On January 28^th, the Curtis Infrastructure Initiative hosted its second meeting of its grant-funded cohort of projects, and first meeting of 2021, to hear updates from ULI District Council personnel and local teams present on the projects they are pursuing with their awarded Curtis Infrastructure Grants.

The meeting began where the prior meeting had left off, with ULI Toronto and ULI San Antonio presenting on their funded projects. The San Antonio team detailed the specific challenges of being in a large and fast growing city without any fixed guideway transit, and their plan to create innovative and equitable mobility, as well as reduce miles travelled by building out a network of “mobility hubs” with a variety of densities and services available.

ULI Toronto’s project will revolve around using the current appetite in the province to intensify urban nodes as a means to solve fundamental issues such as affordability, public health, and community health. They hope to use ULI’s network to bring together parties within the community, public sector, private sector, academia, and non-profit spheres who are not currently collaborating. To begin, they will undertake a series of workshops to collect feedback and work towards solutions on these issues.

The cohort reviewed progress updates from the four district council teams who presented at the last meeting, and discussed how issues in their projects intersected and overlapped.

The cohort meetings will continue on a bi-monthly basis in 2021, focusing on having discussion and building capacity and network among the local project teams, as well as a community of practice that can work together on shared challenges and opportunities. Future cohort meetings will also provide resources through ULI HQ staff and presenters.

For more information, visit americas.uli.org/infrastructure-initiative.