A United Way report last week highlighted a problem in Toronto: our city鈥檚 poor are increasingly concentrated in crumbling highrise towers, mostly in the inner suburbs, wrote :
The report addresses a subject that National Film Board filmmaker-in-residence Katerina Cizek has been studying for two years, while making films on a digital, interactive project called Highrise. Her films allow viewers to click in and around apartment towers in Toronto and around the world to hear the stories of residents. In the wake of the United Way report, EYE WEEKLY checked in with Cizek to get her thoughts on the state of our concrete vertical suburbs, and the need to rejuvenate them.
Q: What are the 鈥淗ighrise鈥 films, in a nutshell?
A: The original idea was to do something in Toronto, as a city. Not City Hall, but Toronto; to see how documentary can be part of city building. I鈥檓 not someone who studies the city鈥擨鈥檓 not an urban planner, I鈥檓 not an architect鈥攁nd I had certain assumptions about the city. The city I live in鈥擳oronto鈥攂ut also the urban experience in general. I think we are, or at least I was, at fault in thinking of the city as something that kind of happens to you, rather than as something we create and we constantly reinvent.
I got really inspired by this phenomenal world-class research that鈥檚 happening in our city鈥攆rom David Hulchanski, ERA Architects and 91亚色鈥檚 鈥攏ot only to engage in the city I live in but to start rethinking how we understand the city all over the world. What 鈥渦rban鈥 entails is not what we typically think: it鈥檚 actually at the edges, at the periphery, in the suburbs where some of the most complex, diverse, interesting and highly problematic things are happening. We need to understand these things in order to be able to do something about them. 鈥淗ighrise鈥 is, quite simply, a multi-year, multimedia documentary exploring the human experience in 鈥渧ertical suburbs鈥 around the world.
The Global Suburbanisms project is led by Professor Roger Keil in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, director of the City Institute, and funded by the (SSHRC). The National Film Board is a partner in the project.
The rest of the interview is available on .
Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile鈥 91亚色鈥檚 daily e-bulletin