Imagine Cities Research Categories
We help neighbourhood organizations understand and use current research, skills and tools to build thriving neighbourhoods that last for generations.
Our obsession with research has allowed us to build an increasingly strong understanding of what it takes to create communities that foster opportunities, belonging and happiness. We collect and share research on our search engine across 18 city making categories to keep you up to date with current research.
These categories are regularly reviewed and updated. For instance, we now collect research on DNA and neuroscience. With our improved understanding of our brains and DNA has highlighted how our daily experiences can shape how our brain develops and how our DNA functions.
We are entering an era of exponential change never seen before in human history. This era is being supported by a strong culture of innovation and creativity. If we choose, this era could be used to solve some of humanity’s biggest challenges. The number of problems we can solve is only limited by our collective ingenuity and ability to work together.
Our research categories focus on the topics that advance human flourishing. Rooted in systems thinking, the purpose of each description is to provide a high-level understanding of each category’s importance to neighbourhood life. The descriptions are not comprehensive but provide you with a framework for further exploration and healthy debate. We welcome you to provide feedback so we may improve our descriptions.
The descriptions listed below attempt to answer the following two questions:
- What the research category is about;
- Why is the research category is important and;
- What are some cities doing to make improvements.
Note: what we have provided is our perspective. You don’t have to agree wth us. We encourage healthy and respectful debate on any research category covered.
Category #1: Arts & Culture
The impact of arts and culture on society cannot be understated. The social, health, educational and economic outcomes are wide ranging and significant including the ability to improve struggling communities. When we consider neighbourhoods that people gravitate to, it almost always involves arts and culture. With a new economy that’s dependent on creativity, the indirect impact of arts and culture is playing a growing economic role by building the creative muscles and inspiration needed by innovators to create the future. The importance of increasing access to art and culture led Toronto to preserve cultural hubs through implementing a tax break while Malibu City’s utility box art program gives more people access to art in their neighbourhood, and Paris’ famous public arts festival Nuit Blanche is an immersive arts experience for everyone.
Category #2: Climate Change, Energy & Pollution
The science of climate change is clear. While the planet has historically warmed and cooled, increasing human activity has led to an unsustainably warming planet. Tackling climate change is not about saving the planet because the planet will survive changes in climate. It’s about saving human life on this planet because civilization can only survive within certain temperatures. Embedded in this warming is pollution such as greenhouse gases. There is also so much plastic pollution that humans consume thousands of pieces each year. The largest producers of greenhouse gases include electricity, transportation, industry, property development, and agriculture. This has led to an effort to find solutions to reduce our carbon footprint by lowering the carbon intensity of fossil fuels, investing in more types of energy, lowering our need for energy and mitigating the impact of global climate disruption and pollution.
Category #3: Density
As populations in cities grow, so will our use of land. In the Greater Toronto and Hamilton area, growth between 2006–2016 saw 1,000 hectares of agricultural and natural habitats get paved over per year (a hockey rink is 0.15 hectares). Studies have shown that more compact urban design saves between 38%-50% of upfront infrastructure costs, 10% on the delivery of services, and produces 10 times more in taxes per hectare. In addition to economic impacts, urban sprawl has wide ranging negative health impacts. On the flipside, cities that depend on high-rises also have a negative impact on quality of life. This is why how we design density is important. Consider that New York has over 300 skyscrapers and Paris has only 18. Yet, Paris is twice as dense as New York. The way we choose to design our cities is critical to how we experience our cities where density is not the goal but is a critical ingredient to creating better outcomes for residents. This is why California has ended the development of single family homes to add more density to communities and why more cities are proposing establishing 15 minute cities where you can get what you need within 15 minutes of your home which also involves implementing, not high or low density, but well designed density.
Category #4: Diversity, Inclusion & Equity
Coming soon…
Category #5: Economic Development
The strong relationship between urban design and economic development dates back to the 18th and 19th century when it was found that there was a correlation in the US between registered patents (i.e. innovation), access to canals and railway (multi-modal transport), and the agglomeration of people (dense communities). The most productive economies apply the same principles today. The ability to create economic growth relies on investments in key assets that amplify the capacity to innovate, improve competitiveness and household income. In the new economy, a symbiotic relationship exists between the ability to attract and retain talent and businesses. There are many who have made the investments and those who have not, which has led to growing economic divergence across regions as some cities lack the capacity to be more productive leading to disastrous outcomes for residents. In this era of transformative innovation, many are working to reshape the economy to also be more resilient while better addressing the needs of society and the environment.
Category #6: Education
Whether it was learning how to farm in ancient Mesopotamia or learning calculus in modern cities, education has been an essential part of society that ensures we have some of the skills and tools needed to to survive. For some like John Dewey, education is not simply a place to acquire knowledge to get a job. It is also a critical component to learning how to live life including creating social cohesion which is essential to human progress. What we have needed to learn has changed over time, but the need to learn has remained essential as cities attempt to remain competitive as their economies evolve. Unfortunately, the quality of education we receive, such as access to early childhood education, varies depending on a number of factors leading to unequal access to the knowledge, skills and tools that enable us to acquire the resources to not only survive but also thrive.
Category #7: Engagement
Cities are full of people overflowing with creativity and innovation, but the ability to innovate to solve urban problems has long been siloed within the hands of the few. More thoughtful solutions can be proposed at a faster pace when increasing the capacity for more diverse participants to become involved leading to increased happiness among residents. This can be accomplished by creating policies, approaches and platforms that can propel trust and increased participation. Traditionally, this has involved community associations, business improvement areas, nonprofits and charities, but recent innovations have led to more tools to improve engagement including crowdsourcing, crowdfunding, tactical urbanism, participatory budgeting, community benefit districts and data. In many regions, purpose driven companies are also playing an increasing role in solving problems in communities.
Category #8: Food Security
From early childhood, access to not just food but quality food is critical to the development of our brain and body. For many, the ability to access quality food is not a basic human right which has adverse impacts on their lives. This includes a higher propensity to have obesity and related health outcomes, adverse mental health impacts, and negatively impact your ability to be productive at work. On the flipside of the inability of many to access food is the problem of growing food waste. We throw away billions of dollars of food each year. In addition to accessing quality food, there’s also the threat of the quality of our food as the nutrition levels in food have been declining over the past 50 to 70 years and climate change is leading to impact on crops. Despite the challenges, there have been so many incredible innovations solving some of these complex problems such as apps that reduce food waste, the emergence of upcycled food, fast food chains that make healthy food more accessible, nonprofit grocery stores, drought resistant farming techniques.
Category #9: Finance
Cities are becoming increasingly competitive. It’s expected that by 2025, 136 of the top performing cities in the world are expected to fall out of the top 600 and be replaced by cities coming primarily from the developing world including China, India, the African continent and Latin America. In this environment of increasing competition, it is critical for cities to organize and use their finite financial resources to more effectively optimize investments leading to more significant results. There are many examples of how cities are more effectively organzing their capital through partnership to advance better outcomes. In Salt Lake City, the local government partnered with FedEx to assist in gaining public support to prioritize public transit investment. In Victoria, Fernwood NRG partnered with the public sector, private sector, and foundations to advance community transformation to become a sought after place to live. In Toronto, a partnership with developers led to the redevelopment of Canada’s largest social housing project into a well designed community, and in Cleveland a partnership with a local hospital led to the creation of high quality jobs.
Category #10: Government
Whether you believe in limiting or expanding the role of government, the importance of the role of government in modern life cannot be understanded. In her article for the World Economic Forum, Anne Marie Slaughter states that the government serves three core roles: protecting its citizens from violence, providing goods and services, and investing in talent. Considering our ability to access healthy food, clean water and clean air, what is the role of the government? While many people have differing opinions about the role of government, most can agree that the government must be given the capacity to successfully fulfill its goals such as having the power to collect taxes.
Category #11: Housing
The first rung on the ladder to providing opportunity is access to housing in a good neighbourhood. A lack of access has many wide ranging effects. For instance, young people without access to adequate housing are less likely to graduate while having housing leads to better economic outcomes as adults. Parents benefit from reduced negative mental and physical health impacts while providing housing is cheaper when supporting those who are homeless rather than relying on police and emergency room visits. In Toronto, Trillium Housing has been making housing more affordable asking for a 5% down payment, in the US Section 8 housing has helped millions of families move into better neighbourhoods, and Housing First policies have dramatically reduced homelessness across the world.
Category #12: Mobility
Urban mobility refers to the ability to get from one point of a city to the other. Sitting in traffic can have disastrous wellbeing outcomes and wasted time. The way we design our communities to improve our mobility options can have a significant impact on our health, local and industrial scale economies, and the environment. For cities that rely on a single mode of transport, the outcomes can be disastrous for residents. To advance a future that reduces congestion and gets people to where they want to faster, cities are advancing a multimodal future such as embracing tolls which reduced traffic by 20% during rush hour in Stockholm, Germany’s cycle highway and New York’s protected bike lanes, Paris’ growing micro mobility options, as well as Barcelona’s Superblock design which encourages walking. In the near future, options could also include drone and autonomous delivery systems and taxis.
Category #13: Neuroscience & DNA
Breakthroughs in neuroscience & DNA research has led us to better understand how our life shapes our brain and genetic code well into adulthood. The research has demonstrated how our lived experiences have a direct correlation with our ability to reach our full potential. A lack of nutritious food or facing high levels of stress early in life can have negative impacts that last the rest of our lives. Consider that our brain grows the most in the first five years of our lives or that our DNA is not set in stone and can be rewritten as a result of our lived experiences. What is even more interesting is that our DNA is not only shaped by our lives, but also the lives of our ancestors.
Category #14: Biodiversity
Biodiversity refers to all the variety of life (i.e. wildlife, plants and humans) that exist in cities and how we interact with each other. Biodiversity is linked to a stronger sense of happiness, mental well-being, and even improved brain-aging in urban settings. Due to its significant benefits, cities set goals to increase their residents’ access to biodiversity. In an attempt to mitigate the city’s vulnerabilities to climate change and increase livable spaces for its residents, Montreal has committed to building a Biodiversity Corridor. The financial cost of poor biodiversity planning is also significant. Over a 9 year period, the City of Calgary estimates a financial cost of $45,376,000 due to vehicle collisions with wildlife, which added to the motivation behind the development of their 10-year biodiversity plan.
Category #15: Parks & Public Space
Coming soon…
Category #16: Safety & Security
While urban centres have witnessed a decline in violence since the 1990s, safety remains top of mind for residents. A lack of safety, perceived or real, has wide ranging short and long term impacts on individuals and communities. Many associate safety with sufficient policing, the justice system, and prison, but others have expanded the toolkit to include preventative measures to ensure public safety. Jane Jacobs famously noted the importance of “eyes on the street” in urban design, some cities have declared violence a public health issue and diverted police funding into preventative services, and others have turned to technology to improve safety.
Category #17: Smart Cities
Through scientific study, we’re gaining an increasing understanding of what it takes to build great cities. By supporting data programs and the use of indicators, an increasing number of cities have built the capacity to measure whether their city is improving or not. Alongside this knowledge is a growing effort to create mechanisms to enable more people to participate in problem solving. Whether it’s through the use of technology or buckets of paint and some lumber, cities are becoming smarter and more creative in their ability to meaningfully identify problems and solve them.
Category #18: Water Security
Coming soon…
