Toronto's streets can sometimes feel like contested spaces, filled to capacity with cars, buses, streetcars, bicycles and pedestrians. Our headlines are dominated by debates about bike lanes, cyclist and pedestrian fatalities, pedestrian scrambles, street maintenance and the design quality of our streetscapes—not to mention the role of public transportation in getting us to where we need to go.
 
For Yonge Street's third public event, we're looking for solutions to some of our transportation conundrums. Our panel will include Nancy Smith Lea, Chris Selley and Chris Hardwicke.

Nancy Smith Lea is director of the Toronto Centre for Active Transportation (TCAT). Nancy has been working on transportation issues for many years, and was a founding member and board director of the Toronto Cyclists Union. Read more about Nancy's work in this Yonge Street story.

Chris Selley is Toronto City Hall columnist for The National Post. A lifelong Torontonian, he has written on national affairs for Maclean's magazine and is also on the Post's editorial board. He recently wrote about how the city's traffic policies are poorly enforced. 

Chris Hardwicke is an associate at Sweeny Sterling Finlayson &Co Architects. He has managed projects such as the OCAD master plan, the Port Lands' implementation strategy, Canada Square at Harbourfront Centre's urban design and the Dundas West BIA's branding effort. An active member of the Toronto Cycling Committee and the Zerofootprint sustainability task force, he is also an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo's School of Architecture.

We're hoping the discussion will generate ideas on how to create safe streets that have room for everybody who needs to use them.
 
The Yonge Street Speaker Series is sponsored by the Toronto Community Foundation and Waterfront Toronto.
 
It's free and everyone is welcome. You can register here.

To make this Yonge Talks even more social, it will be a licensed, 19-plus event.
 
The details
Thursday, January 19
Doors at 6pm; program starts at 6:30pm
ING Direct Café, 221 Yonge Street, at the southeast corner of Shuter.
 
We'll be using the hashtag #yongetalks for this series.