Public libraries have run on overdue fines and quiet-please rules for generations. Increasingly, more of them are dropping both—and discovering that connection, not silence, is what makes a place worth belonging to.

Åsa Kachan is CEO and Chief Librarian of Halifax Public Libraries. She drawing on her own experience growing up in libraries, she shows how removing fines, welcoming food and conversation, and designing for accidental encounters can turn libraries into places where belonging happens by design. This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.

Kachan spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging on November 4, 2025.

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Physical infrastructure can be seen. Relational infrastructure can only be felt—and it might be the difference between a park and a place worth belonging to.

Jorge Garza is director of Networks for Change at the Tamarack Institute. Drawing on communities like BC's Tri-Cities, he shows how relational infrastructure—the connections and collective intelligence beneath a place—is turns static spaces into ones that generate real belonging.

This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.

Garza spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging on November 4, 2025.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Beneath the noise of traffic, one Toronto space is quietly proving that conversation—not commerce—is what makes a neighborhood.

Anna Gallagher-Ross is senior manager of programming at The Bentway, a public space beneath Toronto's Gardiner Expressway that hosts year-round arts programming and social gatherings. Drawing on The Bentway's research, she shows how seating, art, and play turn passersby into neighbours—and why public space is public health infrastructure. This special episode of The Conversation Piece features content from her presentation at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging, supported by The Belonging Forum.

Gallagher-Ross spoke at The Walrus Talks at Home: Place and Belonging on November 4, 2025.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.