2022 - Opening the Doors

2022 - "opening the doors"

The ‘City Building at the University of Alberta: Opening the Doors’ Conference was held at the Dinwoodie Lounge on March 24, 2022. Funded by a grant from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation, the goal of the Conference was to bring together those across the University of Alberta campus undertaking research in or involved in teaching programs in the ‘city building’ space.

One of the goals of the Centre for Cities and Communities is to encourage collaboration across disciplines while recognizing that creating great ‘places’ is an activity that involves many professionals from private companies, non-profits, educational institutions, public safety entities and various levels of government. For each player, the process of ‘city and community building’ may mean something totally different but for most the vision is the same: to create more vibrant, healthy, sustainable, livable and inclusive cities and communities — ‘places’ — each with a strong economic base. We need to further encourage and facilitate collaboration among educational and research institutions, business, government and NGOs around this same goal. This conference is meant to help in some small way to accomplish that.

This first conference was focused less on discussion and interaction and more on allowing as many as possible to present their role in the city building space. There was agreement among attendees at this first annual conference that it should be an annual event at which presenters could dig deeper into their work with more opportunities for interaction among attendees and speakers. There was also consensus that including representatives from the private sector, NGOs and local governments was a valuable attribute of the conference and should be continued, and perhaps expanded, allowing an opportunity for those outside the U of A to present their work, while encouraging collaboration with the private sector, NGOs and local government.

Conference Recordings:

The Centre for Cities and Communities would like to thank the speakers for contributing to a thoughtful and thought-provoking day. You can watch all presentations using the following link:

Watch The Presentations

Kishwar Habib, Postdoctoral Fellow, Alberta School of Business: Public Spaces and Built Environments in the Post-pandemic World

Maria Mayan, Professor & Interim Dean, Faculty of Extension: Poverty and an Inclusive Economy

Nicole (Nykkie) Lugosi-Schimpf, Assistant Professor, Faculty of Native Studies: Structural Racism and Indigenous Canada Micro-courses

Karim El-Basyouny, Associate Professor at the University of Alberta: Smart Road Infrastructure & Digital Innovation

Robert Summers, Director, Sustainability Scholars Program: The School of Urban and Regional Planning - Programs and ResearchOverview

Maja Osmanagic, Program Lead - Academic Programs and Initiatives: Experiential Learning Programs - the Sustainability Scholar program and the Adaptation Resilience Program

Karen Lee, Associate Professor at the University of Alberta: Fit Cities Improving Housing and Neighbourhoods for CommunityHealth and Wellbeing

Laura Nieuwendyk, Project Coordinator at the University of Alberta: Centre for Healthy Communities: Forging a future for every community that is healthy, sustainable, and flourishing

Malcolm Bruce, CEO Edmonton Global: Edmonton Global

Yuxiang Chen, Associate Professor, Building Engineering, Faculty of Engineering: Energy-Efficient Design and Operation for Human-Centric Built Environment

Farook Hamzeh, Associate Professor, Building Engineering, Faculty of Engineering: Advanced Production Planning Control to improve construction projects

Eran Kaplinsky, Professor, Faculty of Law: Ecosystem services, soil health in the urban and rural context, risk and climate change, property rights

Joshua Evans, Associate Professor, Faculty of Science: Innovation Under the Microscope: Learnings from the Affordable Housing Solutions Lab

Damian Collins, Professor, Faculty of Science - Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Admin: The Role of Community Housing in Successful City-Building

conference feedback

• "My mind went to seeing this grow into a bigger event, I would be interested in some slightly longer talks to expand on the ideas a little more, and to allow more engagement, as while I was processing some of the speakers another speaker was already on stage, so as I engaged with the new speaker, my questions for the previous speaker fell to the side a bit."
• "It seems some presenters were given guidance to speak about the courses they offer, and which students should apply. I work in the private sector and was interested in attending to learn about some of the interesting research/work that is being done at the U of A."
• "Topics were good, perspectives and insights of change agents (investors and private sector) were missing."
• "In the topics presented there was discussion about the beginnings of a project and a lot about social aspects and items during the lifecycle of a building or city, but without closing the circle to include waste we are missing a critical item in a holistic approach to building cities. It needs more foresight in order to be effective and a part of the natural life cycle of a community."
• "Less focus on selling the programs and bigger focus towards integration of these skills into practice. How can private industry, municipal partners, and interested citizens use this in their everyday life?"
• "More back and forth communication, perhaps a long Q&A or breakrooms. Chance to share ideas and thoughts as they come up rather than just lectures."
• "My thoughts were the presentations were more geared towards an overview of the topics in their courses. While this is interesting, as someone from the private sector who isn't engaged in post-secondary education, left me with little value."
• "I liked that this was all under the umbrella of the school of business, to me it shows that we're looking to take those social issues and included them in our planning for business models, not as something we have to figure out how to integrate after we have our bottom line."