Today I was honoured to be a mentor for the Future City Builders Lab in Halifax, an amazing initiative through Youthful Cities and Future Cities Canada. FCB engages 150 young people in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Hamilton, and Halifax (30 in each city). The purpose is to get local youth to tackle an urban issue such as transportation, waste systems, and housing and develop their own innovative solutions. The Halifax team, led by Alfred Burgesson (social entrepreneur and Saint Mary’s student) and Joyce Liu (alumna of the Dalhousie School of Planning and entrepreneur), are tackling housing. The group meets on five different days in February, sometimes learning from mentors, other times brainstorming, ending up with a public launch of their solutions on March 4th.
Today’s mentors included myself, Frank Palermo (Emeritus Professor, Dalhousie School of Planning), Stephan Richard (NS Housing), Rodney Small (One North End), and Tristan Cleveland (PhD student, Dalhousie). We each spoke for 10 minutes, then answered questions. Then we each met in small groups for 15 minutes each, and had more informal discussions. We had time to chat more over lunch, and then in the afternoon they got to work on developing solutions.
It was really inspiring to be in a room full of young people who are so enthusiastic about housing! I can’t wait to see what they come up with.
