Carla Guerrera

Virtual Keynote Speaker

Futurist, Urban Development Expert and Virtual Business Advisor

Virtual Keynote SpeakerCarla Guerrera Professional Business Speaker
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Carla Guerrera is a globally recognized real estate and urban development professional.  Carla combines the fields of real estate development and urban planning is a respected advisor, business consultant and speaker on topics pertaining to urban design, people, architecture and city policy. Carla has delivered over $1 B of complex, mixed-use real estate development across Canada's top markets over the past 20 years. Notable projects include leading the West Don Lands waterfront revitalization on Toronto’s waterfront, one of the world’s most advanced waterfront revitalization initiatives. She has been awarded the prestigious Urban Land Institutes Top 40 Under 40 Global Land Use Professionals Award, as well as Business in Vancouver's Top 40 Under 40 Award.

Carla was appointed to the prestigious Thames Estuary Growth Board, UK's largest growth opportunity focused on the revitalization along the Thames River with a £1.5bn investment and recovery post-Brexit and post-Covid. Locally she also serves on several boards including the British Columbia Pavilion Corporation and Gitga'at First Nation Economic Development. Carla is an international thought leader and speaker on innovative approaches to development and city building.

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Speaking Topics

Inoculating the City: Life After COVID-19

This keynote discussed the emerging global trends on how we how we will live, work and play. While the world awaits a vaccine, how will we inoculate our cities, workplaces, homes, and families against another pandemic? For example, how will fluid organizations balance the mental- and physical health of employees with new remote/office work hybrids? Will social distancing kill mass transit and uber in favor of driving alone — or will cities turn streets over to cyclists, scooters, and pedestrians?

As the world of urban living and working may appear to be in flux, a dynamic and reimagined future is taking shape in which the world’s major cities will thrive, characterized by vibrant and distinctive office, cultural, retail, residential spaces and transportation modes.

Decision-makers across all sectors, industries and geographies take note. Organizations that learn and embrace these dynamics of the post-covid city reinvention will become the organizations best able to make better decisions, focus on organizational resilience, and hunt for opportunities to elevate performance.

Future historians will be tempted to ascribe the roots of all sorts of change to the year 2020, but many of the choices we make in reimagining the future of urban living and working will be driven by trends that have been gathering momentum for far longer.

Designed for all sectors, this session will share the leading research, trends and dynamics of the Post-Covid City relating to the future of office, retail, housing, recreation, travel, education and transportation.

 

The Future of Cities - Transform Underutilized Lands, Revitalize Our Cities, Recover our Economy

It’s time for the new normal. But what exactly is the new normal? For the city building sector, it could be using a confluence of unprecedented new opportunities to unlock development, drive economic recovery and transform communities into inclusive, affordable, climate-positive places for generations to come. And it all starts with the redevelopment of underutilized lands to revitalize our cities.

While the economic fallout caused by the COVID-19 pandemic is forcing governments to stimulate the economy, revitalization of our cities on underutilized lands is a tried-and-true method to boost our economy and provide transformative benefits to cities.

- Evidence from revitalization projects on former industrial lands globally show that revitalization has significant economic, social and environmental benefits that unlock successful development and create communities where we can all thrive.

- Drawing on case studies across Canada and the UK we will explore the unparalleled opportunity to reinvest, rebuild, and reimagine our cities, while unlocking vital development opportunities and catalyzing economic recovery.