FES Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Series

Permanent URI for this collection

https://hdl.handle.net/10315/13775

Browse

Now showing 1 - 20 of 117

Open Access
Ecological Encounters in Outdoor Early Childhood Education Programs: Pedagogies for childhood, Nature and Place
(2013-12-31) Rafferty, Sinead; Leduc, Tim
This paper explores how nature, place, and pedagogical practice are perceived by educators in three Canadian outdoor early childhood education programs. Intersections between ideologies in early childhood education and interests in environmental education are introduced to highlight possibilities for collaboration in education for social transformation and ecological justice. Thematic issues and philosophical undercurrents of modern culture are explored and how they shape human and nature relations in educational settings. This research is situated in the movement to reconnect children to nature, whose goals include more outdoor play, enhancing children’s well-being and fostering environmental concern. Elements of critical theory, ethnography, phenomenology, grounded theory, and documents analysis were crafted to inform questions and code for themes that emerged from interviews with educators from the outdoor early childhood programs. Findings revealed that what the educators perceived from outdoor play was that children were more experientially engaged with movement, the land, and the local flora and fauna they encountered outside. The combination of democratic, child-led, and emergent pedagogical approaches with the educator’s conceptualizations of ecological literacy allowed children to construct reciprocal and affective ways of knowing and meaning making in the outdoors. This alternative form of pedagogical praxis, revealed from the educators’ experiences and the immersion of learning and play in the outdoors, demonstrates tangible possibilities for transformative education that honours embodied ways of knowing and reconfigures human and nature relations towards sustaining life and an ethics of co-existence.
Open Access
Energy Efficiency in Commercial Kitchens
(2022-08-31) Ritchie, Trevor; Lakhan, Calvin
The Energy Efficiency in Commercial Kitchens course project is intended to observe the presence of energy efficiency as a curriculum in post-secondary culinary institutions. It is designed to connect commercial kitchen planning and practice with emission reduction strategies as they relate to energy use. The following reflection provides an overview of the research findings and methods used to create an energy efficiency course proposed for post-secondary culinary students. This project responds to the gap in culinary training in prospect that chefs will gain the ability to identify opportunities for energy efficiency in commercial kitchens and become activists in energy reduction endeavours.
Open Access
Solidarity: The history and future of Canadian BIPOC co-operation and co-operatives in context
(2022-08-31) Redekop, Susanna; Myers, Lisa
This paper is a reflection of my research and experiences over the course of my Masters of Environmental Studies degree, which culminated in my co-founding Freedom Dreams Co-operative Education, an organization designed to educate about the co-operative model from an intersectionality lens specific to Black, Indigenous and People of Colour communities and to enable coalition building in the solidarity economy. Culturally diverse forms of co-operation are not recognized or understood well by the Canadian co-operative sector, which has led to a dominant model of co-operatives held up by and continuing to perpetuate colonial, heteropatriarchal constructs. This is problematic in the active erasure of BIPOC contributions to the co-operative sector, ignoring the diverse, rich cultural traditions of co-operation, and leaving out demographics of groups and individuals who may benefit from the co-op model. My research was guided by the following questions: How do Canadian co-operators and co-op activists engage more diverse communities in the co-operative model and establish more equitable and inclusive co-ops? How does the co-op sector introduce tools and education to form co-ops for interested BIPOC co-operators? What is it about the Canadian co-operative model that has made it inaccessible to many BIPOC communities? Through my primary and secondary research via interviews, focus groups and a literature review I draw on what I have learned from various communities of Black and Indigenous co-operators, and engage with critical pedagogy, Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR), and decolonial theory. I argue that this is a pivotal time to reassess the Canadian co-operative sector in making room for more diverse voices and action, strengthening the wider solidarity economy with co-operative action and bringing co-operative values to work led by BIPOC co-operators, youth, and allies. The key findings of this research were that culturally diverse co-operation in Canada faces barriers of language, racism, and a lack of time, resources and trust. This paper is part of a portfolio which explores these themes and connects them to the broader body of work that explores co-operatives and the solidarity economy through an intersectional lens. This portfolio also includes a an appendix of partners building solidarity economy in Canada, a business plan outline for Freedom Dreams Co-operative Education and the framework for an upcoming workshop series analyzing the 7 Co-operative Principles using an anti-oppression lens, each intended to build on this reflection paper by creating practical tools for the co-operative sector.
Open Access
Diagnosing Doug Ford’s Durability: The Discourse and Political Economy of Right-Wing Populist Environmental Politics in Ontario
(2022-04-30) Hillson, Peter; Winfield, Mark
As we approach the 2022 Ontario provincial election, political observers are apt to be somewhat confused. To most, it would seem that the current Ontario government, facing increasingly low popularity and widespread dissatisfaction with its management of the COVID-19 pandemic, has been ‘mugged by reality.’ However, as of yet polls show the Conservative Party of Ontario, (though with a dented reputation), very likely to retain power if an election were called today. This poses something of a theoretical dilemma. How do we make sense of an approach to governance that seems to have been discredited by reality, but shambles on relatively undisturbed in the discursive/political realm? With the goal of answering that question, this paper forwards a theory of the Ford government’s discursive strategy in general, and then examines how that style has persisted. It approaches this investigation using through discourse analysis, political-economic analysis, and a Gramscian analysis of hegemony. It proposes that the Ford government’s resilience can be attributed to the ability of its populistneoliberal and promethean-populist discourses to absorb and explain challenges accompanying COVID-19, changes in environmental politics, and labor market polarization in Ontario, as well as the inability of institutional discursive alternatives to provide a compelling counterhegemonic discourse that moves beyond the facilitative-managerial discourse the Ford government displaced in 2018. It concludes by suggesting that a revision of the ‘Green New Deal’ discourse that incorporates elements of deliberative democracy and a ‘green economic survivalism’ discourse might prove to be a more successful counter-hegemonic discourse.
Open Access
The Spit Represented: Imagined Natures of the Leslie Street Spit and Emerging Aesthetic Ideals on Instagram
(2022-08-31) Donnelly, Allison; Foster, Jennifer
From a wasteland to an urban wilderness, Tommy Thompson Park (commonly referred to as “the Spit”) is the culmination of various landscape narratives and visions of nature. Built from the rubble of Toronto’s early city-building initiatives, the 5km long peninsula is a product of shifting environmental values and socio-political processes. As a landscape in flux, there is a need to understand aesthetic preferences and the landscape character of the Spit. Publicly available photographs on social media have increasingly been used as a proxy for recreational values, preferences and to gauge visitor behaviour (Hamstead et al., 2018; Jim & Chen, 2006; X. P. Song et al., 2020; Wood et al., 2013). This method supports the shift away from technocratic, expert-based approaches to understanding landscape preferences, towards a more placebased understanding of the everyday situated experience, while enabling more collaborative local landscape planning processes. In this research, landscape preferences are identified through the coding of frequently occurring image attributes and the rate of occurrence serves as an indicator of aesthetic appreciation. Key findings demonstrate a balanced appreciation for socalled natural and urban features. The photos of Lake Ontario and Toronto’s skyline resemble a relatively homogenous photographic composition that constitutes the bulk of visual representation. Images of Toronto’s skyline portrays an idealized waterfront city. In looking out towards the urban centre, it positions the Spit outside of the city, engendering particular affective responses and perceptions that limit understandings of the urban, economic, and socio-ecological entanglements that have created it. This is problematic for post-industrial natures that are deeply enmeshed within urban processes, which require contextually attuned responses, and for promoting narratives that exclude the negative and unscenic impacts of the “urban engine” (Coelho, 2018). The prevalence of images that depict water either as the focal point or in the background, suggests access to Lake Ontario is highly valued and contributes to the Spit’s imageability. Other viewpoints that are oriented toward the urban skyline and those with unimpeded views of the lake are highly appreciated and could inform future park management plans. The prevalence of wildlife imagery affirms the Spit’s important role in habitat creation. It also alludes to the power of nonhuman actors (especially birds) in shaping the relationship between humans and the environment, in both attracting people to the Spit and inspiring its protection. The results confirm the landscape is multivalent and offers insight into aesthetic preferences of the Spit. This research complements existing work by the Rubble to Refuge Project, a joint endeavor with the Toronto Region and Conservation Authority (TRCA) and York University that responds to the pressing need to understand human uses with the Spit.
Open Access
Exploring Disparities in Park Access and Experience: A Case Study of Toronto, Ontario
(2022-08-31) Del Prete, Nicholas; Podur, Justin
According to the City of Toronto Strategy (2019), Toronto has over 1,500 parks in approximately 7,700 hectares of land scattered throughout the City, equating to 28m2 of parkland per person. This paper explores the provision of parkland throughout the City of Toronto, while intersecting the practice of urban and environmental planning with wider themes of environmental justice and equity. If parks are unevenly distributed, then so are the benefits that they provide. This research paper looks beyond the geographic distribution of parks, to critically examine the quality and user experience of these public spaces in socio-economically contrasting neighbourhoods to attempt to highlight themes of environmental inequity and environmental injustice in the context of the City of Toronto. Through this essay, I will argue why the practice of urban planning and more specifically, parks planning in a neoliberal context such as Toronto, works to perpetuate injustices that already exist through the exclusion of participatory planning practices. I argue that it is vital to equitable parks planning to create meaningful community engagement opportunities that considers the varying needs of contrasting communities. This study will build on existing theoretical and empirical conversations on how the intersection of socioeconomic inequality, racialized poverty and environmental degradation disproportionately impact vulnerable groups in Toronto and how different levels of access to quality park spaces contribute to environmental justice. Through intense site observations, a created site audit tool, as well as questionnaire responses, this study uncovers the different qualities and user experiences that exist at parks within four neighbourhoods which consist of contrasting socio-economic characteristics. The results of this study demonstrate that user experience and park quality are much greater in the neighbourhoods of higher socioeconomic statuses or that have recently received investment through urban revitalization processes. Findings also highlight the importance of considering the unique needs of a particular neighbourhood and the residents, rather than a one-size-fits all approach when planning and enhancing local parks.
Open Access
“Public” Space for Whom? Encampment Evictions, Spatio-Legal Exclusion, and Differentiated Urban Citizenships in Toronto
(2022-08-31) Abdelmeguied, Farida; Sotomayor, Luisa
In the summer of 2021, Toronto police executed violent raids, brutalizing vulnerated encampment residents and their supporters in three downtown public parks. During these evictions, state violence manifested in displacement and police brutality, including the use of force and intimidation tactics such as kettling. In response to the public relations fallout that ensued, the City changed course in October 2021, issuing Suspension Notices to encampment leaders that barred them from public space and public services. These tactics constitute a form of legally-imposed spatial exclusion (Beckett and Herbet, 2010), subjugating a vulnerated group to additional precarity, uncertainty, displacement, and violence. Forbidding unhoused people from accessing and using public space produces an acutely unequal and exclusionary city. In light of this, questions of differentiated urban citizenship, the meaning of “public” in public space, the processes by which individuals are made illegal, and the narratives and discourses embedded in the aforementioned become acutely pertinent. This portfolio of work is an exploration of the encampment eviction tactics pursued by the City of Toronto in the summer and fall of 2021 in the context of spatio-legal displacement and exclusion, carceral urban governance, and differentiated and propertied urban citizenship. The first section of the portfolio is an article that identifies the implications that the City’s eviction tactics have on questions of urban citizenship and the reconfiguration of spatial governance in Toronto. Utilizing a socio-legal approach and a mixed-methods qualitative research design, the article investigates how and why legal processes of spatial exclusion are mobilized against unhoused people, and how those processes produce differentiated access to urban citizenship and rights. The second section employs arts-based methods to complicate the City’s narratives surrounding the encampment evictions. Using erasure poetry and abecedarian poetry, two municipal press briefings are intentionally reworked to transform their meaning or effect, elucidating the constructedness and instability of narrative. The experimental and site-specific poetic explorations raise questions of erasure, public memory, and the right to narrate (Bhabha, 2014). The final section is a critical discourse analysis (Fairclough, 1992, 2003, 2010), identifying the dominant narratives about encampment evictions constructed in mainstream media articles and municipal press briefings. The analysis elucidates how discourses of governance, order, and citizenship are mobilized to justify displacement and minimize state violence, while constructing unhoused people as undeserving non-citizens. In an antiparallel corollary, counter-narratives identified from advocate public statements and internal municipal documents relating to the planning of encampment evictions reveal what is erased by hegemonic narratives. This work contributes to socio-legal literatures on propertied urban citizenship and permanent displaceability, offering new insights on the arbitrary and informal processes of illegalization that exclude unhoused dwellers from public space in cities of the Global North and the narratives used to justify them.
Open Access
A Materialist Acoustemology of Urban Atmospheres in Mexico City’s Centro Histórico
(2017-08-31) Martinez De Velasco, Guillermo; Gilbert, Liette
The resonant frequency of sound, that is to say, the vibratory quality of sound, is felt and registered by our bodies in a way that goes beyond the audible. In an urban environment, the combination of sounds creates a sonic topography that manifests itself in the environmental qualities of a place. Sound is an integral constituent of atmospheric construction. How we think and feel sound is contingent on the architectural and lived conditions of space. In turn, the configuration of space is linked to capitalist-nationalist practices of urban development. This paper takes a materialist approach to urban sound in two areas of Mexico City’s central district (Centro Hisórico). The first is the corridor made up by San Jerónimo and Regina Streets and the second is the area known as La Merced. Through a combination of sound recordings, soundwalks and interviews with local residents, this paper aims to gain insights the construction of the built environment and its relation to quotidian interactions with situated sound atmospheres in the context of urban regeneration. Additionally, this paper seeks to bring to the forefront aural research methods as a way of approaching the nuances of urban life at the intersection of political economy, geography, and ecology. Two sound pieces accompany this paper. One (11:30 minutes) is a recording of daily sounds around Edificio Smirna located in the San Jeronimo/Regina Streets area. The other (16:36 minutes) provides a sonic glimpse of Edificio Uruguay 125 in La Merced.
Open Access
How Planning Creates the Unplannable: The Case of the Katchi Abadis (Impermanent Settlements) of Lahore
(2016-01-31) Arif, Mina; Kipfer, Stefan
This research delves into the role of planning in the Global South with respect to informal settlements. Using a case study of the informal settlements in Lahore, Pakistan, it evaluates the current planning process as a subset of the statebureaucratic-developer nexus that dominates political structures of postcolonial cities. In an era where socio-spatial politics are increasingly determined by the edicts of neoliberalism and urbanism is defined by the circuits of capital accumulation, planning institutions too form a part of the political power matrix. This research evaluates whether planning as an institution is complicit in the formation and perpetuation of informal settlements in the cities of the Global South. To that end this research highlights the informality of the state apparatus itself which subverts planning paradigms in practices of deregulation, exceptionalism and patronage to profit from the neoliberal financialization of land. It discusses how the multi-planar socio-spatial synergies of the city are reduced to binaries of informal-formal, order-disorder, legal-illegal, to reengineer the urban and rural landscape according to the edicts of global capital. This culminates in violent dispossession, segregation and peripheralization of the poor, complemented by a politics of patronage and common sense used by the state-apparatus to legitimize coercion and violence in the hegemonic administration of space.
Open Access
Comparing the Experiences of Refugee Women, Unwed Mothers, Sex Workers, and Women Living with HIV Accessing Healthcare in Morocco: Narrating Citizenship and Health
(2018-04-30) Khan, Nashwa; Flicker, Sarah
Although research on women’s health has been conducted throughout Morocco there are still significant gaps that require our attention. This is a result of the ever changing political, physical, and social environment in Morocco and across the world. Furthermore, the majority of emerging literature from Morocco with a focus on women's health has traditionally been conducted in silos focusing on women from very specific social locations. Intersecting factors impact health for women in Morocco, and this study hopes to bridge some of the existing gaps and speak to women’s health in Morocco beyond the identity specific silos while also acknowledging nuances and differences in lived experiences amongst women. This research investigates, compares, and contrasts four groups of women and their experiences accessing healthcare, specifically: 1) unwed mothers 2) women who are HIV positive 3) sex workers and 4) Syrian refugee women. The data was collected using semi-structured interviews and critical narrative methods. Furthermore multiple bodies of work in the fields of public health, community health, gender studies, narrative theory, and refugee and forced migration studies were examined to supplement this research. The data was coded three times using open coding and then coded using axial coding. The results of this small qualitative study illustrate that much of the previous literature provides a good foreground for research in this field, however, the results also disrupts notions perpetuated by siloed research of the past. By examining the four groups identified together, counter-narratives are formed that illuminate new findings and challenge older ones. For instance, some studies conflated the experiences of some of the groups of women I interviewed when in fact their experiences are diverse and should be complicated. The results will be shared back with community partners, non-governmental organizations, and published in both print and digital forms that are academic and nonacademic with the goal of enhancing health outcomes for women in Morocco.
Open Access
Preparing Cities for Climate Emergency: A Triage-based Framework for Urgent & Equitable Climate Action Planning and Prioritization
(2021-08) Ritch, Jenna; Marcus, Joel
Three interconnected crises (the climate crisis, the pandemic and inequality) are presenting unprecedented challenges for local governments. The pandemic is straining resources and time to mitigate and adapt to the effects of climate change is running out. This is leading to disproportionate burdens on racialized, marginalized, and vulnerable communities and intense pressure on local governments to formulate innovative solutions. In Section One of this paper, mixed-method research synthesis and semi-structured, open-ended interviews were utilized to explore trends, strategies and shortcomings within municipal climate action planning, prioritization, and implementation. Findings from Section One suggest that municipal climate policy and planning is haphazard, lacks standardization across municipalities, does not consider prioritization of initiatives, is not consistently leading to emissions reduction or energy savings and largely excludes considerations of equity or justice. In Section Two, an exploratory conceptual framework incorporating a medical triage perspective is proposed to streamline and standardize the climate planning & prioritization process. The triage framework adds value to the climate action planning field by utilizing an innovative, systematic method to achieve efficient, effective, and equitable policy outcomes in urgent situations. Traditional approaches to climate policy and prioritization have been insufficient in non-emergent circumstances and will no t suffice in the current state of climate crisis. Section Three is a case study which utilizes the triage framework in a hypothetical scenario. The case study prioritizes climate change mitigation and adaptation initiatives for buildings in Waterloo Region. These results are compared to priorities in recent climate action plans released by Waterloo Region. An equity and justice lens underpins this research.
Open Access
(In)Equity in Active Transportation Planning: Toronto’s Overlooked Inner Suburbs
(2019-07) Mohith, Mohammed; Gilbert, Liette
Active transportation modes in North America are often accounted as ‘white strips of gentrification’ as advocacy for walking and bicycle infrastructure is characterized as a manifestation of privilege (Mirk, 2009). Such concerns usually arise from complex cultural, historical and political currents influencing urban politics and policies. Policies and investments make the urban amenities and facilities easier or harder to access and have a huge impact on the lives of the city’s population depending on their social and spatial status. Unequal distribution of transportation investments due to lack of fair access to participate in the planning process is not uncommon in Canadian cities -- and in almost all cases lead to inequality in mobility benefits. Decisions of transit infrastructure priorities in Toronto historically and politically tend to favour affluent and influential communities. The goals, preferences and strategies of active transportation planning for Toronto, therefore, is worth a critical discussion and engagement. If the benefits of active transportation investments are to be fairly distributed across the city and among all users, equity will have to be comprehensively addressed in the planning process. The goal of this research paper is to evaluate Toronto’s current initiatives in active transportation planning in terms of social and spatial equities and to bring forward discrepancies in practices to outline relevant strategic directions. The study area compares Toronto’s downtown and inner suburbs.
Open Access
Towards an Entangled Education, An Ethos of Care and Kinship: A Manifesto
(2021-08) Lefler, Aaron; Fawcett, Leesa
My research is focused on de-centering the human in how we educate, and I believe it can allow for new possibilities of what a livable future will look like. Through my research I intend to explore alternatives to Neoliberal models for education, our Western educational model is informed by humanism and promotes the notion that the human is superior to all other things on the planet, this idea underscores the way in which our lived reality functions. This superiority complex has led to Neoliberalism and Capitalism, I propose that Capitalism and Neoliberalism permeate Western society; and is embedded within our educational system, these values and ideals are taught to children at a young age. This system needs an overhaul and urgently, I intend to explore ways in which to de-center the human from education. The boundaries of what we consider human are in fact not what they seem to be, what makes us human is the way in which relationships manifest and entangle our corporeal forms, relationships with power, with the environment, and with each other, thus if we can change our understanding of how these relationships are embodied, we can change what constitutes the human. This can only be achieved through a deconstruction of how we perceive our place in the world. I believe by challenging how Neoliberalism and Capitalisms impacts our educational system is one way to achieve this deconstruction.
Open Access
Toronto’s Tent Encampments: Excavating Northwestern Informalities and State Ambiguities
(2021-08) Evans, Allison; Sotomayor, Luisa
This Major Paper examines the ambiguities of municipal state regulation in relation to the dwelling practices of Toronto’s unhoused and the difficulties navigating urban space by marginalized publics in the context of two overlapping crises: an affordable housing crisis and a public health emergency. This paper argues tent encampments are a persistent mode of urban informality in the global northwest, where tents and other small structures provide a source of housing when faced with limited access and affordability. Throughout the pandemic, tent encampments proliferated across the City of Toronto, an increase linked to the heightened risk of COVID-19 transmission within congregate emergency shelters. However, tent encampments are not a novel occurrence and typically occupy the ‘interstitial' spaces of the city. Using the case study of Toronto, the analysis investigates how urban informality is (co)produced and (co)mediated in and through the state and civil society. The findings suggest the local state—at times ambiguous and negotiated relative to an array of civil society actors, property relations, and desirable formalities—routinely enforces encampment clearances on public property and influences encampment demolitions on private property. The paper explores alternative conceptualizations of tent encampments before proposing an urbanism of empathy aimed at centring those at the forefront of the discussion: unhoused people experiencing homelessness in Toronto.
Open Access
Private Market Solutions to Private Market-Induced Problems: The Limits of Inclusionary Zoning in Toronto
(2021-08) Carvalho, Nigel; Sotomayor, Luisa
The City of Toronto is experiencing a well-known crisis in housing affordability. The municipality has increasingly failed to provide housing that is affordable to its low- and middle-income residents amidst rapid growth in population size and construction activity. Condominium development has vastly outnumbered new purpose-built rental development in recent decades while existing affordable units are lost to urban revitalization projects and financialized landlords. The City has been negotiating Official Plan and Zoning By-law amendments to allow for inclusionary zoning, an affordable housing strategy that has been implemented in over one thousand jurisdictions globally. These changes will mandate that developments in specified areas of the city include a percentage of affordable units. Inclusionary zoning policies are highly variable and involve careful consideration of the unique local contexts in which they are implemented. This paper examines the potential of inclusionary zoning in Toronto and the role of power in the design process through an investigation of the city’s local housing market and history of affordable housing, interviews with various stakeholders to understand their competing perspectives and demands, and a comparative policy analysis of Toronto’s proposed framework with those of other jurisdictions. With implementation scheduled to begin in January 2022, inclusionary zoning could hold immense implications for Toronto’s housing market and residents. While this research ultimately supports the City of Toronto’s use of this policy tool, its effectiveness is found to be severely limited by a firm reliance on the private development sector, neoliberal capitalist market logics, and colonial ideologies underlying the problem of inequitable access to housing that it seeks to rectify. Deeper changes in systems of Canadian housing provision at all levels of government including transformative interventions in Toronto’s urban planning status quo are found to be necessary if housing unaffordability is to be adequately addressed in the city.
Open Access
Is there room for collective agency in a gentrifying city?: Planning for autonomous community space in Toronto
(2021-08) Aylen, Alexandra; Sotomayor, Luisa
The proliferation of gentrification in Toronto has been enabled by the city’s adoption of neoliberal urban development processes consistent with Toronto’s growing desire to compete with other global cities for the attention of global investors. The impacts of gentrification are far-reaching, with physical, economic, cultural, and social consequences associated with the increase in property values, rents, changes in commercial orientation, demographics, and neighbourhood class structure. As state sanctioned gentrification continues to take place across the city of Toronto, and terms such as “community benefits” are integrated into major neighbourhood revitalization projects by developers, this paper considers the implications that this change in urban development processes has for community-based organizations and their access to space, and the consequent implications for the autonomy of community based work. The high cost of real estate combined with the emphasis on service oriented third sector actors in the neoliberal city has resulted in increased pressures faced by community-based organizations to fit within the neoliberal valuation of the third sector, and higher property values or to face displacement and dissolution. This Major Paper examines the relationship between gentrification and access to space for community-based organizations in Toronto. The discussion presented here discusses the current neoliberal urban development context that is specific to the experiences of community-based organizations in Toronto’s gentrifying neighbourhoods, followed by a review of the main concerns and challenges raised by community-based organizations operating in these areas. By using a variety of methods including interviews, a survey and a focus group, the findings of this research project indicate that neoliberal urban development practices impact the ability of community-based organizations to access and maintain space for their communities while maintaining autonomy in regards to their activities and location. Without the ability to generate revenue to keep up with the real estate pressures of Toronto’s gentrifying neighbourhoods or to fit within the service-oriented systems of valuation of the third sector produced by neoliberal policies, the question arises as to how community-based organizations can continue to contribute to the development of Toronto’s community-focused social infrastructure. Findings indicate that the main challenges facing these organizations fall within four key categories: top-down planning processes, inequitable acquisition processes, dependence on underutilized space and of course, financial barriers. By reviewing these findings in relation to the context in which these organizations are operating, five recommendations are made in regards to current and proposed methods of creating autonomous spaces for community-based organizations.
Open Access
The 15-Minute City in Toronto: Insights from Lefebvre and Fanon
(2021-08) Amin, Aaminah; Kipfer, Stefan
This major paper examines the spatial and political project of the 15-minute city by drawing on the insights of Henri Lefebvre and Frantz Fanon. This research paper interrogates the 15-minute city urban vision and explores the social and spatial implications of the model. This analysis explores the different contexts where this plan is being promoted, highlighting local dynamics of socio-spatial inequality, state policy, and expectations of social life in urban areas. It applies a conceptual framework that foregrounds the works of Henri Lefebvre and Frantz Fanon which offers insight into the ways that areas can be spatially organized into hierarchical relations and be impacted by racialized and gendered dynamics of everyday life. This paper also examines the 15-minute city in Toronto within existing popular planning discourses and in the context of neoliberal policies and dynamics of socio-spatial inequality. I am engaging in a contextual reading that looks particularly at the role of the state and everyday life in influencing spatial and social relations. The aim of this research is to challenge the underlying assumptions around desirable social life and urban space and to highlight the colonial, capitalist, and neoliberal dimensions of the 15-minute city.
Open Access
Searching for an Authentic Chinatown: Studentification, Intangible Heritage, and Contentious Space
(2021-08) Zheng, Jing Yi (Corals); Sotomayor, Luisa
Toronto’s Chinatown West is currently undergoing socio-spatial restructuring through intertwined processes of redevelopment, gentrification, and commercial change. In this Major Paper, I examine how the presence of urban universities are triggering much of this transformation. Building on recent global debates about universities and the role of students in neighborhood change, I unpack the effect of higher concentration of students on residential typologies and commercial change; and second, the politics of studentification in Chinatown West. Our findings indicate that vertical studentification occurs on both the residential and commercial boundaries of Chinatown. Similarly, an analysis of changes in the commercial orientation and employment patterns of Chinatown shows a move away from employment in retail and offices, into food services and part-time job opportunities catering to youth. Finally, we discuss how the growing intake of international students–particularly from China– in proximity to Chinatown creates new tensions and diverse reactions to neighbourhood change within the existing Chinese community. While some entrepreneurial community members, particularly those representing the business community are pro-growth, other long-term residents are concerned about the displacement caused by studentification and organize to contest new developments. The community responses from the long-term Chinese residents and other members of Chinese diaspora raise important questions on the future of Chinatown, who is Chinatown for, and how might a historically marginalized neighborhood be preserved in a rapidly growing city. The findings also highlight the interconnected nature between higher education institutions (HEIs) and their locality, and the volatility of student-focused neighborhoods to urban politics.
Open Access
Responses to gentrification, displacement, and the loss of low end of market (LEM) rental housing in the City of Toronto: From creating to contesting displaceability
(2021-08) Marshal, Richard; Sotomayor, Luisa
Government efforts to respond to the current crisis in housing affordability have centred on efforts to create new supply with comparatively little attention to preservation of existing affordable, or Low End of Market (LEM), rental housing in the private market. Decades of state policies that have prioritized developer and real estate interests over tenant rights and protections have facilitated various forms of gentrification resulting in widespread erosion of affordability and losses of LEM rental housing leading to displacement of low-income tenants. Efforts to measure and define these losses have been challenged by a lack of data but there is evidence that they are outstripping gains in housing affordability made by government housing strategies. This portfolio of work explores the loss of LEM housing and displacement in the City of Toronto including the ways in which these losses are occurring, the role of state policy in both facilitating and framing the responses to these losses, and efforts by the third sector to contest them. A key element of this exploration is the role of data in these responses. The first section of the portfolio is a review of state policy, both historical and current, and how they have shaped new forms of gentrification and displacement and what are the influences on policy preference formation in the area of housing supply. The role of data is considered in relation to understanding housing options available to the low-income renter, policy and program development and supporting advocacy for the preservation of affordable housing and efforts to contest displacement. The second section mixes both quantitative and qualitative methods to review how the loss of LEM housing is being tracked in the City of Toronto and how the impact of the related displacement is being responded to and contested. A collection of datasets documenting both physical and economic losses and displacement responses are presented and analyzed accompanied by case studies of three multi-tenant housing sites of displacement involving interviews with former tenants, advocates and agency staff involved. The implications of the findings on program and policy development and community practice to preserve affordable housing and contest displacement are discussed in this section’s conclusion. The final section outlines a project funded by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) Housing Supply Challenge to develop a data solution with the capacity to monitor the iv supply and location of LEM rental housing in urban areas that could inform and support preservation-based approaches to housing supply decisions.
Open Access
Settler Canada’s Trans Mountain Pipedreams: An Ideology Critique of Western Alienation
(2020-08-31) Thornley, Isaac; Kapoor, Ilan
Applying concepts from Žižekian and Lacanian psychoanalytic social theory to the case of the Trans Mountain Expansion (TMX) project, this paper offers an “ideology critique” of the environmental discourses surrounding the TMX. Chapter One argues for the applicability of psychoanalysis to social and political theory, and to environmental politics in particular (climate change, environmental justice, the politics of energy infrastructure). Chapter Two examines TMX discourse as a network of settler Canada’s social fantasies – namely, (a) “Western alienation” and the settler origin story of Buffalo, (b) “landlocked” Alberta oil and mythical markets in Asia Pacific (with the promise of total enjoyment), (c) the (sexual enjoyment of) scapegoating environmentalists and “foreign” threats, and (d) denial and disavowal of the climate change implications of tar sands development. My overall argument is that “Western alienation” serves as an origin story for Alberta’s extractive industries, one that configures resistance to pipeline development as a centuries-long attempt by “external entities” to hold back Alberta from realizing its autonomy and self-sufficiency. Ultimately, each of these social fantasies works in concert to disavow and conceal the antagonisms inherent to tar sands expansion and pipeline development (Canadian settler colonialism, fossil capitalism, and global climate change), serving to mobilize consent for the TMX.