In advance of next week’s municipal election, U of T News has produced a podcast mini-series all about cities. The series kicked off with a look at the future of traffic. Episode two explored at the future of transit. The third episode, released Monday, focused on research around sustainable cities.

The episode on sustainability began with a interview with Assistant Professor Liat Margolis, whose research on green roofs was described by the American Society of Landscape Architects as “the most rigorous and comprehensive of all the test-roof research out there.” Margolis is the principle investigator of the GRIT Lab (Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory), located on the roof of the Daniels Faculty at 230 College Street.

Dean Richard Sommer spoke on both transit and sustainability. In episode two, host Brianna Goldberg asked him about the Daniels Faculty’s joint project with Metrolinx, which looked at designing transit hubs across the Greater Toronto Hamilton Area and resulted in the book Huburbs. And since transit and sustainability are interconnected, Dean Sommer was brought back again to discuss the importance of seeing transit as something more than just a way of getting residents from point A to point B.

“It’s not just a matter of convenience," says Sommer. "Our ambition has to be to make the experience and quality of commuting into the city through transit something that is better than driving. So, one can read, one can shop, one can exercise, one can socialize — one can do something that is enriching rather than something that is seen as a sacrifice.”

The final episode of the series, features the director of the Daniels Faculty’s Global Cities Institute Patricia McCarney, along with Richard Florida, and U of T president Meric Gertler.

Previously "aired" U of T Cities episodes:

• Episode one: The future of traffic
• Episode two: The future of transit
• Episode three: Sustainable cities
• Episode four: Future cities