On the occasion of World Town Planning Day, November 8, CIP hosted the webinar "International Approaches to Healthy Communities." 

With the increasingly complex issues affecting communities globally, the ties between community design and health status are ever more salient. What are planners and organizations doing worldwide to put human and environmental health into the core of city building? This webinar examines international programs and projects that target community health and improvement. 

At a time when planning practices clash with urbanization and grassroots movements, winter city designs seemingly skim the surface of the already contested public realm. A move towards cold weather-friendly cities is trending in the urban planning profession, encouraging people to get outside and embrace colder weather; but wherein these designs do they plan for spaces that welcome and embrace vulnerable populations? Nicole Cronkhite's research analyzes these emerging trends from a social equity lens to help urban planners gain new insights on what impacts of winter city design guidelines have on vulnerable and low-income populations. Upon completion , the findings will help guide planners in creating public space plans that truly create warm, welcoming, and dignified spaces for all. 

This video presentation seeks to examine the connection between horizontal modes of management, when residents provide direct input with their active engagement, in "third places", and social inclusion practices. Considering collective gardens as third places, the research put forward by Sahar Alinezhad explores how such socio-spatial platforms frame neighborhood dynamics. Collective gardens are spaces for food production, sharing of knowledge, and meaningful social encounters. Based on not-for-profit exchanges of tangible and intangible resources, collective gardens favor a wide array of non-hierarchical social interactions leading to engaged communities. Moreover, as low-key venues for social gatherings of individuals at the neighborhood scale, collective gardens constitute prototypical platforms for socially sustainable urban living and could serve as transitional spaces towards social integration contributing to social cohesion of the neighborhood. 

PLACE is a national planning and geography conference that takes place every fall. Every year, a group of students organize PLACE, bringing together like-minded students, professionals, and others from across Canada to present research and discuss topics in geography and planning. 

This year, PLACE 21 was offered virtually, organized by VIU Masters student volunteers, and hosted by the Canadian Institue of Planners on their GoTo Webinar platfrom. 

On April 22nd, CIP hosted Planning for Health and Well-Being: a webinar in CIP's Continuous Professional Learning Program series. The webinar included an overview of current developments in planning for health, with a particular focus on metrics and measuring healthy community outcomes.

Merging planning with neuroscience, delegates saw a demonstration of how virtual reality can be used to  measure the impact of the built environment on mental health.

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This session brought to light the most recent best practices in environmental health to respond to emergent trends. Further on, the panel discussed highlights and resources for systematic reviews supporting planning decision making and evidence based decisions, and the European network of "Living Lab" a new approach to a multidisplinary concept to support innnovation, urban planning and architecture for a healthier, walkable built environment.

Community design is one important factor that can lead to better health by providing opportunities for increased physical activity, by making healthy eating options easier to access, and by promoting better mental health through social support and community belonging. 

This webinar examined how planning and designing our communities can help build healthy living into the daily lives of Canadians.