Chief city planner Jennifer Keesmaat is the star of a new short film by
Freeman House Productions, a Toronto firm doing a series about creative people called
The Guild. The project does Keesmaat, and the city, a big favour. In the seven-and-a-half-minute black-and-white film, Keesmaat makes urban planning sound like fun.
“I believe we are inherently creative as a species,” she says at the outset. “I'm a city-builder. I build cities every day. That's my job.
“It's really tricky for me to walk down the street without looking at the shape of a building, the way the entrances are shaped, the width of a sidewalk.”
Though people looking for Toronto specifics will be disappointed – this
little film is all blue-sky, big-picture stuff – the way Keesmaat thinks about her profession, as a mix of engineering and art, should make us all sleep a little better at night as our city, as dreamt up by her, coalesces around us.
Writer: Bert Archer