2022-3 The city after COVID-19: Vulnerability and urban governance in Chicago, Toronto, and Johannesburg

Lead organisers: Roger Keil (York University, Canada), Xuefei Ren (Michigan State University, USA), and Philip Harrison University of Witwatersrand (South Africa). This research project is funded by Urban Studies Foundation - Pandemics and Cities grant.

This study examines the critical role of municipal institutions and their civil society partners in mobilizing resources to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 and improve health and economic equity. The project aims to shore up a gap in the scholarly literature that has emphasized the actions of global institutions and national governments. Focusing on urban regions, we will examine how the pandemic altered or exacerbated existing patterns of vulnerability, how municipal institutions, in conjunction with civil society groups, have alleviated the devastating consequences of the pandemic, and how their interventions evolve after the acute phase of the pandemic passes. Many programs mobilized for COVID-19 equity response represent dramatic transformations in urban governance, in terms of new partnerships being forged between grassroots organizations, citizens, and municipal authorities. We aim to generate a database of policies and programs from the pilot study on Chicago, Toronto, and Johannesburg, and offer explanations on the convergence and divergency of their policy choices. This pilot project will form a basis for the next phase of research on pandemics and urban governance in a more diverse range of cities.

2021-2 Co-applicant, with Nicholas Phelps and Paul Maginn, Urban Studies Foundation seminar series ‘Peripheral centralities’. 

Peripheral centralities have re-entered the public imagination in the form of corporate, university and science city campuses, edge cities, airports, mega-shopping malls, and distribution centres for online retailers. Over the last year, the COVID-19 pandemic has led scholars, practitioners and the media to speculate about the demise of the CBD and the rise of suburbanism as people seek sanctuary in peripheral spaces. This seminar series is hosted by Professor Nicholas Phelps (University of Melbourne), Dr Paul J. Maginn (University of Western Australia), and Professor Roger Keil (York University) and is made possible by the support of the Urban Studies Foundation.

The seminar series brings together a multidisciplinary mix of scholars and practitioners including urban historians, sociologists, geographers, planners, architects, urban designers and property developers to consider the meaning, form, dynamics and significance of peripheral centralities within an era of global extended urbanisation. More information here: https://msd.unimelb.edu.au/research/projects/current/peripheral-centralities-lost-past-present-and-future

2020-1 Mitacs Accelerate Internship Supervisor, Murat Ucoglu, “Rethinking Housing Market Financing in the Aftermath of COVİD-19: Lessons from and Responses to the Pandemic,” with Tomar Realtor Inc.

This project in the first instance aimed at understanding the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the housing market. The ongoing crisis that stems from Covid-19 shows that we need to rethink how we finance our housing systems and how to overcome the financialization of housing that limits the options of affordable housing systems. This research will focus on how we can create a more sustainable housing market that can be resilient against global crises. Using the Greater Toronto Area, and especially the 905 suburban communities as a living laboratory during the lockdown and impending reopening, we investigated the existing quantitative data on market activity in the housing markets in the GTA and to add to it focused qualitative research (online surveys and interviews with industry representatives) on experiences during the emergency.  In addition, we considered lessons from the current crisis on how we can finance and organize the housing in accordance with the necessities during future social and health crises. What we need to grasp is about how it would be possible to create new housing systems that can provide a variety of affordable financial systems. A final report on the project is available at request.

2018-20 Co-applicant with Harris Ali (York, PI), Mosoka Fallah (NPHIL, PI) and others, The Role of Social, Cultural and Environmental Factors in Improving Ebola Virus Disease Response and Resilience: Exploring the Potential of Community-Based Initiatives, IDRC Rapid Research Fund for Ebola Virus Outbreaks, $359,989.75.

Our research project can be understood to have two main objectives.

The first is to identify and analyze the social (we use this term to include the cultural, political and economic dimensions) and environmental dimensions of the Ebola Virus Disease (EVD) outbreaks in West Africa (Liberia, Sierra Leone) and the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

The second is to use our insights from West Africa to improve existing public health response strategies in the DRC through the application of community-based initiatives.

2018-21 Co-applicant with Raktim Mitra (PI) and others, SSHRC Partnership Development Grant, StudentMoveTO: From Insight to Action on Transportation for Post-secondary Students in the GTHA, $ 199,934

We are a 3-year research and partnership program focusing on an improved understanding of the travel behaviour of 600,000 post-secondary students in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), Canada.

This program will explore transportation patterns of post-secondary students, and the potential social and environmental influences on their travel behaviour, and the effect of students’ travel on their social well-being and urban systems.

Through partnerships between students, researchers,universities, policy makers, and communities, we will create new pathways for public policy, institutional planning and enhanced student support services.

2015-17 Co-applicant with Jonathan Davies (PI), Pierre Hamel et al., ESRC funded consortium project (ES/L012898/1), Collaborative Governance under Austerity: An eight-case Comparative Study. £435,131.

The focus of the project research was how collaboration contributes to the governance of austerity. Governments and public service leaders argue that collaboration with businesses, voluntary organisations and active citizens is essential for addressing the many challenges posed by austerity. The challenges include transforming public services to cope with cuts, changing citizen expectations and managing demand for services and enhancing the legitimacy of difficult policy decisions by involving people outside government in making them.

But at the same time, collaboration can be exclusionary. For example, if there are high levels of protest, governmental and business elites may collaborate in ways that marginalise ordinary citizens to push through unpopular policies. The challenge is to explore different ways in which collaboration works or fails in governing austerity and whether it is becoming more or less important in doing so.

In exploring these issues, Collaborative Governance under Austerity: An Eight-Case Comparative Study aims to learn something about the urban condition in and after austerity, reflecting comparatively on how cities are governed, the role played by citizens and publics and what might have changed through the years of austerity.