City Innovation @ CSI: Creating a City of Solutions

Submitted by Tonya Surman on July 6, 2010 - 2:15pm

city innovation

Cities are the embodiment of collaboration, acting as a platform for exchange, a place where culture meets economics meets education meets health meets planning. Cities demonstrate just how connected we all are and how the issues that we are working on fundamentally connect to each other in ‘place.”

Cities are also flashpoints of the best and worst of human potential. Cities are centres of creativity, culture and promise – but also places of deep economic disparity, environmental degradation, and social injustice. This isn’t just Toronto, of course, but cities around the world. More and more of our global population is migrating to cities, creating increased pressures to understand how we can innovate the systems which support us. Take Monday’s power outage here in the city… or public squares… or transit…or social networks and the study of happiness… or police power… or food security…. All these things and more demonstrate just how connected we are in cities.

At CSI, we have a deep love and commitment to Toronto. We truly believe that Toronto has the potential to embody all that is good in the world – inclusion, civic engagement, justice, sustainability, wellness and joy. We are also deeply committed to building solutions. So, we have decided to explore how our new space – The Centre for Social Innovation Annex (#csinx) – can help support city innovation. We’re not exactly sure what this will look like, but we’ve decided to start with some active curation. We’re going to create space on the third floor of the CSI Annex for a cluster of people, projects and organizations that are focused on improving our cities. Our hunch is that, by bringing these folks into a common space, we’ll create the conditions for collaboration and innovation.

But to do so, we need your help!

Do you have any recommendations of super amazing people or projects we should reach out to or include in the space? Let us know! Send a note to csiannex@socialinnovation.ca.

Are you working on a project that is improving Toronto or addressing issues of urban development and sustainability? Come apply for space! You can apply here or join our Information Sessions on July 8 or July 21 for more information. 

We are not exactly sure where this will lead, but then we are rarely sure about anything. We would love to hear your ideas and thoughts on what a city innovation cluster might look like.

Tonya Surman's blog

Comments

From my work/expereince, I

Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on September 12, 2010 - 4:19pm.

From my work/expereince, I have found like minded individuals are not always open to opposing point's of view not matter how grand the purpose may be. For this to have a chance in any meaningful, sustainable way - you need individuals who not only have certain skills, networks but hold the capacity/ability to listen to each other with respect, have an open mind and hopefully an open heart. There are ways to assess this.

This is not an either/or (re leadership vs collective effort) but a both/AND mindset.

CSI - this is a challenging and very worthy task.

I think this is a bold,

Submitted by Arvind Karir (not verified) on September 11, 2010 - 2:02pm.

I think this is a bold, creative and a great idea. Like one plus one equaling eleven, I can only imagine what great ideas will emerge if a group of like-minded individuals/organizations come together in an informal way.

This is how great things happen and movements emerge, not by someone leading it, but people coming together because of a sense of shared purpose and participation.

I like the spirit of adventure and sense of play of this concept and regardless of the outcome there is success in having tried to make it happen.