Speaker Series Presentations

Brampton 2040 Speaker Series

Four nights | 10 Speakers | Hundreds of Ideas

At this free event you will hear from and engage with international leaders who have successfully implemented transformational change in other communities.

The series, part of a larger project that is aimed at developing the Brampton 2040 Plan to implementing the Brampton 2040 Vision, that followed extensive public engagement in the fall of 2017.

The Brampton 2040 Vision was endorsed by Council in May of 2018. Brampton 2040 depicts a more sustainable, urban, vibrant and economically successful direction for the City. Building upon the 2040 engagement process, the objective of these events is to share ideas with the community as to how we can move from vision to action.

January 22, 2020

Ken Greenberg

Ken Greenberg is an urban designer, teacher, writer, former Director of Urban Design and Architecture for the City of Toronto and Principal of Greenberg Consultants. For over four decades he has played a pivotal role on public and private assignments in urban settings throughout North America and Europe, focusing on the rejuvenation of downtowns, waterfronts, neighbourhoods and on campus master planning, regional growth management, and new community planning. Cities as diverse as Toronto, Hartford, Amsterdam, New York, Boston, Montréal, Ottawa, Edmonton, Calgary, St. Louis, Washington DC, Paris, Detroit, Saint Paul and San Juan Puerto Rico have benefited from his advocacy and passion for restoring the vitality, relevance and sustainability of the public realm in urban life. In each city, with each project, his strategic, consensus building approach has led to coordinated planning and a renewed focus on urban design. He is the recipient of the 2010 American Institute of Architects Thomas Jefferson Award for Public Design Excellence and the 2014 Sustainable Buildings Canada Lifetime Achievement Award. Involved in many grass roots and community initiatives he has served as a Board Member of Park People, a non-profit dedicated to the improvement of Toronto's parks, is currently a Director of the Bentway Conservancy Board, on the Advisory Board of Waterfront for All and President of the Wellington Place Neighbourhood Association. He is a cofounder and Vice Chair of the new City Building Institute at Ryerson University in Toronto. A frequent writer for periodicals, He is the author of Walking Home: the Life and Lessons of a City Builder published by Random House and shortly to be released Toronto Reborn; Design Successes and Challenges published by Dundurn. He played a leading role as urban design lead and client representative for The Bentway, the transformation of a major public space under the Gardiner Expressway in Toronto and is currently serving as an advisor to Sidewalk Labs for Quayside on the Toronto waterfront.

David Crombie

David Crombie has been a politician, professor and consultant. A popular mayor of Toronto from 1972 to 1978, he was affectionately referred to as ‘the tiny perfect mayor.’ In federal politics from 1978 to 1988, he served as the PC member for Rosedale and held several cabinet positions, including Minister of Indian and Northern Affairs and Secretary of State and Minister of Multiculturalism. He subsequently chaired the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, and from 2001 to 2007 served as president and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute. More recently, he has served in various advisory capacities to city and provincial governments.

January 29, 2020

Stephen Lewis

Stephen Lewis started his career as a member of the Ontario Legislative Assembly; he served from 1963 to 1978, during which time he became leader of the Ontario New Democratic Party and leader of the Official Opposition.

Mr. Lewis served as Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations from 1984 to 1988 and was the Deputy Executive Director of UNICEF, at the organization’s global headquarters in New York, from 1995 to 1999. Stephen Lewis was the UN Special Envoy for HIV/AIDS in Africa from 2001 to the end of 2006.

Mr. Lewis serves as the board co-chair of the Stephen Lewis Foundation, and he is co-founder and co-director of the international advocacy organization AIDS-Free World.

Stephen Lewis is the author of Race Against Time, a series of five lectures published in book form and delivered during the annual Massey Lecture Tour in 2005. Mr. Lewis is a Companion of the Order of Canada, Canada's highest honour for lifetime achievement, and he holds 42 honorary doctorates from Canadian and American universities.

Zahra Ebrahim

Zahra Ebrahim is a city builder and designer interested in shifting power from some to many, using design to build equity, and engaging citizens in the design of services, policies and infrastructure. She is an Executive Advisor to Deloitte on Cities, Design and Governance, and a senior advisor to political and public interest initiatives across the country. Zahra has led organizations across the private and social sectors, all focused on engaging diverse sets of stakeholders to co-create solutions to complex organizational and industry challenges, and working with communities to co-design towards better social outcomes.

Through her work, she has led some of Canada’s most ambitious participatory infrastructure and policy programs. Zahra has taught at OCADU, MoMA, and currently teaches at UofT. She has served on the boards of Jane’s Walk, St. Stephen’s Community House, Toronto Biennial, and the Canadian Urban Institute, and is currently the chair of the board of Park People. She serves as an advisor for a range of organizations including Toronto Public Library, Progress Toronto, and Code for Canada. She was recently named Next City’s Vanguard “40 under 40 Civic Leader”, Ascend Canada’s Mentor of the Year, and one of WXN’s Top 100 Women in Canadian Business.

February 5, 2020

Brad King

As Vice President with Lord Cultural Resources, Brad King oversees a number of the firm’s planning and implementation services. Having led or contributed to more than 200 museum planning projects in over 15 countries since joining Lord in 2000, he is an experienced, versatile and knowledgeable consultant who consistently demonstrates an ability to see through to the heart of a particular issue or problem.

Brad works in both management consulting and museum exhibition development and has particular specializations in master planning, collection analyses, business planning and museum learning strategies. He brings a wealth of national and international experience to his work and has led or had a major role in numerous museum planning projects in Canada, the U.S. and around the world.

Brad holds a Ph.D. in History from the University of Toronto and is a frequent presenter at museum and academic conferences. He is the author of chapters in The Manual of Museum Learning (1st ed. 2007) and The Manual of Museum Planning (3rd ed. 2012: Chapter 5, “Understanding Collections”) and is co-editor of The Manual of Museum Learning (2nd ed. 2016).

Gil Penalosa

Gil Penalosa is passionate about cities for all people. He advises decision makers and communities worldwide on how to create vibrant cities and healthy communities for all, regardless of age, gender, ability and social, economic, or ethnic background. His focus is on the design and use of parks and streets as great public places, as well as the promotion of sustainable mobility: walking, riding bicycles, using public transit, and new use of cars.

Gil is the Founder and Chair of the board of the successful Canadian non-profit organization 8 80 Cities, as well as Ambassador of World Urban Parks: international representative body for the city parks, open space and recreation sector. In addition, Gil leads a private international consulting firm - Gil Penalosa & Associates, providing services as an inspirational keynote speaker, facilitator of strategic workshops and advisor to decision makers and community groups.

Throughout his career, Gil has been a strong advocate for improving city parks, making his first mark in the late 1990s where he led the design and development of over 200 parks in Bogotá, Colombia - including Simon Bolivar, a 113-hectare park in the heart of the city. His team also initiated the “new Ciclovia”/ Open Streets - a program that sees over 1.7 million people walk, run, skate and bike along 121 kilometres of Bogotá’s city roads every Sunday of the year, and today is internationally recognized and emulated.

Because of Gil’s unique blend of experience, pragmatism and passion, many cities and organizations worldwide seek his leadership and valuable advice. He has worked in over 300 different cities in all continents. He also serves as senior advisor to Vision Zero Network, Children & Nature Network, and America Walks.

Gil holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, where he recently was selected as one of the “100 Most Inspirational Alumni” in the school's history. In 2015 Gil received a Doctorate Honoris Causa from the Faculty of Urban Planning at the prominent Swedish University, SLU. He is a Certified Professional Speaker by the US-NSA. In 2017 Gil was listed in Planetizen’s Top 100 Most Influential Urbanists. In 2018 he received the Annual World Urban Parks Distinguished Individual Award.

Pamela Blais

Pamela Blais is an urban planner and Principal of Metropole Consultants Ltd. Her professional focus is in creating better cities by integrating planning, economic and environmental thinking in analysing urban issues and developing innovative policy.

In her twenty-plus year career as an urban planning consultant, her work has included reurbanisation strategies and research; regional growth planning; municipal economic development strategies; innovative land use policies for industrial areas; urban regeneration strategies; sustainable urban form, community design and infrastructure; and research on the impact of technology on urban form.

She is the author of Perverse Cities: Hidden Subsidies, Wonky Policy and Urban Sprawl, which was shortlisted for the 2011 Donner Book Prize – awarded for the best Canadian public policy book of the year.

Pamela has a Masters in Planning from the University of Toronto and a PhD in urban economic geography from the London School of Economics.

February 12, 2020

Ian Lockwood

Ian Lockwood P.E., is a Livable Transportation Engineer with the Toole Design Group. Ian has Bachelor and Master Degrees in Civil Engineering and is a Harvard University Loeb Fellow. Ian has applied his expertise in “city structure” (i.e., street network and open spaces) to help many urban and suburban places achieve better outcomes. The scales of his projects range from individual development sites, to transit station areas, to downtowns, to entire cities. Ian describes this foundational level of place-making as, “getting the bones right.” As an early step during his projects, Ian does an “X-ray.” If structural problems exist, he suggests remedies. Three examples of the power of getting the bones right include: i) the huge gains in walkability, cycling comfort, and livability around the Mount Baker a suburban transit station in Seattle, Washington; ii) the urbanization around White Flint area in Maryland, a 1960s suburban strip/sprawl area that is now becoming an emerging urban center; and iii) the revitalization of downtown in South Bend, Indiana. Ian helps maximize the places’ potential by aligning transportation metrics with the community’s values, with complete streets designs, and refocusing transportation policies, priorities, and funding to result in better places. Ian has conducted several training courses on the structure of places and complete streets for cities and departments of transportation. He also guest lectures at universities and is occasionally interviewed on National Public Radio. For fun, he does photography, cartooning, and road cycling. Follow Ian on Twitter @IanLockwoodPE

Dan Burden

Dan Burden is the Director of Innovation and Inspiration at Blue Zones, as well as cofounder and former Executive Director of the Walkable and Livable Communities (WALC) Institute, a nonprofit organization that works throughout North America and the world to create healthy, connected communities that support active living and advance opportunities for all people through walkable streets, livable cities, and better built environments.

In his work, Dan brings together many disciplines and issues -- such as street design, public safety, economic development and land-use planning -- to create a holistic vision for healthy communities that are pedestrian- and bicycle-friendly. He is considered an international expert in walkability, bikeability, traffic calming, and road diets.

Burden has spent more than 40 years helping to get the world “back on its feet.” His efforts earned him the first-ever lifetime-achievement award, issued by the New Partners for Smart Growth and the Association of Pedestrian and Bicycle Professionals. Additionally, in 2001, Burden was named by TIME magazine as “one of the six most important civic innovators in the world.” Also that year, he became Distinguished Lecturer for the Transportation Research Board of the National Academy of Sciences. In 2009, a user poll by Planetizen named him one of the Top 100 Urban Thinkers of all time.

Joe Minicozzi

Joe Minicozzi is an urban planner imagining new ways to think about and visualize land use, urban design and economics. Joe founded Urban3 to explain and visualize market dynamics created by tax and land use policies. Urban3's work establishes new conversations across multiple professional sectors, policy makers, and the public to creatively address the challenges of urbanization. Urban3’s extensive studies range geographically over 30 states, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Joe holds a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Miami and Master of Architecture and Urban Design from Harvard University. In 2017, Joe was recognized as one of the 100 Most Influential Urbanists of all time.

Speaker Series Videos

Bramptonians hear from and engage with renowned speakers on how to move Brampton forward. Week one features Ken Greenberg, urban designer, teacher and writer, and David Crombie, former Mayor of Toronto, Chair of the Royal Commission on the Future of the Toronto Waterfront, and President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute.