Jennifer Keesmaat, Toronto’s chief planner, will be talking about her favourite subject, walking to school, at
Walk Toronto’s annual general meeting next Wednesday.
"We're generating a culture change in our school system and in our communities around walking," Keesmaat says, "recognizing walking to school as being a fundamental part of creating healthy, happy communities."
Her thinking on the subject, which she has laid in several
TEDx talks, is that walking to school benefits children's health, creates communities that are pedestrian friendly, and increases the chances parents will send their children to local schools, discouraging the development of what Keesmaat calls mega-schools.
"In downtown Halifax, they closed a series of schools and opened a mega-school," she says, "and guess what that mega-school needed? A huge parking lot. Part of the connection I would like to make is that there is a public policy implication in the academic performance of our children and the cohesive strength of our communities that is unrelated to the financial efficiency of having one building instead of five."
Keesmaat believes that walking and pedestrian issues are a fundamental part of a city’s transportation planning. "Thinking about walking is a part of how we learn about our community. It’s not a design question, it’s a choice question and a cultural issue.
"We have a culture where we've become inverted in just one generation from being communities, back in the 1960s, where 70 per cent of our children walked to school, to now, when 70 per cent of our children are driven to school. Schools are still centrally located, they’re still within walking distance, and the choice is being made to drive.”
Keesmaat says our communities are safer than ever but, ironically, our perception of their safety is lower than ever. She says there’s a direct correlation between this perception, having children walking on the sidewalks, employing crossing guards, and generally populating the streets with people instead of cars.
Keesmaat will be speaking and taking questions from 8pm to 9pm on Wednesday, Feb. 12, at the University of Toronto Schools auditorium at 371 Bloor St. W.
Writer: Bert Archer
Source: Jennifer Keesmaat