De/centering the ‘community benefit’ in Toronto’s inner-suburbs

In Toronto, Canada, core-periphery relations have shifted through re-mappings of city boundaries and districts over the past seventy years: austerity-led amalgamations resulting in new peripheralizations, with subsequent attempts at addressing disparity with an emphasis on place. Publicly disinvested, the now inner-suburbs of Toronto are driven into new competitive relationships, and therefore becoming vulnerable to private

[ Read More ]

Peripheral centralities: Lost, past, present and future

Co-Principal Investigators: Roger Keil with Nicholas Phelps (PI, University of Melbourne) and Paul Maginn (Co-PI, University of Western Australia). Funding: Urban Studies Foundation Seminar Series Award. Term: 2021-2022. 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

[ Read More ]

Reshaping cities: The power of urban planning

The 15-minute city urban development is an approach which comprises compact and transit-oriented development, mixed-use, smart and strategic growth. It focuses on meeting all the requirements that a person would need within a 15- to 20-minute radius of their household. The main goal of Mariyan Boychev’s MES major paper is to appraise the adoption of

[ Read More ]

Slope gradient, soil texture, and ground vegetation affecting erosion in the Lovers Creek Ravine

Lovers Creek is a notable subwatershed that is part of the Lake Simcoe watershed. It is one of several that pass through the City of Barrie’s residential areas in order to connect to Lake Simcoe. Sections of Lovers Creek are characterized by ravines that are regularly accompanied with recreational trails along the slopes or fields.

[ Read More ]

Women and urban place-making

Rapid urbanization affects everyone, but women living in poverty represent a disproportionate percentage of the urban poor, bearing the brunt of housing and employment insecurity, inadequate transportation infrastructures, violence, and the climate crisis and other environmental disasters. Through research, public education and policy engagement in strategically chosen cities in the global south, Professor Linda Peake’s

[ Read More ]

Urban life in the time of the COVID-19 pandemic

In an article in The Conversation on February 17, Professors Roger Keil, Creighton Connolly, and S. Harris Ali, stressed that “[o]utbreaks like coronavirus start in and spread from the edges of cities,” noting that merging infectious disease has much to do with how and where we live, and that the ongoing coronavirus is an example of the close

[ Read More ]

Re-imagining public spaces and designing liveable communities in a COVID-19 world

How do we reimagine public spaces – such as parks, streets, beaches, schools, libraries, and other areas of communities – in a way that they will be liveable for people in a COVID-19 world? What are the issues around equal access and rights to public and social spaces as we begin to live in this

[ Read More ]

Next stop: Equity -- Routes to fairer transit access in the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Area

In the fast growing, complex and diverse Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area (GTHA), transit discussions rarely focus on improving access for the greatest number of people and addressing the complex needs of the public. As plans are made, money is spent, routes are plotted and far schedules are set, "transit equity" must enter the discussion.

[ Read More ]

Sustainable Neighborhood Retrofit Action Plan (SNAP): Program Evaluation and Lessons Learned for Accelerating Environmental Improvement in Established Neighborhoods

MITACS Accelerate Internship Program The graduate student, along with her academic and industry supervisors, evaluated the Sustainable Neighborhood Retrofit Action Plan (SNAP) program. Three pilot SNAPs were studied to improve the design and delivery of the program as well as its transferability to other neighbourhoods within and beyond the Greater Toronto Area. Researcher: PI: Laura

[ Read More ]

Comparing Metropolitan Governance in Transatlantic Perspective: Toronto, Montreal, Paris and Frankfurt

Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) A comparative investigation of the globally-induced transformation of metropolitan governance systems in Toronto, Montreal, Paris and Frankfurt. The project focused on the urban region with its growing web of metropolitan governance. The emergence of collective action at the metropolitan level in Canada and Europe were examined through infrastructure,

[ Read More ]