Streets for everyone

Revisiting early street design in search of greater equity and sustainability.

Before the rise of the automobile, city streets were for everyone. This event will revisit earlier forms of streets designed for a variety of users, including children at play and pedestrians in large open areas. We will look at road design and its management, including rights-of-way, and how to create greater equity and sustainability from design to public space.

Peter Norton

Peter Norton is associate professor of history in the Department of Engineering and Society at the University of Virginia. He has also been a visiting faculty member at the Technical University of Eindhoven in the Netherlands, and is a member of the University of Virginia’s Center for Transportation Studies. Norton is the author of Fighting Traffic: The Dawn of the Motor Age in the American City, and of Autonorama: The Illusory Promise of High-Tech Driving. He is a winner of the Usher Prize of the Society for the History of Technology, and a frequent speaker on the subject of sustainable and equitable urban mobility.

Zvi Leve

Zvi Leve is a transportation modelling expert whose interests focus on the linkages between transportation, land use, and sustainable development. His professional experience has been principally in the field of transportation modelling, but his passion is ‘streets as public space’ and creating a more equitable allocation of street space. Currently he is working on developing a «community parking» project which seeks to develop a roadmap for using parking as a policy lever to help us overcome our ‘auto-dependence’ while promoting more sustainable development patterns. When he is not evaluating the implications of large-scale infrastructure projects and technological change, he can be found promoting active transportation and human-scaled cities. He is involved with numerous community groups dedicated to rethinking the role of transportation and the built environment in our lives.

December 1, 2022, 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. (EST)

40 Elgin St., 2nd floor, Ottawa, Ontario

If you cannot attend in person, or if the event is fully booked, you can still watch the webcast live on YouTube.

In-person events and the live webcast on YouTube are bilingual with simultaneous interpretation and closed captioning in both official languages. Interpretation of the floor audio is only available during the event.

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