Making Hamilton better, smarter
Walrus Foundation partners with Mac for talk on thriving cities
How do you make a city smarter, healthier and more creative?
It’s a tall order for sure, but a unique event, co-sponsored McMaster University and the Walrus Foundation, plans to tackle the issue head-on.
McMaster University has been hosting a series of forums called Big Ideas, Better Cities, that showcase how McMaster research can help cities respond to modern challenges.
And the Walrus Foundation — most known for its Walrus Magazine — has been travelling the country featuring its Walrus Talks, on a wide range of topics.
The two will merge in Hamilton on Feb. 10 in an evening that will showcase a variety of speakers discussing how cities can be improved.
The Spectator talked to McMaster University president Patrick Deane about the thinking behind the event and the university’s approach to helping Hamilton become smarter, healthier and more creative.
Q. As succinctly as you can explain it, what is a smart, healthy and creative city as described by the event organizers?
A. Cities that seem to thrive and produce a high quality of living for their citizens are not just economically stable and prosperous; they take some of the economic benefits of the prosperity and turn them into refinements to quality of life. Healthy cities need to have a vibrant cultural and recreational side to them as well as a good healthy economic base underpinning the whole thing. Education is critical to that as well. The more educated the population is at large, the higher level you will see in everything from artistic achievement to innovation and so on.
Q. When did the movement toward smarter, healthier and more creative cities start?
A. People like Richard Florida have been writing about the characteristics of healthy, good cities for several decades, but I think it goes back way further. There was the city beautiful movement at the end of the 19th century. There was a very conscious attempt in a number of countries to build cities from the ground up that are planned and focused on these issues. I think the healthy city movement ... is probably easily a century and half old with a line of thinking that follows on improving industrial blight.
Q. What do you see as McMaster’s role in achieving that in Hamilton?
A. The university came here (from Toronto in 1930) at the invitation of the citizens of Hamilton ... The city was prosperous in the ’20s and missing a centre of higher learning ... When I think about McMaster and its relationship to Hamilton I think it has been a fundamental and symbiotic kind of relationship from when we admitted our first students here. I see our fortunes as continuing to be very closely intertwined.
Q. What is the objective of the Walrus Talks Healthy City event in that context?
A. I would say the whole series is intended to be an ongoing opportunity for dialogue between people from the university — and people who can be convened by the university — with people from the city to talk about issues that have an impact on our community ... We see these as an opportunity … to create opportunities for a multi-sided conversation with our community.