A Beautiful City Worth Loving

A city cannot demand loyalty. It has to earn affection.

If people arrive in Waterloo for school, do extraordinary things and leave the moment they graduate, we should not scold them. We should ask what kind of life they could not see here.

Jobs matter. So do homes, friends, beautiful streets, places to gather, things to do in February and the feeling that your city is alive when you step outside.

Extraordinary work already happens here—at our universities, Perimeter Institute and CIGI; in companies and studios; and inside homes, apartments and backyards. The city around that work should look and feel equal to the imagination inside it.

I want Waterloo to be a city people can keep living in after school ends. That means communities not only for founders and builders, but for people looking for friends, sports, art, music, recreation, shared interests and a reason to belong.

We need more third places: public rooms, cultural spaces, workshops, cafés, parks and events where being together does not require an invitation or a professional purpose.

We need streets designed for human life. Walking, cycling, transit and bike parking should make it easier to reach the people and places that matter. A city feels larger when more of it is within reach.

We need to take beauty seriously. Beautiful buildings and public spaces tell people that their daily experience matters. Waterloo should be capable of modern design with confidence, warmth, craft and a sense of its own identity.

I want clear aesthetic and livability standards: not one mandatory architectural style, but a serious expectation that new places contribute to the street, work for the people using them and make Waterloo better to inhabit.

No more accepting ugliness as the inevitable price of getting something built. We can demand more imagination while still making room for the homes and businesses the city needs.

Winter should not place public life on pause. Music, light, markets, recreation and spaces built for the cold can make the hardest months part of Waterloo’s character instead of something to endure indoors.

And we need more businesses of every size. A thriving society is not made only of large employers and venture-backed companies. It needs restaurants, shops, studios, trades, services, manufacturers, independent professionals and the person trying something useful in an empty storefront.

Those businesses are social infrastructure. They create jobs, but they also create the places where neighbours recognize one another and a collection of buildings begins to feel like a community.

City Hall should make it clearer and faster to start, adapt and grow a useful local business. Rules should protect the public without turning initiative into an endurance test.

Government does not need to build every beloved place itself. It should make it easier for private investment, nonprofits and neighbours with good ideas to create useful, beautiful and fun places—and hold the result to a high public standard.

Waterloo’s campuses should not feel like temporary islands beside the city. University of Waterloo, Laurier and Conestoga students should encounter the rest of Waterloo—and one another—as participants in a shared place.

A student can become a neighbour. A newcomer can become an institution-builder. A small event can become a tradition. That is how a city develops a culture people can feel without needing it explained to them.

I do not want Waterloo merely to be efficient, respectable or convenient. I want it to be lovable.

A beautiful city with room for friendship, enterprise, creativity and an entire life is not separate from ambition. It is what makes ambition worth bringing home.