Welcome Message
Emmy Scholten is Deputy Consul General of the Netherlands in Toronto. Scholten came to Toronto in 2014, after having worked as Policy Advisor for Foreign Economic Relations in The Hague for 4 years. Previously, she worked as a trainee at the Dutch Ministry of Economic Affairs in The Hague and the Netherlands Embassy in New Delhi. Scholten holds a Master’s Degree in International and European Law from Radboud University Nijmegen, including education at LUISS Rome, and the University of Copenhagen.
Master of Ceremonies
Lisa Prime is a Registered Professional Planner and LEED AP, with a Master of Environmental Studies from York University, and a Bachelor’s Degree in Environmental Studies from the University of Waterloo. With over 20 years of experience, Lisa’s expertise is focused on strategic leadership for complex issues in planning associated with the natural environment. As Director of Environment and Innovation for Waterfront Toronto, her role implements the corporation’s sustainability framework, performance measures, green building requirements, as well as overseeing environmental approvals for infrastructure and brownfield redevelopment. She leads the Climate Positive project relationship with the C40, and regularly speaks at conferences locally and abroad.
Opening Remarks
Honourable Lilianne Ploumen is Minister for Foreign Trade and Development Cooperation of the Netherlands, and was appointed in November 2012. She studied social history and strategic marketing management and worked in marketing research and consultancy before working with Mama Cash in 1995. She coordinated fundraising for women’s initiatives, and directed the organization from 1996 to 2001. She then held leadership positions in Cortaid until 2007, when she became the Chair of the Netherlands’ Labour Party.
Honourable Glen Murray currently serves as Minister of the Environment and Climate Change. He was appointed the Minister of Infrastructure and the Minister of Transportation in February 2013. Glen has a lifetime of activism in urban planning, sustainable development and community health. He was the Senior Resident and Visiting Fellow at the Faculty of Architecture and Landscape Design at Massey College, University of Toronto and worked on the Development of the University’s City Centre. He was appointed President and CEO of the Canadian Urban Institute in 2007 and led the development of award winning programs in community energy mapping & planning, regional economic development and culture lead regeneration of urban centres. Murray was appointed by the Prime Minister of Canada to Chair the National Round Table on the Environment and the Economy (NRTEE), where he helped to shape environmental policy and respond to climate change in Canada.
Keynote Speeches
John Campbell has an MBA from the University of Toronto, a Bachelor of Engineering Degree from Carleton University, and has his Institute of Corporate Directors designation. He is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Waterfront Toronto, and is responsible for leading the estimated $35 billion revitalization of Toronto’s long-neglected waterfront. In the past decade, Waterfront Toronto has invested over a billion dollars in infrastructure and flood protection, led the development of several thousand residential units and created two dozen new or revitalized parks or public spaces. Waterfront Toronto’s investments have also spurred over $13 billion in private- sector investment in waterfront or adjacent lands. Before joining Waterfront Toronto in April of 2003, John was a Senior Executive at Brookfield Properties and played a leadership role in the development of the company’s most prestigious property, Brookfield Place.
Geoffrey Cape is the founder and CEO of Evergreen since 1990. Across Canada, Evergreen has enabled over 7,100 action projects, and led the $55 million redevelopment of the Brick Works property centre for cities and urban infrastructure. He is a founding member of the World Entrepreneurship Forum and founding Chair of the Sustainability Institute. He has been recognized as one of Canada’s “Top 40 under 40,” and an “Ashoka Fellow.” He was winner of the Peter F. Drucker Award, the Governor General’s Golden Jubilee Medal, and the “Canadian Social Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Schwab Foundation. In 2010, Geoffrey was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award from Sustainable Buildings Canada, and was recently invited to become a Rockefeller Foundation Global Fellow.
Henk Ovink is Vice Director General and Director of National Spatial Planning for the Dutch Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. He is responsible for the development of the new Dutch Spatial Planning Policy, the Architecture Policy on Architecture and Spatial Design, the new Spatial Planning Act, as well as several long-term plans, studies and various research projects on sustainability, spatial planning, governance and design. He teaches at Harvard GSD, Columbia GSAPP, University of Kentucky, TU Delft, and the Design Academy Eindhoven. He has published several articles on the change of government, governance and planning, as well as on the specific relationship between design and politics.
Afternoon Plenary Sessions
Jennifer Keesmaat is the Chief Planner for the City of Toronto and is committed to creating places where people flourish, with an emphasis on collaborations across sectors. Over the past decade, Jennifer has been repeatedly recognized by the Canadian Institute of Planners and OPPI for her innovative work in Canadian municipalities. Most recently, Jennifer was named as one of the most influential people in Toronto by Toronto Life magazine, and one of the most powerful people in Canada by MacLean’s Magazine. Jennifer is the founder of Project Walk, which premiered its first short film in 2011, as an official selection at the TIFF. In 2012 Jennifer debuted her first TED talk, Walk to School, and in 2013 she delivered her second, Own Your City. Jennifer is a graduate of the University of Western Ontario, and has a Master in Environmental Studies (Politics and Planning) from York University.
Alec Hay is a principal in Risk, Resilience & Security Planner at Southern Harbour, based in Toronto. He served 25 years in the British Royal Engineers, specializing in fortifications and infrastructure development for the past two decades before becoming Resilience & Security practice leader at DIALOG. Practicing all over the world, he was the lead protection designer in Northern Ireland and later Iraq and Afghanistan, and the infrastructure protection planner for the NATO estate in Afghanistan. He is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto Centre for Resilience of Critical Infrastructure, where he focuses on operational resilience of communities. He is also a director of Rethinking Sustainability Initiative and the International Secretary of the Register of Security Engineers and Specialists.
Enid Slack is the Director of the Institute on Municipal Finance and Governance (IMFG), and an Adjunct Professor at the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto. She has written extensively on a range of topics including property taxes, intergovernmental transfers, development charges, financing municipal infrastructure, municipal governance, and municipal boundary restructuring. Her recent publications include Is Your City Healthy? Measuring Urban Fiscal Health (co-edited with Richard Bird) and Governance and Finance of Metropolitan Areas in Federal Systems (co-edited with Rupak Chattopadhyay). She consults to governments and international agencies on
municipal finance and governance issues in Canada and abroad. In 2012, she was awarded the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal for her work on cities.
Matthijs Bouw is the founding principal of One Architecture, a firm known for its unique approach in which financial, technical, and organizational issues are addressed and often re-solved through design. One of Bouw’s main areas of expertise is large-scale planning and infrastructure. He has also been instrumental in the development of design studios as a tool in complex, multi-actor, planning processes. His expertise in design studios has led him to be involved with much of the Netherlands’ long-term planning projects, as well as projects for the governments of Flanders and Germany, as well as in Tbilisi, Georgia and Delhi, India. With Bjarke Ingels Group, he co-leads The Big U, the winning proposal for Manhattan’s flood protection in the Rebuild by Design Competition. He is the Rockefeller Urban Resilience Fellow at PennDesign.
Workshop 1 Coordinators
Chris Glaisek is the Vice President for Planning and Design at Waterfront Toronto, and is a passionate advocate for design excellence in the public realm. He is a strong promoter of sustainable city building whose professional goal is to make great urban neighborhoods come to life. He is responsible for conceiving all planning and design initiatives, and managing detailed designs for Waterfront Toronto projects in the 2,000 acre Designated Waterfront Area. Under Glaisiek’s stewardship, Waterfront Toronto has received more than 50 national and international design awards and nominations for its master plans, parks, and streetscape designs.
Ken Dion received his degrees in Physical Geography at the University of Victoria and McGill University, respectively. Starting his career with non-profit organizations, he became a habitat restoration project manager at Ontario Streams from 1999 to 2001. In March 2001, Ken was hired as a Project Coordinator at Toronto and Region Conservation, and has since become the Senior Manager of Special Projects. He has led numerous environmental assessments involving flood protection, shoreline restoration, waterfront park creation, shoreline and valley wall stabilization, and habitat restoration, and has managed and overseen detailed design, permitting and construction of several projects including Don Mouth Naturalization and Port Lands Flood Protection Project, the Lakeview Waterfront Connection, and the Lower Don River West Remedial Flood Protection Project.
Laurian Farrell is a professional engineer, specializing in water resources, and holds a Master’s Degree in Landscape Architecture. After spending 4 years in the consulting industry at Marshall Macklin Monaghan Ltd, she joined the Toronto and Region Conservation 11 years ago. Laurian is currently the Senior Manager of Flood Risk Management and Infrastructure at TRCA, and leads TRCA’s Flood Management Service, which includes: flood risk management, data management, hydrometrics and the operation and maintenance of flood control infrastructure.
Dirk Sijmons is a landscape architect, having studied architecture and environmental planning at the Technical University of Delft. He had worked at several ministries as a strategic planner and served as Head of the Landscape Architecture Department of the Netherlands State Forestry Service. He was one of the three founders of H+N+S Landscapearchitects, which received the National Prince Bernard Culture award in 2001. From 1994-2010, Sijmons was the chairman of the board of OASE, an independent Journal on Architecture Theory. In 2002, he received the Rotterdam-Maaskant award. His publications in English include: Landscape (1998) and Greetings from Europe (2008), and Landscape and Energy (2014). Sijmons was appointed first State Landscape Architect of the Netherlands for the period 2004-2008. He received the prestigious Edgar Doncker-award in 2007. Currently, Dirk Sijmons is the curator of the International Architecture Biennale Rotterdam IABR--2014.
Workshop 2 Coordinators
Camilo Martinez is a hydro-geologist and environmental planner with over twenty years of experience in contaminant hydrogeology, soil vapour intrusion and risk assessments. He joined Waterfront Toronto after working for several years with the Ontario Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change and a consultant to the oil and gas industry. Currently, he is a Senior Project Manager with Waterfront Toronto leading the Brownfield approvals for multiple projects, including the Don Mouth Naturalization Project, and Port Lands Revitalization.
Chris Lompart is the Manager of Land Use Policy for the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change.
Co Molenaar works for the Ministry of Environment/ Rijkswaterstaat as a senior advisor on Soil and Water. He works in many international networks with the aim to connect the soil-sediment-water system to the societal challenges like food production and security, drinking water, resource efficiency, energy supply, climate change. He is responsible for the following products: Circular on Soil Remediation, the decree for an area approach of contaminated groundwater, gentlemen agreements with drycleaners, tank filling stations and other companies on how to deal with historical contamination, partly the Soil Quality Decree. He is the chairman of the working group for deriving Standards for Soil and Groundwater.
Hans van Duijne has extensive experience in the management of big international projects in the field of soil and groundwater, and river basin management. He spent 12 years working abroad in different continents on large scale projects. For almost 2 decades, he worked for Deltares as Project Manager in international projects with different governments in Europe, North America and the European Commission in R&D framework projects. For the past 7 years, he also acts as Cluster Manager of North America with the Netherlands Soil Partnership in setting up co-operation between Canada and The Netherlands with knowledge institutes, governments and companies on subjects like regional groundwater management, soil treatment, and regeneration of brownfields.
Ruud Cino is Head of the Department of Subsurface and Groundwater, within the directorate Water and Soil of the Ministry of Infrastructure and the Environment. He is responsible for the policy concerning the spatial planning of activities in the subsurface in regard to the quality of the groundwater and the environment. Cino has a background in accountancy. He started his career with the government at the directorate of Finance. In 1999, he was appointed head of the unit for soil remediation, and had a leading role in the development of the soil policy in The Netherlands as well as in Europe. Currently, Cino and his team are working on a national spatial plan which will provide a decision support system for the allotment of activities in the subsurface.
Tom Kaszas is Director of Environmental Innovations Branch, Environmental Programs Division. Kaszas joined the Ministry of Environment in December and is working with his team on leading the development of a new Environmental Innovation Strategy. Prior to that, Kaszas was with Dillon Consulting, and before that McCain Foods where he was Director of Global Environmental Sustainability. He has broad experience in the areas of energy and water management, green energy, wastewater treatment and recycling across a wide variety of industries. Kaszas holds a Bachelor of Applied Science, Chemical Engineering, from the University of Ottawa and is a licensed member of Professional Engineers Ontario. He is known for his ability to work across organizations and stakeholders on a wide variety of environmental projects to develop and achieve mutually beneficial goals and objectives.
Toon Segeren holds an Engineering Degree from Wageningen University, The Netherlands, in Water Management and Hydrology, and a Ph.D. in Irrigation Engineering from Utah State University, USA. Dr. Segeren started his career as a research assistant with the Agricultural Research Service (United States Department of Agriculture) in 1987. After a short period as consultant, he joined the regional water authority Roer en Overmaas as a hydrologist. In 1996, Dr. Segeren joined Delft Hydraulics as a senior researcher and consultant. In 2003, Dr. Segeren was appointed as the deputy director, inland water systems with Delft Hydraulics. As of February 2012, Dr. Segeren is the Director of Groundwater and Subsurface of Stichting Deltares and also President of Deltares USA. He is also a member of several steering committees within the Netherlands.
Workshop 3 Coordinators
Aderonke Akande is a Project Manager with the City of Toronto’s Tower and Neighbourhood Revitalization unit, which leads the City’s Tower Renewal program. Tower Renewal focuses on improving the City’s older apartment buildings and the surrounding neighbourhoods. Akande has been instrumental in leading the design and implementation of Hi-RIS, a $10 million program designed to improve energy and water conservation in apartment buildings. She also has a leadership role in the implementation of a number of Tower Renewal initiatives, including a partnership table on Tower Renewal champion sites. Akande is currently a Registered Professional Planner with a background in sustainable community planning practices and a certified Project Management Professional.
Andy van den Dobbelsteen is a professor of Climate Design & Sustainability at the Faculty of Architecture & the Built Environment of the Delft University of Technology. He chairs the faculty’s Department of Architectural Engineering + Technology. He is the theme leader for energy in the built environment for the Delft Energy Initiative, and PI for the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions. He was a primary faculty advisor to the TU Delft Prêt-à-Loger team, which won five prizes at the Solar Decathlon Europe 2014 competition. He
lectures nationally and internationally and conducts research in sustainability, most notably on sustainable energy solutions and climate adaptation.
Anke van Hal, Ph.D., M.Sc., is professor of Sustainable Building & Development at the Center for Entrepreneurship &Stewardship at Nyenrode Business Universiteit, and professor of Sustainable Housing Transformation at the Faculty of Architecture of the Delft University of Technology. She is a sustainable building specialist for more than 25 years. As a professor, she developed a sustainable business approach which covers most of her work. She co-initiated the Canadian-Dutch Sustainable Building and Planning network parallel52 (www.parallel52.org), and is a member of the board of the Dutch Green Building Council and has written several books and many articles.
Lisa King completed her graduate work in Environment & Community at Antioch University, Midwest. She is Senior Environmental Policy Planner for the City of Toronto, City Planning Division, practicing in the areas of green development policy andclimate change resilience. Since 2006, Lisa has been involved in the development and implementation of the Toronto Green Standard, Toronto’s two-tier green building policy. Her career spans 20 years of practice in the areas of ecosystems planning and restoration, sustainable design of buildings, communities and green infrastructure. She has contributed greatly to the adoption of international principles for sustainable cities in Canada, including the Melbourne Principles and the Earth Charter principles. She has worked across sectors in local government, conservation authorities and as a private consultant. She provides regular guest lectures and staff training on sustainable design
Paul Dowsett is a practicing, registered architect with a well-recognized expertise in the fields of sustainable and resilient design, development and construction in Canada, and in the United States with ongoing media recognition, both traditional and online, throughout the world. He is the founding Principal Architect at SUSTAINABLE.TO Architecture + Building. With more than 3 decades of local and international residential, institutional and commercial sustainable design and project management experience, Paul leads a highly collaborative design team for projects of diverse scales, types, and complexities. He is a winner of the 2014 Homegrown Design Challenge, DIY Backyard Bee Hotels, and a recipient of an AIA Designing Recovery Award in 2013 for Resilient House. He speaks regularly at universities, conferences, media events, and trade shows.
Workshop 4 Coordinators
Nico Tillie holds two Master’s Degrees in Plant Breeding & Genetics, and Landscape Architecture from Wageningen University, and is completing a Ph.D. in livable low carbon cities. He is Assistant Professor and Researcher in landscape architecture and sustainable development at Delft University of Technology at the Faculty of Architecture and the built environment. He also works for the City of Rotterdam, where he has taken on various projects ranging from planting schemes, the Museumpark, greenplans, urban metabolism and citywide, densification, adaptation and mitigation plans. He is currently City Leader and EU representative of the World Council on City Data in Toronto. He is a senior fellow of the global cities institute of the University of Toronto, and representative of the German Marshall Fund in
Washington DC. He is a global lecturer and a freelance writer on planting and gardens for garden magazines and is chairman of visitor garden, foundation friends of Rock Garden Ber Slangen.
Nina-Marie Lister is Associate Professor of Urban + Regional Planning at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. She was Visiting Professor in Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at Harvard University, Graduate School of Design, and Visiting Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto. A Registered Professional Planner with a background in resource management, ecology and environmental planning, she is the founding principal of plandform, a creative studio practice exploring the relationship between landscape, ecology, and urbanism. She is also co-editor, with Chris Reed, of Projective Ecologies, and co-editor of The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability. She is author of more than 30 professional practice and scholarly publications.
Nina-Marie has received a Canada Mortgage + Housing Corporation Excellence in Education Award for outstanding educational contribution to sustainable practices, and in 2012, she was named Senior Scholar with the Centre for Humans and Nature.
Seana Irvine joined Evergreen in 1997 and has been the Chief Operating Officer since 2010. She has helped Evergreen develop programs locally, nationally and internationally, and was a key player in the planning and development of Evergreen Brick Works. Irvine has a Master’s Degree in Environmental Studies, an Honours Degree in Environmental and Resource Studies, and is currently helping lead an initiative to revitalize the Lower Don watershed. As COO, she helps to set Evergreen’s strategic and operational direction and priorities, and oversees Evergreen’s staff and volunteers, as well as risk management planning, policies and procedures. She previously served on the Board for The Stop Community Food Centre and the Sustainability Network. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for The Equality Effect and volunteers with Girls Rock Camp Toronto.
Design Charrette
Frits van Loon is a landscape architect, and graduated from the University of Wageningen. Afterward, he worked as a landscape architect in several offices for urbanism and landscape architecture. He has been the co-owner of HOSPER, an office for landscape architecture and urbanism, for 12 years. His role is developing urban and landscape architectonical concepts for projects, giving new impulses, keeping them clear and precise, as well as coaching the co-workers to develop themselves. For the last 2 years, he has dedicated himself to teaching at the University of Delft in Landscape Architectonical Theory and in the practical ways of designing. He participates in design competitions along
with his own office, SCHEP.nu.
Liat Margolis is Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture at the University of Toronto, John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design. She is the Director of the Green Roof Innovation Testing Laboratory (GRIT Lab), an interdisciplinary and applied research facility that is dedicated to testing and evaluating the environmental performance of green building technologies. The GRIT Lab works collaboratively with the City of Toronto Environment and Energy Division, and with over a dozen industry partners. Using sensor technologies and real-time data acquisition, her research team focuses on analyzing the environmental performance metrics of green building technologies in relation to urban water management, thermal cooling, energy production, as well as biodiversity and habitat creation.
Rob Roggema, Ph.D., is a landscape architect and an international renowned design-expert on climate adaptation, renewable energy planning and the design of urban agriculture. He held positions at several universities in the Netherlands and Australia, State and Municipal governments and design consultancies. He is currently appointed as Professor of Design for Urban Agriculture at VHL University of Applied Sciences, in the Netherlands and Adjunct Professor, Planning with Complexity at the Design Innovation Centre, Swinburne University of Technology, in Australia. He was Chair of the International AESOP Conference on Sustainable Food Planning in Leeuwarden in 2014. He has
written three books on climate adaptation and spatial planning, one about design charrettes and one on Urban Agriculture. He has designed and led over 30 design charrettes globally.