Legacy of Jane Jacobs in Toronto | 4 May 2016

Today is the 100th birthday of urbanist Jane Jacobs (1916-2006), and, as is tradition these days, she has a Google Doodle. One of the many signs of her legacy in Toronto, Canada is the beautiful magazine, Spacing: "Toronto urbanism uncovered". Spacing also has a store at 401 Richmond Street West in Toronto (my former workplace, where Watch Magazine became one of the first occupants of this hub of creativity in the late 1990s). I highly recommend it for all things urbanist. You can purchase a t-shirt boldly asking "What would Jane Jacobs do?" and feel smug.

While putting together the fourth issue of Southern Innovator on cities and urbanization in 2013 (also inspired by Jane Jacobs), I made contact with Anne Vellone at vellonedesign, who let me know about her latest project, Recollections of a Neighbourhood: Huron-Sussex, from UTS to Stop Spadina, edited by Nancy Williams and Marie Scott-Baron. It is an excellent account of Jacobs' adopted home in Toronto's Annex near the University of Toronto.

Citation: sandwiched between Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Jane Jacobs.

Southern Innovator Issue 4 Launches in Nairobi, Kenya at Global South-South Development Expo (GSSD) 2013 | 5 November 2013

Volunteers help launch Southern Innovator’s fourth issue at the Global South-South Development Expo (GSSD Expo) in Nairobi, Kenya.

The fourth issue of Southern Innovator magazine has launched at the Global South-South Development Expo (GSSD Expo) 2013 in Nairobi, Kenya. Southern Innovator Issue 4 visits the new cities being built to tackle the challenges of a rapidly urbanizing 21st-century world. The magazine also highlights some of the solutions being devised to the challenges people face as the world becomes a majority urban place.

Some innovators are building new cities from scratch, applying the latest thinking and hard-wiring in cutting-edge information technologies and innovative environmental measures to create ‘smart’ cities and eco-cities. Architects are designing and refining homes that are beautiful and functional, easy to build, affordable and conserve energy. Social entrepreneurs are innovating ways to create liveable and socially inclusive urban areas, often in places where planning has been scant and where incomes are very low. All those featured in the magazine were chosen for their focus on improving human development and their ingenuity and fresh thinking.

Southern Innovator champions a 21st-century global innovator culture. The magazine profiles and celebrates the innovators across the global South finding new ways to tackle poverty, create wealth and improve human development and achieve the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). In its first issue in September 2011, Southern Innovator featured the people who are re-shaping new information technologies – from mobile phone apps to Internet technologies. Many of the innovators profiled in that first issue came from Kenya.

SI (southerninnovator.org) is based on intensive research and produced by the United Nations Office for South-South Cooperation in UNDP (UNOSSC) (formerly the Special Unit for South-South Cooperation in UNDP). UNOSSC organizes an annual Global South-South Development Expo (southsouthexpo.org), a roaming celebration and gathering of Southern innovators previously held in New York, Washington, D.C., Geneva, Rome and Vienna. This year’s Expo is being held in Nairobi, Kenya (28 October to 1 November 2013) and is hosted by the UN Environment Programme (unep.org).

SI is being distributed through the United Nations’ network and partners and reaches some of the world’s poorest and remotest places, as well as the vibrant but stressed growing global megacities. It is hoped the magazine will inspire budding innovators with its mix of stories, essential information, facts and figures, images and graphics.

We hope you enjoy the magazine and find its content interesting and illuminating: a snapshot of a fast-changing world awash, as we found out, with innovators, creators and do-ers making their world a better place. It is possible to sponsor issues of the magazine, either through helping to fund its print run, or through sponsored inserts covering that issue’s theme with relevant content for our readers.