EUC Global Connection: South Africa
The Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change brings together geographers, physical scientists, social scientists, humanities researchers and artists whose innovative research seeks to advance sustainability and social justice. Using field-based science, policy analysis, critical social theory, planning skills, geomatics, and cultural and arts-based approaches, our researchers drive action to address the world’s environmental and urban challenges.
EUC researchers are engaged in collaborative relationships, projects and partnerships with colleagues and institutions around the world. Here are the works we have been doing in South Africa.
EUC Main Researchers in South Africa
EUC Main Partner Institutions in South Africa
EUC Research in South Africa
Drafted by Roger Keil 18th March 2025
From the point of view of planetary geography, South Africa is very far away from Toronto, typically two long overnight flights, but it has long been close to what we do at EUC.
There have been longstanding research relationships with South Africa by faculty (Keil, Lehrer, Norcliffe, Perkins, others) and graduate students (Hillary Birch, Anne-Marie Debbané and others) in both Environmental Studies and Geography.
Keil has long worked with South African regional studies scholar and international consultant, Dr. Robin Bloch, a visiting faculty and member of graduate committees at York. Early in the century, Keil visited Bloch in Southern Africa and, in collaboration with MES student, Anne-Marie Debanné, did some research on environmental justice and the political ecologies of water in Hermanus in the Western Cape and Walvis Bay in Namibia.
After the creation of the City Institute in 2006, Keil worked with Robin Bloch and subsequently also Professor Alan Mabin and colleagues at the University of the Witwatersrand (WITS) on the Global Suburbanisms MCRI which engaged leading South African researchers on the urban periphery. Apart from producing landmark publications, the MCRI held a two week Critical Urban Planning Workshop in Johannesburg under the course directorship of EUC professor Ute Lehrer (also involving EUC faculty Keil and Kusno) in the fall of 2016. This was part of the Africa’s New Suburbanisms Workshop that brought leading scholars on suburbanization on the continent to WITS.
Keil continued to work with South African researchers when the COVID-19 pandemic started and collaborated with two York colleagues on a chapter edited by WITS professor Philip Harrison and colleagues on urban densities. In 2020, Keil participated in a high-level exchange of ideas with colleagues of the BRICS countries organized by scholars at WITS. Subsequently, Philip Harrison, South African Research Chair in Development Planning and Modelling at the University of the Witwatersrand, Roger Keil and Xuefei Ren at Michigan State University obtained funding from the Urban Studies Foundation to do a comparative study on “The city after COVID-19: Comparing vulnerability and urban governance in Chicago, Toronto, and Johannesburg.” This cooperation led to field visits by Keil and EUC PhD student Hillary Birch to Johannesburg in 2023 and return visits by Harrison in May of the same year. On the occasion of Harrison’s visit to York, the group gave a public facing seminar at the Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research where they reported on their preliminary results of their research on COVID-19 affected and engaged communities in Toronto, Chicago, and Johannesburg. The same group will publish a keystone article on this topic and a book with an academic publisher. In March 2025, they held a USF Foundation sponsored workshop with related groups in Detroit, Michigan.
