Architecturally Speaking

Rethinking Neighbourhoods: Insights from the OAA SHIFT Challenge Winners (Part 1 of 3)

• Ontario Association of Architects • Season 3 • Episode 14

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In this episode of Architecturally Speaking, host Ryan Schwartz welcomes listeners our three-part series on the Ontario Association of Architects’ SHIFT Challenge, a biennial competition inviting architects to explore bold ideas for the future of design.

This year’s theme, Reshaping Communities, focuses on rethinking how neighbourhoods are built to better respond to modern urban challenges. Ryan is joined by two winners of the 2025 SHIFT Challenge: Naama Blonder of Smart Density, whose project Subdivillage reimagines the subdivision, and Tim Scott, whose project The City Limits proposes a redesign of a century-old Toronto suburb.

Together, they share insights on the power of walkability, the importance of public space, and the need to move beyond car-dominated planning. From creating safe, pedestrian-first streets to introducing gentle density in established neighbourhoods, their visions highlight how thoughtful design can foster stronger, more sustainable communities.

Tune in for an inspiring conversation on the future of urban design and how architects can help reshape the places we live, work, and connect.

Subscribe now to Architecturally Speaking on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.


Rethinking Neighborhoods: Insights from the OAA SHIFT Challenge Winners (Part 1 of 3)


Ryan Schwartz: 00:04.38 - 01:15.2

Hi there, welcome back to another episode of Architecturally Speaking. I'm your host, Ryan Schwartz, and today we're continuing a three-part series based around the Ontario Association of Architects SHIFT Challenge. The SHIFT Challenge is a design competition held every other year where the OAA will pick a particular topic and invite OAA-registered architects to submit a conceptual project of their choosing that speaks to or kind of addresses that particular topic. So recent past topics have included resiliency and health, but the topic selected for 2025 was titled Reshaping Communities. So the challenge this year was coming up with an architectural concept or solution that starts to rethink our communities and how they're designed, how do we respond to modern challenges that our cities are facing, and what can be improved to actually make our neighborhoods and our communities better for everyone. The thought being that some of these conceptual ideas can then maybe migrate into the real world and have a real tangible and positive impact on the public. So today we're lucky enough to have two guests joining and they both just happen to be winners of the Shift Challenge this year. So we have Naama Blonder of Smart Density representing her team's project called SubdaVillage, a remaking of the subdivision. So welcome, Naama.

Naama Blonder: 01:15.23 - 01:16.59

Thank you.

Ryan Schwartz: 01:17.47 - 01:46.98

And we also have Tim Scott and his project titled The City Limits, Rethinking a 100-Year-Old Toronto Suburb. So welcome Tim. Thank you. So thanks for your patience while I sort of work through that long, lengthy introduction. But before we get into even the specifics of your project, the challenge of reshaping communities, you know, what sort of went first through your mind when you see a title like that or a challenge like that? What are some of the first ideas and thoughts that go through your mind when you hear reshaping communities?

Tim Scott: 01:49.58 - 01:51.52

Naama, please.

Naama Blonder: 01:52.42 - 03:01.62

For us, it's actually the fourth time that we are participating and winning a Shift Challenge. And what I love about it is that the OAA is doing a really good job with coming up with these topics because they're always broad enough to really have creative ideas that are different from one another. And with this year, you know, It is such a broad topic that so many things and ideas could fit under. And that's the purpose of the shift challenge, right? To demonstrate architectural thinking and how architects approach problem solving. So for me, reshaping communities, first of all, it is a topic that is more relevant than ever. We're, we're living in this post COVID era. We're having a housing crisis yet our market is not what it used to be. So for us and, and for us specifically, the shift that we saw from higher density projects to the subdivision typology is exactly about that reshaping communities.

Ryan Schwartz: 03:03.04 - 03:06.62

And what about you, Tim? What, what goes through your mind when you hear reshaping communities?

Tim Scott: 03:06.80 - 04:19.72

Well, first of all, I'm really sympathetic having spent some time with Naama's project with everything that her team did. You know, the idea of finding a way of gently increasing density And in her case, and I become more and more interested in this, adjusting what the public space of a reimagined neighborhood could be like, because without those public spaces, there really isn't a neighborhood. have been working on this simply as a citizen of my own neighborhood for several years. And it was, I stumbled on the shift competition and I simply used it as a way of focusing my, my thinking. And it's really been about, you know, how to, for me, you know, how to reimagine this existing neighborhood, which right now, in my opinion, as it rebuilds itself is failing. any of the ambitions I would have for the neighborhood as a place I'd like to continue to live in. So it became very personal for me. You know, how do I make my neighborhood a place I want to stay?

Ryan Schwartz: 04:19.74 - 04:23.22

Yeah. How do you make it better in your immediate surroundings?

Tim Scott: 04:23.38 - 04:43.32

As an architect, I'm really interested in the Uh crises of the day. I'm really interested in designing meat carbon net zero. I'm really interested in That kind of missing middle increase in density. Um And i'm really really really interested in mobility in the city in the change radical change that's necessary to make it work


Ryan Schwartz: 04:44.68 - 05:07.44

And your two projects, they're certainly unique and different from each other. But I also think there's a lot of common ground. Having spent a little bit of time kind of looking at both these projects, there's a lot of overlap, I think, in terms of the ideas and the things that you're pushing forward. So Tim, maybe we'll start with you then. Can you take 30 seconds or a minute, just kind of describe your project and walk us through where it's located and what it's about?

Tim Scott: 05:08.09 - 07:35.96

Well, okay. There are, uh, stepping back from full-time work. I walked the dog three times a day in a way I'd never had. And the, um, I began to see the, uh, 70 blocks that comprise our, our kind of neighborhood in a new way. Um, and I also saw the re I saw in a refreshed way, the rebuilding of that neighborhood with new, uh, single family houses that weren't changing anything or making anything better. Um, And so that, that really provoked a kind of desire to respond. It's hard to do this in 30 seconds, but, you know, improving the neighborhood and improving the public space, the neighborhood is one in the same thing. You know, what makes a good street, you know, a human scale. I mean, I could quote an animal on this, you know, just the making public space, um, human scale, public spaces. that begin with safety and amenity for pedestrians, then cyclists, and last cars, you know, is fundamental to making the streets work. My neighborhood is completely colonized by cars now. There's no longer any public space that's not scary to be on. So, you know, our approach, my approach, and I include my wife who's an architect, my son who's, you know, leaving home and entering a city and being, you know, nonplussed by it, you know, it's really all about beginning by decolonizing the neighborhood of cars. And although I don't want this just to be about cars, it frankly is. uh and you know until that becomes part of and i like i love the renderings and namu's project they're incredibly evocative of of conditions that we need to not about the buildings it's about the public spaces that actually animate and and make um make Like there's an interesting thing, sorry to jump sideways, but between neighborhood and community, like neighborhood is a physical place. And that's what as architects, we have a say in community is just our, is a social construct. And I think we both ideally want our neighborhoods to be our communities. That means the two things have to be brought together and made to align. And that means fixing the things we can fix, you know, which are the streets and the buildings.

Ryan Schwartz: 07:37.45 - 07:44.02

Okay. And Neema, we'll jump to you. So the same kind of thing. Walk us through your project. Where, where was it proposed and sort of what does it look like?

Naama Blonder: 07:44.26 - 09:50.49

And I just want to say something about what Tim just said about cars, and I'm sure we'll talk more about that. We can't have it both ways we can have wide streets for cars to drive fast and the charm and character that we're hoping for. It's one on the other and sub village is that's exactly what i promised but let me. Let me give a bit of a background so. I just want to say that my, my firm is called smart density. Me and my husband, who is my partner at the firm, we raise our kids in a three bedroom condo in downtown Toronto. We don't have a car. We have two bikes, uh, that we ride everywhere. For us, even, you know, talk about subdivisions and, and sprawl and all of that is very, it was very against our nature. And one day we saw a stat that shocked us that 58% of all new homes in Canada are single detached. And it's a shocking number and it just teaches you what people Really want at the end of the day, and it was maybe, you know, uh, a process for me to accept that. And then we said, okay, this is the reality. This is a fact. How can we design it the best way we can to. Bring the values and the promise of the old suburbs because the suburbs we build today even them. Went through a process of intensification the properties are smaller it's packed with cars so they even lost the original promise. So we said how can we design it in a way. That will bring the qualities that we want to bring, but still accepting that it is car dependent and, you know, ground related, um, homes. And that is the story behind subdivision, the subdivillage concept.

Tim Scott: 09:51.81 - 11:37.60

I would just jump in to finish fleshing mine out so that you can read it in the context of what Naamas just said, which is that my proposition is to replace or see the replacement of the existing houses with new three and four plexes with laneway houses and garden suites, because they can fit inside the existing building envelope of the new single-family houses that are replacing the existing hundred-year-old houses. So, you know, it's possible on a site straddling the Yonge Street transit corridor to actually completely change the density, by which I mean Make quadrupling it and um you know the provincial governments uh imposition which i approve completely of allowing for three and four plexus and garden suites and landways as of right without parking requirements. is the new, is the vision I have for our old neighborhood. You know, it means that we have to stop rebuilding these single family overscaled houses, which are, look, if this is about, if we were being social scientists, we could talk about what that's all about, about hiding away from the existential threat of the end of the world in front of big TVs and, you know, tinted window cars. And, you know, but that's not it. We're talking about the physical realm and So, so in addition to making those public spaces, for me, it's been about also this gentle increase in the number of people who can arrive without needing cars because we're on the subway. Just works. That's what should happen.


Ryan Schwartz: 11:38.64 - 12:31.39

And it's interesting because Tim, your project is kind of re-imagining an existing neighborhood, while Naama, yours is imagining kind of a new neighborhood. And there's a lot of similarities between those two ideas, even though they are sort of different points in time. And they both make repeated references to neighborhood and shared community of public space. So this is a sort of a podcast about architecture, but we're zooming out and not looking at necessarily one building in particular, but a series of buildings. And Tim, you sort of hit the nail on the head with the spaces in between. We're looking at the streets and the streetscape and the sidewalks and alleyways and all that and how that that fits together. So thinking about neighborhoods, sort of what makes a good neighborhood? What makes a bad neighborhood? Neema, maybe we'll start with you. Any thoughts on, we've touched on it a little bit, but any thoughts on sort of good streetscapes, bad streetscapes?

Naama Blonder: 12:31.47 - 14:30.56

For me, it's definitely the width of the street. As I said earlier, you can't have it both. You can't Plan and design for the convenience of the car with several lanes and hope that it will also be safe enough for your kid to play on the street like it's not it's one or the other. What we are basically saying when you were absolutely right we are saying it in a context of a new neighborhood at the edge of cities in more suburban context. And we're saying let's have a menu of streets yes. We need streets for cars, they are here to stay for the foreseeable future, but can't we add streets that are car free or car light or green streets. And we are saying and you can see it in the sub the village plan that we're saying design shapes behavior if if i am giving as a very narrow street i'm signaling the driver. You are not king or queen on the street you need to drive really really slow ten kilometer per hour fifteen kilometer per hour and yes you this. The distance I'm asking you so the block is pretty short so I'm asking you to drive slowly for your garage. But the block is short so you're not driving so slow for so long. But this is an example of a shared street where you are asked to drive very slowly and enter your garage there's no driveway we're not here to wasteland. And that is also how you know that the part of the community there's community and I always say that is what. You see the same people again and again your neighbors in the public realm and then on the third time you gonna say hi and if you both have kids guess what that's really helps to. And this is how so then the question is how the built environment how the physical environment. Could be the foundation for that community creation.

Ryan Schwartz: 14:33.21 - 14:34.15

And then Tim to you.

Tim Scott: 14:34.45 - 15:47.65

Well, I agree completely. And I think there's an interesting word that, um, we should remember, like when you are building the safe public spaces that people. Uh, meet in and it goes beyond the street. It's actually having places to meet that isn't home and isn't work. You know, the so-called third place that includes. coffee shops and noodle houses along with parks and schoolyards. I mean, you need those places. Just, you know, meeting at the end of somebody's car on that four foot existing sidewalk is not where that happens. Anyway, the word that's really important as an that goes with Naama's description of being in those public spaces is tolerance. You learn tolerance. You learned to put up with your neighbors being in the same space as you are. That's how we make that's how we make community out of the circumstance of our neighborhoods by being together and having places where we can be together that are safe. It's not hard. It's just that we are so persistently you know, uh, affected by our commitment to a car centric city that we just can't get to this easily.

Ryan Schwartz: 15:48.73 - 16:05.22

And before you'd mentioned, um, sort of the difference between a neighborhood and a community, and they're not quite the same thing. So it sounds like you're both sort of pushing for that sense of community. And how do we, how do we, how do we create a community out of a neighborhood? And is it through those public spaces


Tim Scott: 16:05.56 - 17:08.96

I think I personally think so. I mean, I would go. In my project, I've gone further to propose fairly specific design ideas for the three and four plexes that define the street. And to Naama's point about the design of streets, the face of the buildings that define the profile of the street and the ratio to the width of the street are actually really important. A one to two ratio is the kind of basis for, for a really civil, you know, human scaled. kind of streetscape, you know, within which those pieces have to be aligned. And it keeps restricting the width that the car can be in. The car has got to be considered as a guest in this space, not the dominant alpha figure, you know, as it currently is, you know, as soon as you're building it, you know, sleeping policemen out in the middle of the road to slow the traffic down. Yeah. I mean, you're just, you've already, you're already being defeated.

Naama Blonder: 17:09.50 - 18:40.33 


You know, it's, you need to, yeah, I think both projects and maybe I want to introduce another term here, which is walkability and walkability is like this very flashy word that, you know, it's very fuzzy and, and. You know, who, who doesn't want that, but if you really look at it, walkability for me, it's like two, it, it, it has two aspects. one is that you have a place to walk to, and that it's pleasant to walk to. It's pleasant to actually walking there. If you think about it, I don't know, I'm in downtown Toronto, so if you're telling me to walk from here to St. Lawrence Market, which is like, I'm on the west end of downtown, it's quite a bit of a distance, but probably It's a really people would do that because i have a. You know where to go to write this to send lawrence market is a destination and the walking there is pleasant because there's a lot of change and lots going on. How do you translate that walkability aspect because let me tell you even people who love driving. Appreciate walk ability and not to mention that we have. Communities within our community such as kids and seniors that they didn't choose to leave there or be car dependent necessarily so the question is how do you design for them. And really achieve walk ability and that is again in conflict with how you design how you not design for the car.

Tim Scott: 18:42.00 - 20:37.02

Yeah, I think in the case of my project, the 70 blocks that comprise this sort of precinct were originally subdivided 100 years ago with a provision of a central east-west lane in mind. The blocks are 100 meters deep. The first three blocks, first three align Alignment of blocks were provided with lanes, but I'm sure what happened was, even though it's 100 years ago, the market said, Hey, we'd much prefer cars to be at the bottom of our front steps than out the back on the lane. And so the lanes were never built, but they're huge, deep. blocks, as soon as you introduce lanes, an entirely new, uh, or, or a supplementary, um, system. And it's very, very present in Naama's scheme, uh, exists where people, it's sort of like the kindergarten of public spaces, you know, people, uh, uh, meet informally, kids play without restriction and they, and they do that by mingling with cars that are tiptoeing in and out of their garages. It's like where you learn how to behave. In public space. And so I think the combination of, of kinds of streets is critical. So I've done my best to add what's missing. Naama scheme shows a full range of things. You need streets that go somewhere. You know, and you, then you need streets that are about the public space of that street, you know, and then lanes had this whole fantastic other system. And there's certainly, uh, in my case would, um, augment this idea of walkability, walking to Metro, walking to the subway, everybody would take the lanes, you know, you, you would, or you would have these options of all these intersecting connections. You know, it adds a kind of magic right to a neighborhood.

Ryan Schwartz: 20:37.85 - 21:12.61

Yeah, I love that term, a menu of streets. I think that that's fantastic because you have streets that are sort of meant for walking and biking and Nem, I think I got this from your project, something about having a school that was like a 10 minute bike ride away, but it was a pleasant 10 minute bike ride. And not all, not all 10 minute walks or bikes are created equal. And you touched on that. Like you can imagine a 10 minute bike ride through a beautiful tree line street versus a 10 minute bike ride through downtown four lane traffic. And they're not necessarily the same thing. So can you speak to that a little bit?

Naama Blonder: 21:12.67 - 23:02.49

And I think, you know, when I, ask my friends, like, why did you move to the suburbs? And, and a lot of the times, like, oh, we wanted to be close to nature. But if you look at our suburbs, there's nothing really green about it. Like it might get you closer to some parks or, but, but the way our suburbs are designed, you don't really have that green quality woven into, into that. So Part of, you know, one street typology in our menu is the park street. It's like really heavily, heavily green because a lot of the times we do have, when we get a plot of land of a hundred acres, we have natural features on them. So instead of, you know, completely ignore them, we say, how can we bring that into a quality of our new neighborhood? And that ties into, you know, can you imagine your kids riding to school in a pleasant way? And a lot of it, as I said, comes down to walkability and the way we design the street. Because I do believe that narrow street, as I said, design shapes behavior is, it could be a safe place for kids to play. And it exists, by the way, it's not none of this is, is my creation, it exists, it exists, probably mostly in Europe, we're just acknowledging that we're not in Europe. And I think that is something that many architects are having a hard time. So, yeah, so we are trying to see how we can match it to North American standards.

Tim Scott: 23:03.81 - 24:20.23

There's some really interesting examples when you roam around the larger city of, uh, where, uh, cyclists and motorists, and of course, pedestrians have been, have, um, mingle and, and I'll use Shaw street as one of my favorite examples. If you go South from Davenport, which is another good East-West multimodal street, but Shaw. And when you go to the Contra Cafe and sit there south of DuPont and have your morning coffee and you watch how all of the different kinds of cyclists, moms with kids, racers on their carbon bikes, kids going to school and cars, the cars have just tamped down. They're like, they've become aware that there's something else going on and they need to be respectful. And you, you know, this combination. Uh, and it's, it's not particularly, I don't think it's strictly well-designed, but within the existing space of the street, it's a been a kind of best possible strategy. I just think it's interesting to see how motorists can be trained to behave in a respectful way, but it demands participation on by both pedestrians and cyclists. You need everybody to be in that space. It's kind of, yeah.

Naama Blonder: 24:20.65 - 26:09.34

Shaw is an excellent example because I think and, and bike lanes is such a, I don't know when this episode is going to be released, but, um, right now, bike lanes are a big, big hot topic in Toronto. And I just want to say, and it might surprise you because I'm a cyclist. That's how I get around full stop. And this is something that we always implement in our design. The moment we have the opportunity, we actually separate the bike lanes from the vehicle roads. I don't believe that bike lanes should be on Bathurst or, you know, those major streets. Actually, they need to be on streets like Shaw. Unfortunately, you know, now we're discussing about, you know, University and North of Young, North of Bloor and Bloor Street. Unfortunately, these streets don't really have an alternative. University is one of the safest bike lanes in the city right now. And north of Bloor, there's simply no other way. There's no other bike lane that takes you north of Bloor. And the moment if we have the opportunity to actually separate bike lanes from vehicle roads, me as a cyclist would absolutely, I don't want to ride next to a car that drives 80 kilometers per hour. Not always we have that. We must have safe bike lanes, that in paint is not a bike lane. bike lanes that are constructed, separated, elevated. And if we can have them on local streets like Shaw, and they did do a wonderful job there because you can even see like there's like intersection there. There's an intersection that is completely blocked for cars. The city did a wonderful job there. Not always we have that option, but when we have it, it is definitely ideal.

Tim Scott: 26:10.31 - 28:08.27

And I, I want to add something to that thing, which I really, uh, Naama's, uh, holding forth, which I agree complete with. I too am a cyclist. When I arrived as a graduate architect, I came with a bicycle and I've always cycled. I've cycled before there were bike lanes. So I just, you know, understood the city by bicycle and understood the pleasure of using my bike. And I have come to believe too, that we need to find these strategic streets like a duplex, Jedburg and duplex, which goes parallel to Yonge street, one block to the west through my study area goes all the way down to the apparently abandoned Eglinton Crosstown LRT. This would be an incredible connection for my proposed neighborhood and the rest of the city. You know, bike lanes have to go somewhere. And like when we begin to imagine a network of safe cycling that connects our various neighborhoods together, we begin to have both parts of the story working. Our desire and need for safe mobility other than by car. And the neighborhoods that they're in service to, like we need to make these connections. When I look at the city cycling map, I don't understand it. You know, you have, it's really hard to, to, um, put together the pieces that would actually make it viable and, and make the arguments that, you know, the political grandstanding of the provincial government, you know, got away with for as long as I did. No, there really is a need for systems and we should be discussing where they best go. You know, I don't cause like the, the bike lanes on young street, even though I use them because they're better than nothing. Aren't well designed, not great. They don't work very well. We shouldn't be arguing about that. We should be finding the spaces that actually do work to Nana's point.

Ryan Schwartz: 28:08.86 - 28:39.19

Yeah. And it seems like we're trying to undo a lot of the last hundred years and, and sort of think ahead for the next 100 years. And, and, you know, the past hundred years it was car first, and now we really need to integrate these things, bike lanes, walkability, menu of streets. So what, what does that look like for the next, you know, the next 50, a hundred years? How do we start thinking about that and integrating these things so that, you know, bike lanes are first and then instead of an afterthought, um, what does that, what does that look like?

Naama Blonder: 28:40.894 - 31:22.588


I think that the key here is transit. Whenever we invest in transit, we should treat it like a golden opportunity to rethink everything. I mean, okay, let me, let me be more clear. There are two types of investments in transit, one in like a brownfield, you know, a ghost station that is outside of, you know, the city. They're now, they're building new, new ones. And there's the transit that is within the city and, and existing fabric. Clearly, they reveal two different sets of opportunities. I believe that in both cases, these are big opportunities. I am very, from what I witness, we're still with every transit, we still design for the convenience of the car. And I want everyone that listens to us today to imagine a neighborhood where it's really not about car, where we can ask people to really ditch their cars, right? Like we can only ask this near transit. And majority of our new developments are not transit but when we are talking next to designing next to transit we really need to look at it differently. And. And really imagine you know car free streets car light streets not designing it for the convenience of the car and i always give one metropolitan center is an example. I encourage everyone to just take the subway and get out of the subway and you will see that everything is extremely oversized even the most intimate. The residential streets are 20 meters wide, and I even have a slide in my presentations that shows six lanes to cross to get to the subway. This is not transit-oriented development. You need to make it so convenient for people to use transit, to bike, to get to the transit. And unfortunately, crossing six lanes, just imagine it, a kid or a teenager doing it, but you can't, as I said, have it both. And that six lane is by the way, not highway seven or something. It's just a street within that neighborhood. So transit, we need to treat transit as gold every time we do it. Everywhere else is i admit harder it's a cultural shift it's a it's a long term shift hopefully it's a within a generation. But we let's treat transit and land next to transit the way it should it deserved and then. Will continue from there.

Tim Scott: 31:24.517 - 35:32.131


You know, well, yeah, yeah. I mean, my, my son is 26 years old. He and his girlfriend live downtown. They don't have cars or a car. They have a commune commune auto membership and rent a car when they need one. They have bikes. They would, they want to live in the city and they want to live safely in the city. They would live in my neighborhood, you know, because they would have a gracious apartment to live in near the near transit. They like taking transit. They like everything about the city, except for the absence of livable spaces and, and except for the absence of safe spaces. It's really, it's interesting to see their migration as I look for a place that meets all these expectations. You know, in the next hundred years, like I would hope that my project gets realized. It would take, it took 10 years for the original 70 blocks to be built out. You know, if instead of building ridiculous over scaled, um, single family houses that make the existing zoning bylaw irrelevant, um, you know, these, uh, The population or the density of units could be quadrupled. It could support the city of Orillia on these 70 blocks on an existing subway system. No new infrastructure, more performance needed, but no new infrastructure. We have to find these strategic places. And actually act, you know, like the state, where's the city of Toronto planning department in a circumstance where our neighborhood is being rebuilt, rebuilt by small. Uh, um, housing developers who are just doing what they believe the market requires, which are these ridiculous things, you know, it's a, so there, for me, this conversation, and I know we're going to conclude shortly has to go towards advocacy. I, I found when I stepped away from work, which takes all your time is now my would know. Um, I found myself, you know, on a ghost bike ride helping, uh, manage an event, you know, a thing that I never had time for. Not that I want to go on ghost bike rides, but, you know, I realized that stepping into like stepping out of. and from behind our desks into our communities and participating leads to a whole new set of ideas as a citizen about how you need to behave. You need to write letters. You need to object. You need to organize. You need to do all these things because our city is overwhelmed by the reality of it and by the imposition of thoughtless government that we have to put up with as they come and go. I'm not trying to get us to the end of the conversation but that's where i'm at you know i'm i was happy to work on this project and i was happy to be selected so that i could continue to participate but. Like that's what's left is advocacy. You know, that's like, nobody's paying us to do this. You're going to now, you may benefit from this as you, as you said in Ottawa, someone called someone, someone you were, it was great. I love that you were boasting about it, that someone, you know, has entered into contract, entered into a contract with you for services, but. You know, it's hard to bring these ideas forward and be paid for them. You know, architects need also to make a living. So how you go about it is, uh, really interesting to me. And I, just to step over that, I would. My colleagues who are, who remain committed to change this change, most of them have left the profession because they just can't stand the sense they're wasting time. They're teaching, they're writing, they've set up development companies to do the work themselves. They, they just can't wait. They can't stand it.

Ryan Schwartz: 35:32.71 - 35:34.01

To actually make a change.

Tim Scott: 35:34.19 - 36:06.21

Yeah, because it's, it's just, you know, it go only can go so far. And if you're, if you want to build things, you want to see real change. You want to find a way to bring the idea of community and neighborhood together. You have to, you need to find a way to act. Um, because, you know, there's, there's a saying that I think is ascribed to Kierkegaard, which is everybody wants progress. Nobody wants change, you know, and it's a, it's a kind of condition that we all as architects, um, face.

Ryan Schwartz: 36:07.40 - 36:31.51

Yeah, we really need these new ideas. And Tim, you sort of answered it from your perspective. It was a perfect lead into my next question was, this is a show that tries to shed some light on what architects do and what role they play. So maybe Naama, I'll throw this one to you. What role do architects play in practice in trying to bring these ideas? What can we do to bring these ideas into the real world and actually create some of this change?

Naama Blonder: 36:33.377 - 37:32.048

Maybe in my case, it is a little bit of a Cinderella story because I did get clients out of it, but no, which is great. And I'm sure that's, I'm sure the OAA was very happy to hear that, but, but Tim said a lot, Tim said a lot. And first of all, I do spend a lot of my time. In advocacy for intensification and affordable housing and i think teams teams project surprised me when you know it brought. The single family homes and and dad are being built that are out of scale and. I. Me personally have an issue with single family houses steps away from the subway. Like we, we barely have transit and then by allowing it, we are subsidizing public transit for the fewer, uh, members of the public.

Tim Scott: 37:32.269 - 37:35.211

And none of those people actually use transit who live in Europe.

Naama Blonder: 37:35.291 - 39:45.540

And they probably don't use transit, yeah. And so there's an issue there, right? Like can't, shouldn't we say that actually the bare minimum is the fourplex and then everything, if you want a single family, you should go through approval process to opt out of the zoning. But I also want to say one more thing that Even the triplexes and the fourplexes in a city like Toronto, it's still not enough. Not enough when this is steps away from a subway. And we are now two months after the city approved sixplexes and anyone, any councillor who is not in the old city of Toronto, it was like the amalgamation never happened. I looked at the map and I was like, oh my God, it was just the old Toronto councillors that approved the sixplex in their words and everyone else but one in Scarborough, Councillor Myers, opted out. And it was sad to watch because it's really the bare minimums that we need. And in my opinion, a triplex is not even enough. Like it's not even the bare minimum because Toronto will always be under a lot of pressure. And Toronto is the biggest city in Canada and we cannot hold ourselves to the same standards as everyone else. So I am unfortunately not very optimistic that we are heading in the right direction, that we are working enough with the private sector and allowing enough to happen. And, uh, I have severe concerns about what the city is going to look like in 25 years. If we think now we suffer from some sort of affordability crisis, this is nothing. And this, that ratio of three families per unit is just still doesn't, it just doesn't move the needle. So maybe not the optimistic ending, uh, you deserve, but food for thought for sure.

Ryan Schwartz: 39:46.155 - 40:01.223

Well, maybe people listening will get fired up enough and go do a little advocacy on their own. So that's, that's what we're hoping for. We only have a few minutes left. Any, any kind of closing thoughts? Maybe Tim, I'll jump to you. Anything you want to double down on?

Tim Scott: 40:02.984 - 40:40.845

As I said in the introduction, I was working on this as a kind of reaction to what I was seeing as my as the work fell away from my eyes, you know, and I walked my neighborhood. And I continued to think about it and work on it and make drawings. I become currently preoccupied with the idea of the duplex corridor down to the LRT, you know, as a way to link or think about the role that our mobility has in, in our carbon narrative. Like I'm really, there's other parts to my project we haven't talked about.

Ryan Schwartz: 40:40.905 - 40:43.988

We haven't touched on climate change at all, but that's a big part of it. Yep.

Tim Scott: 40:44.449 - 42:36.352

So I'm really preoccupied by that and. Found a really interesting for example to discover on the city's carbon emissions by sector website which is really a good reference point this idea that if we don't make our local journeys by means other than private cars. Um, we can't, the city can't meet its targets, its carbon reduction targets. Right. So you can, I've that's the rabbit hole. I go down continuously and I'm fascinated by the idea that our mobility is we, we tend to think about. Carbon just on that topic, which leads to climate change, you know, on a building by building or development by development basis, I'm thinking about it more broadly, you know, which includes the mobility. that any particular project attracts. We assume the right of mobility when we make a building. We assume connection to the grid and so forth. So, you know, I swim off towards the, you know, like topics of interest and that's what I'll be doing. Uh, Naama will be busy, you know, building her, her practice. And I wish her the best of luck. I have to say it was, I really appreciate the renderings you made. Like they just, they invite you to fall into the ideas with the words. You don't need words, especially on the muse street, you know, the lane street. Um, so I, I wish her the best and I, you know, and I appreciate, um, that this thing came along in the course of my thinking to sort of focus, uh, our conversations between ourselves and with each other. So those are my closing thoughts. Yeah. Yeah. And then any, any thoughts, uh, from yourself?

Naama Blonder: 42:36.452 - 42:37.573

I think I've said enough.

Tim Scott: 42:39.634 - 42:40.395

Fair enough. Okay.

Naama Blonder: 42:40.415 - 42:44.381

We covered all the important topics. I'm happy with that.

Tim Scott: 42:44.401 - 42:49.107

Okay. I'll see you out on the street. I'll see you at the contra cafe.

Ryan Schwartz: 42:51.013 - 43:45.757

And I definitely encourage those people listening. Tim mentioned it. So checking out the OAA website and search for the 2025 Shift Challenge, you can find these two winning projects that we've been discussing. And there's some amazing illustrations that really sort of bring this home and you can flip through those at your leisure. So visit the oaa.on.ca to check those out. And also to those of you listening out there, thank you. If you've been enjoying architecturally, pardon me, Architecturally Speaking, leave us a quick review, share it with your friends or a colleague. This will help us to create more and more episodes in the future. And I mentioned the website. There's plenty of other resources there for architects and the general public if you're interested in learning about architecture in your own community, your own neighborhood. So just search for the Ontario Association of Architects. And that will do it for today. So until next time, I'm your host, Ryan Schwartz, and this has been Architecturally Speaking. We'll see you in the next one. Thank you.