Summit Recordings Are Live! Watch Day 1 Sessions

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The State of Canada's Cities Summit

Summit Recordings Are Live!

Local Solutions Are More Vital Than Ever

In December 2025, CUI convened more than 400 urban and community leaders in Ottawa for the third annual State of Canada’s Cities Summit focussed on the theme, "Leveraging the Local: Learning From What Works".

As community champions continue to tackle housing, infrastructure, downtown recovery, and climate readiness in 2026, learning from what’s already working matters more than ever. To support that ongoing work, CUI is releasing recordings from all Day 1 Summit sessions and lightning talks as practical resources for leaders advancing change in their communities.

Watch Summit Sessions

Building Resilience, Building Prosperity: How to Invest in Cities For a Renewed Canada

As Canada looks toward renewal at a national scale and pivoting to new ways of investment, how can we leverage local models to drive prosperity while strengthening resilience?

>> Watch the Panel

Breaking Bottlenecks, Building Homes: Delivering Housing in Canada

Canada needs more homes - fast. And more importantly, homes that more people can afford, and benefit from. But the path from policy to delivery remains blocked by complex barriers in land use, regulation, and financing.

>> Watch the Panel

Trade Winds and Community Wins: Navigating Global Pressures to Deliver Local Opportunities

Global forces - from shifting supply chains to trade disruptions - are shaping Canada’s local and national economies in new and unpredictable ways.

>> Watch the Panel

All Summit Panels

Learning From What Works: Leveraging local solutions to make better places

In May 2025, the School of Cities and the Canadian Urban Institute issued a national call for innovative approaches to solving place-based challenges. The response was inspiring: we heard from over 120 organizations across the country whose community-based solutions are already showing success.

This resulting report features 89 of the most promising submissions we received. The transformative local solutions are from a range of organizations and address housing, mental health, climate change, and more.

The report also features a chapter about how to scale social innovations like these so Canada can expand on “what works,” building on local assets and trust to address our most pressing economic, social, environmental, and cultural challenges.

16 of the strongest solutions are showcased in-depth in the "Learning From What Works" report, and five winning solutions were sent to the Summit to share their stories.

Discover the Report

See the Winners Onstage

Announced at the Summit

The Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies

Shorefast Founder Zita Cobb officially launched the The Shorefast Institute for Place-Based Economies with a keynote at the State of Canada’s Cities Summit.

After more than two decades of on-the-ground, economic development work on Fogo Island, Shorefast is expanding their activities in 2026 to help shape Canada’s future with other nation-builders across the country.

“What we need is to build bridges between ground-up development and top-down investment and policy-making. This is not just economic reform; it is also a moral reorientation to ensure prosperity for more people and places,” said Zita Cobb.

The Institute will strengthen Canada’s economy by advancing place-based approaches to economic development. By building a working framework across governments, markets and communities of all sizes, The Shorefast Institute will build and share proven models, activate entrepreneurship, and develop coordinated strategies and tools to create the conditions for communities to thrive.