On Friday, October 2, the Urban Land Institute — in collaboration with the city of Brampton, the city of Helsinki, Greenberg Consultants, and the University of Toronto's School of Cities — will be hosting an online workshop about the ongoing effort to transform Brampton's uptown Hurontario-Steeles area into a transit-centric, mixed-use community.

The event will take place on Zoom, and pre-registration is required. Anyone who wants an invite should email Yvonne Yeung, manager of urban design at the city of Brampton. The day's programming begins at 9 a.m. More details, including an agenda, are available on the Urban Land Institute Toronto website.

The impetus for the workshop is Metrolinx's new Hurontario LRT, an 18-kilometre light-rail transit line that is scheduled for completion in 2024. The new LRT will terminate in Brampton's Hurontario-Steeles area, instantly transforming the neighbourhood into a major public transportation hub. Currently, much of the neighbourhood's land is occupied by Shoppers World, a suburban-style shopping mall.

Friday's event will be an opportunity for a variety of the Hurontario-Steeles area's key stakeholders (including major developers, public agencies, planners, and city departments) to talk and think about how that community, as well as other parts of Brampton, might be transformed in response to the introduction of rapid transit.

The day will begin with a presentation by Yvonne Yeung. She'll be speaking alongside famed urban planner Ken Greenberg, who is currently advising the city of Brampton, and School of Cities interim director Matti Siemiatycki.

After the presentation, the event will move into a series of panels and breakout sessions focused on the issues involved in transforming Brampton — currently a car-dependent city where the dominant mode of housing is single-family detached — into a transit-oriented, mixed-use community, as envisioned by the city's Brampton 2040 initiative. The frame for the discussion will be Brampton's efforts to transform itself into a "city by design," where design excellence is led by city hall, abetted by developers and community groups, and used as a problem-solving and consensus tool.

In the day's final session, the workshop will generate a series of questions about Brampton's future development. Those questions will form the basis of a second event, a virtual "town hall," which will be held on Thursday, October 8.

The town hall event will be held on Zoom, and will be open for anyone to join. For details on how to participate in that event, watch the ULI Toronto website.