Professor Roger Keil, 91��ɫ Research Chair and former Director of the CITY Institute at 91��ɫ, has been very busy. He released his latest book, Suburban Planet: Making the World Urban from the Outside In, published by Polity (2017) in October 2017. The book was launched at a key international conference that Keil organized, “After Suburbia: Extended Urbanization and Life on the Planet’s Periphery,” held at 91��ɫ, October 19 to 21, and made possible by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) Connections Grant. The conference was the final event of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) “Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century,” also funded by SSHRC since 2010.

This book and conference will change the way people think of urbanization in years to come, noted South African suburban researcher and core contributor to Global Suburbanisms, Professor Robin Bloch, in introducing Keil’s closing keynote address. Keil’s work adds to a greater understanding of our suburban futures, as new forms of work, housing, mobility and governance, as well as how human/non-human nature relationships take shape.

Keil, a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies, holds a 91��ɫ Research Chair in Global Sub/Urban Studies in recognition of his research contributions to the field of urban and environmental research. His research examines suburbanization, a defining feature of the “urban century.”

Book considers the city from its periphery

Part of an Urban Futures Series produced by the publisher, Suburban Planet is a compelling response to 20th-century Marxist philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre’s demand not to give up urban theory as the city in its classical form disappears. This new book invites the reader to reconsider the city from its periphery. Keil argues that while the massive wave of present urbanization is often referred to as an “urban revolution,” most of this startling urban growth worldwide is happening at the margins of cities.

Suburban Planet: Making the World Urban from the Outside In by Roger Keil published by Polity. Cover image reproduced with permission of the publisher

“This book occupies itself with questions of urban growth that are better understood if we take into account tendencies towards urban expansion, decentralization and suburbanization,” Keil explains. “Suburban Planet is about the process that creates the global urban periphery – suburbanization – and the ways of life – suburbanisms – we encounter there,” Keil summarizes.

Suburbanization, according to Keil, is a global process and part of the extended urbanization of the planet. “The reality of life in the urban century is suburban: most of the earth’s future 10 billion inhabitants will not live in conventional cities but in suburban constellations of one kind or another,” Keil explains.

The book contains richly detailed examples from around the world. This includes the gated communities of elites, the squatter settlements of the poor, and many built forms and ways of life in-between.

Conference featured leading thinkers from across the globe

The related conference, “After Suburbia,” brought together leading scholars of suburbanization and suburbanisms with a global profile, including international experts directly associated with the multiyear Major Collaborative Research Initiative, and Toronto-based urban policy and planning professionals and practitioners. Keynote speakers included Solly Angel, New 91��ɫ, New 91��ɫ; Crystal Legacy, University of Melbourne, Australia; Roberto Luís Monte-Mór, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, Brazil; Jennifer Robinson and Fulong Wu, University College London, UK; in addition to Keil.

The conference had much to offer: Graduate students presented their own work in a pre-conference event. Art and performance pieces augmented the conference: Photography and data visualization work created by MCRI researchers Markus Moos and Robert Walter-Joseph University of Waterloo, Ute Lehrer, 91��ɫ were featured. This provided a glimpse into the past seven years of work in the field of suburban research.

As well, the Art Gallery of 91��ɫ presented a panel on ‘off-centred curating’ and the specificities of curatorial practices in suburbia. The gallery also hosted a reception, artists’ talk and tour of the fall exhibit “Migrating the Margins,” which featured the work by artists of immigrant families who grew up in the suburbs. 91��ɫ’s Department of Theatre also staged a reading of a play, set in suburbia: “Concord Floral.”

To learn more about Keil’s book, visit the . For more information about Keil, visit his .

To learn more about Research & Innovation at 91��ɫ, follow us at , watch the and see the .

By Megan Mueller, manager, research communications, Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation, 91��ɫ, muellerm@yorku.ca

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Every Wednesday throughout the month, Vari Hall Rotunda will play host to displays and demonstrations featuring the University’s faculty and graduate researchers. Drop by to learn what they are up to.

"Research Month provides an opportunity for the 91��ɫ community to share knowledge and ideas as we celebrate excellence in research and scholarship at the University,” said Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation. “We invite students, staff and faculty to drop by Vari Hall on Wednesdays in February to explore the many research projects and to learn more about the range of research activities at 91��ɫ.”

The Research Month index on 91��ɫ's Research website contains complete information about the researchers and research centres and institutes participating in the event.

Social sciences and humanities research – Feb. 1, from noon to 2pm.

Confirmed participants include:

• Assets Coming Together for Youth: Linking Research Policy and Action for Positive Youth Development
• Canadian Business Ethics Research Network
• The City Institute at 91��ɫ
• Professor , Department of Sociology, Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
• Professor  – Children as Peacemakers
• The Faculty of Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
• The Harriet Tubman Institute for Research on the Global Migration of African Peoples
• , Department of Humanities, Liberal Arts & Professional Studies
• The Robarts Centre for Canadian Studies
• The 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research
• 91��ɫ Centre for Education and Community

Science and engineering research – Wednesday, Feb. 8, from 10am to 2pm.

Confirmed participants include:

• – Professor , Department of Psychology, Faculty of Health
• The Faculty of Environmental Studies
• IRIS
• Four Grad students from Professor 's lab, Department of Chemistry, Faculty of Science & Engineering
• Professor , Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Engineering
• Professor , Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Engineering
• Professor Gunho Sohn, Department of Earth & Space Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering
• Professor , Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Faculty of Science & Engineering

Health research displays will be showcased Wednesday, Feb. 15, from 10am to 2pm, and fine and performing arts research will be featured Wednesday, Feb. 29, from 10am to 2pm. Check back often for more information by clicking here.

Want to participate?

Do you have completed works, prototypes, technology or works in progress that you could demonstrate? Do you have graduate or undergraduate students working with you who could assist and help talk about the work? If you have other ideas, VPRI would love to hear them.

Interested faculty members or research centres should contact Arielle Zomer in the Office of the Vice-President Research & Innovation at ext. 21069 or azomer@yorku.ca. Note that space is limited and allocated on a first-come, first-serve basis.

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Right: A cooperatively owned high-rise building in Halle has a market at its base with three identical abandoned buildings behind it. Photo by Josh Neubauer

This summer, 13 master’s students from 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies travelled to Berlin and Leipzig to participate in a graduate urban planning course, co-taught by a team of 91��ɫ faculty members under the directorship of environmental studies Professor Ute Lehrer and urban studies coordinator Douglas Young, as well as CITY postdoctoral fellow Will Poppe. The students learned first-hand how German planners are responding to large-scale population decline in urbanized areas.

“This workshop gave me the opportunity to go to Europe for the first time, and Berlin simply blew me away,” says Nishanthan Balasubramaniam, a student in the Masters of Environmental Studies (MES) Planning Program. “I learned a lot about German planning and culture. This course abroad was an unforgettable experience.”

From June 24 to July 9, the students spoke with urban researchers, local planners, activists and residents. Through these conversations, along with many hours of exploring Leipzig, Berlin and Halle-Neustadt on foot and by bike, and taking hundreds of photographs, the students pieced together a picture of how East German cities are working to adapt to their shrinking populations and socio-economic challenges, and what these changes have meant for the everyday lives of residents.

Left: 91��ɫ planning students consult a map of Halle-Neustadt with local planners. Photo by Josh Neubauer

The students learned that many of the biggest changes are taking place in neighbourhoods that are visibly similar to parts of Toronto – demolitions are taking place in the clusters of pre-fabricated apartment towers on the edges of the city. These communities, like Toronto’s high-rise neighbourhoods, are often stigmatized even though many of their residents are relatively content. MES planning student Gwen Potter says residents are concerned about the way their community has been targeted for demolition. “From our conversations with local residents, we heard about their deep pride in their community,” says Potter. 

Despite the challenges that population decline has created for residents and planners, it has also produced unexpected benefits in communities like Grünau. With fewer apartment blocks, there are now more open spaces, and the community is surrounded by lush meadows and forests. Throughout Leipzig, residents are making the best of the shrinking population by turning demolition sites into new green spaces. As they walked and biked through these neighbourhoods, the 91��ɫ planning students were struck by how differently plants and trees were integrated in the community than in Toronto’s manicured neighbourhoods. “I was introduced to a new way of discussing the urban landscape and the importance of urban ecology,” says MES planning student Christine Furtado, who sees the benefits of this practice.

For the students, the course provided an important international perspective where they learned about the contradictions of new developments at the periphery at the same time that population decline is occurring in the core city. With continued sprawl and decreasing populations, planners in many German cities now work with community members, property owners and developers to shape their urban spaces with a focus on quality rather than quantity. The students indicated they were inspired by the innovative approaches to community building that have emerged as a result of these collaborations and hope to carry these lessons into their future planning work in Canada.

Right: Population loss leaves room for an abundance of green space in Grünau, Leipzig. Photo by Josh Neubauer

During the course, the students also had the opportunity to learn about the challenges of suburban neighbourhoods and outlying tower districts all over the world. They observed a two-day conference on suburban governance organized as part of 91��ɫ’s Social Sciences & Humanities Research Council of Canada-funded major collaborative research initiative (MCRI) – Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land & Infrastructure in the 21st Century, which brought together international researchers studying suburbanization processes around the world. The direct link between the themes of the workshop and the conference were an essential component of the learning experience in Leipzig.

As Lehrer says, “This course had a different approach than your normal planning workshop because it was trying to make a regular course part of an international research project. This innovative teaching approach allows both students and researchers to learn from each other in ways that are not possible in a regular classroom. It was a huge success and we hope to replicate it by taking students to Montpellier, France, next year and to Shanghai in 2014.”

Left: Large apartment buildings being demolished in the Grünau neighbourhood in outer Leipzig. Photo by Josh Neubauer

The 91��ɫ students also shared findings and research interests with a group of Polish architecture and sociology students conducting their own analysis of the Leipzig-Grünau housing estate, which added another important international dimension.

The MES students are now producing a final report, aimed at planners and policy-makers in Toronto and the GTA, that will draw on their research in Germany to make recommendations for how Toronto’s tower neighbourhoods might be transformed.

This graduate course was a component of the Global Suburbanisms project based at 91��ɫ’s CITY Institute under the direction of Professor Roger Keil. The course was made possible with generous financial support of 91��ɫ International and the German Academic Exchange Service and benefited from institutional, academic and personal support of Professor Sigrun Kabisch and Professor Dieter Rink, as well as other colleagues from the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, a partner in 91��ɫ’s Global Suburbanisms project.

By 91��ɫ MES students Gwen Potter and Josh Neubauer, who travelled to Germany this summer

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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Polling suggests young people favour the Greens, Liberals and New Democrats: parties that have demonstrated some commitment — however limited — to urban issues in this campaign. A politically engaged youth is thus important for the civic and social health of our urban regions. But as comedian Rick Mercer has quipped, “as far as any political parties are concerned,” young people “might as well be dead.”

As any political scientist will tell you, in a pluralist liberal democracy, those who make the most noise — by voting, organizing, lobbying — are more likely to have their issues addressed by government. Pluralism implies many groups of relatively equal power jockeying for position and influence in political life.

We live, however, in a country of great social and economic inequality where money and power, two things youth lack, go a long way to securing an audience with the governing classes. Young people have power in numbers, but organizing and exercising that power around common interests is never easy. Through advocacy groups and party politics, seniors have flexed their political muscle this election, pushing the parties to address their immediate concerns, from home care to public pensions; youth have yet to flex theirs.

Urban youth have their own issues: environmental sustainability and the livability of cities are major concerns. The young are more frequent users of public transit and would benefit from a federal role in building the green transportation infrastructure our country so desperately needs. Funding for the arts and athletics are also a priority of urban youth, who recognize their value in facilitating creative expression and promoting social cohesion in the highly diverse landscapes of Canadian cities.

Then there are the myriad social problems facing many of today’s urban youth, problems the political parties have failed to highlight this campaign. For instance, in Toronto 40 per cent of black students do not graduate from high school. Drug-addicted youth in Vancouver’s downtown east side struggle to secure housing and access to services. Racialized youth face discrimination and outright racism in urban labour markets and in their contact with police and the criminal justice system. The young are disproportionately represented in the ranks of our cities’ precariously employed; those workers struggling to make ends meet working temporary, part-time or multiple jobs with low wages and few benefits. And there are the extremely high rates of poverty and incarceration of young aboriginal people in cities such as Winnipeg and Regina.

As in any federal system, politicians will squabble over whose jurisdiction these issues fall under. It’s time to move beyond these squabbles and recognize that urban youth, and our cities in general, would benefit from a strong federal urban presence and the development of a federally-led urban strategy. Stephen Harper explicitly opposes such a notion; he’s committed to a model of governance in which the feds do not “interfere” in the business of the provinces and municipalities.

But a top-down, one-size-fits-all approach from the feds is not desirable either. Municipal governments are best placed to evaluate the needs of local populations, including youth. Cities have been important drivers in the design and innovation of Canadian social services and social programs. Any federal urban strategy with a youth component should recognize this and respect the diversity of Canadian cities. For instance, a program to address street gangs (with gang-exit and gang-intervention initiatives) in a city such as Regina in which aboriginal youth are disproportionately involved in gang life will necessarily take a different form than programs in Montreal or Toronto.

In any progressive era of Canadian politics, the federal government has exercised its federal spending power to alter Canada’s approach to issues that were essentially within provincial jurisdiction. In the fields of education, welfare and health care, the feds have influenced provincial and municipal policies and program standards.

Beyond providing necessary funding to cash-strapped cities, a federal urban youth strategy could establish principles that govern access to programs and services without becoming excessively involved in their design and delivery. Pairing universal programs with targeted investments based on the social citizenship, social rights and democratic participation and engagement of young people is vital to building such a strategy.

But an urban youth strategy is not likely to emerge unless it is fought for and demanded by young people themselves. In urban centres across our country, many youth are active in civic life, but often in ways that don’t conform to the politics-as-usual of parties and elections. Other youth speak the language of distress and despair, with gunshots or requests for spare change on our city streets. Whatever the manifestation of their voice, politicians ignore urban youth at our cities’ peril.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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As with previous 91��ɫ Circle Lecture & Lunch events, organizers have planned a full day of inspiring lectures by some of the University’s leading thinkers. For full details, download a PDF of the 91��ɫ Circle schedule.

In her lecture, “The Bird Detective: Investigating the Private Lives of Birds”, 91��ɫ Professor Bridget Stutchbury (left), Canada Research Chair in Ecology and Conservation Biology, will explain why some birds readily divorce their partners, why females sneak out to have sex with neighbouring males and why some mothers sometimes desert their babies. Based on her book (2010), this lecture promises to raise the blinds on the secret lives of birds.

On a more serious note, Stutchbury will examine whether bird behaviour can help species adapt to the drastic changes humans are making to the environment. Since the 1980s, Stutchbury has studied the ecology and conservation of migratory songbirds. In addition to The Bird Detective, she is author of the book (2007) – a finalist for a Governor General’s Literary Award.

"The Interesting Life of Olaudah Equiano, the African, and the Abolition of the British Slave Trade" is the intriguing title of the presentation by 91��ɫ history Professor Paul Lovejoy (right), Canada Research Chair in African Diaspora History and director of the . In his lecture, Lovejoy will explore the pivotal role of Gustavus Vassa, better known by his African name, Olaudah Equiano (c. 1742-1797), in advancing the abolition of the British slave trade. Many scholars consider William Wilberforce (c. 1759-1833) and Thomas Clarkson (c. 1760-1846) to be the pioneers of the British abolitionist movement, but Lovejoy posits that it was Equiano who was the seminal influence in advocating the abolition of slavery and the emancipation of those in slavery.

Lovejoy is a member of the executive committee of the UNESCO “Slave Route” Project, co-edits African Economic History and Studies in the History of the African Diaspora – Documents (SHADD), and is research professor and associate fellow of the Wilberforce Institute for the Study of Slavery and Emancipation at the University of Hull in the United Kingdom.

Acclaimed Canadian poet and 91��ɫ Professor (left) will discuss her experiences as Canadian Athletes Now Fund’s first poet-in-residence during the 2010 Vancouver Olympic and Paralympic Games. In her lecture, which is aptly titled, "My Gold Medal Experience: Olympic Poetry", Uppal will describe how she celebrated with the Canadian athletes and their families by writing poetry about winter sports, the games, and the personalities and performances that captured a nation’s imagination.

How she designed and then “trained” for her position, how the athletes responded to daily poetry readings, and other initiatives she’s undertaken to bridge the sometimes separate worlds of sport and art, will all be addressed. In addition, Uppal will read a short selection of the some of the 50 poems written at the games and recently collected in the book Winter Sport: Poems (2010).

"A World of Suburbs? Finding the Heart of the Urban Century in the Periphery" with 91��ɫ environmental studies Professor Roger Keil (right) will offer 91��ɫ Circle members insights into urbanization. The 21st century has been heralded as an urban century. Indeed, urbanization is now the most tangible shared experience of humanity. Keil will explore what is behind the story of the "urban revolution". He will uncover an important and perhaps astonishing truth: Most urban dwellers now live in the periphery. From the squatter settlements of the Global South to the wealthy gated communities of North America, from the tower block peripheries of Europe or Canada to the newly sprawling cities of Asia, a common theme emerges: where cities grow, they grow at the margins.

Keil is the director of the City Institute at 91��ɫ and professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies. Among his publications are In-Between Infrastructure: Urban Connectivity in an Age of Vulnerability (2010) and The Global Cities Reader (2006). Keil’s current research is on global suburbanism and regional governance. He is the co-editor of the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research and a co-founder of the International Network for Urban Research and Action.

This free series includes two events annually – in the spring and fall each year – and provides opportunities for learning and networking in a relaxed environment.

Lecture & Lunch events are open to members of the 91��ɫ Circle and their guests, each of whom are offered a complimentary lunch sourced from 91��ɫ Region as part of the day.

The 91��ɫ Circle receives generous support from 91��ɫ's Alumni Office (program partner) and the Toronto Community News and Metroland Media Group 91��ɫ Region (print media sponsors).

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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The dialogue sparked by the leaders mystifies 91��ɫ City Institute director Roger Keil, himself a newcomer from his native Germany in the 1990s. “I’m puzzled (that) the national debate in Central and Western Europe is a point of reference in Canada,” he said. “Those making the comments have a specific agenda. They’re right wing and are under various influences, some fascist.”

Citing France’s republic, Germany’s federation and Italy’s struggles to define itself during a wave of Tunisian immigration, Keil said Canada demonstrates vastly different policies and history.

Canada has the highest per-capita immigration rate in the world, driven by economic policy and family reunification. Multiculturalism in Canada was adopted as the official policy of former prime minister Pierre Trudeau’s government in the 1970s.

. . .

Our welcoming nature and immigration policies have created a critical mass of socio-ethno cultural groups, creating a mosaic of diversity that outweighs influences by camps and enclaves found in Europe, Dr. Keil said. “Europe has a different political spectrum,” he said. “They have outspoken nationalists pushed by fascist forces stirring up unrest. We don’t see those forces operating in 91��ɫ Region.”

Keil leads the SSHRC-funded Global Suburbanisms: Governance, Land and Infrastructure in the 21st Century project, which is the first major research project to take stock of worldwide suburban developments in a systematic way.

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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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 “Highrise” 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’m not someone who studies the city—I’m not an urban planner, I’m not an architect—and I had certain assumptions about the city. The city I live in—Toronto—but 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’s happening in our city—from David Hulchanski, ERA Architects and 91��ɫ’s —not only to engage in the city I live in but to start rethinking how we understand the city all over the world. What “urban” entails is not what we typically think: it’s 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. “Highrise” is, quite simply, a multi-year, multimedia documentary exploring the human experience in “vertical suburbs” 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– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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The panel, hosted by 91��ɫ’s (CCGES) and co-sponsored by the International Business Program of the Schulich School of Business, will feature Scott Paradise, VP marketing & business development, Magna International; Jim Stanford, economist for the Canadian Auto Workers Union and 91��ɫ political science Professor Greg Chin, author of and member of the 91��ɫ Centre for Asian Research.

Left: The Hyundai automobile assembly line

Panellists will focus on the state of the world’s automotive and light truck manufacturers in the wake of the global financial crisis: In the United States and Canada, governments stepped in to become majority owners of General Motors, while management of Chrysler was assumed by Italian-based automaker Fiat. In Europe, governments provided incentives to keep consumer demand up and the largest German car company, Volkswagen, began producing vehicles in North America for the first time since the 1970s. Mexico continues to increase its lead over Canada in terms of vehicle production. The same period saw China grow into the world’s largest auto market, with sales of 18 million vehicles, an increase of 32 per cent over 2009. The panel will explore these and other developments, and their ramifications for the global auto manufacturing sector.

Organized by CCGES affiliates Professor Roger Keil, director of 91��ɫ’s City Institute and Professor Emeritus of 91��ɫ’s Schulich School of Business, the series aims to shed light on major shifts in the auto industry and society’s relationship to it.

, director of CCGES, noted that the centre is well-positioned to look at this important theme from a variety of angles. “The importance of the automotive industry to the economies of the industrialized world can’t be overestimated, but it’s clearly a mistake to view this sector and its prospects in a monolithic way. The panel will consider the situation in a variety of regions and jurisdictions so that a useful overview of the current situation and future prospects emerges,” he said.

The event will run from 4:30 to 6:30pm on the seventh floor of the 91��ɫ Research Tower, Keele campus.

A full report on the first panel in the series is available . Panels are open to the public. Attendees are asked to register in advance at ccges@yorku.ca. For more information, visit the website or phone ext. 40003.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin

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Take a glimpse into someone’s life that is otherwise invisible to most, wrote in a story about the groundbreaking, web-based work Out My Window, by the National Film Board of Canada, that offers glimpses of lives within housing developments:

Zanillya Maria Farrell is a musician and the daughter of the recently deceased singer Bobby Farrell of the disco group Boney M. Many would label her part of the huge, immigrant community in a southeast corner of Amsterdam and stop there. But her story, although unique, symbolizes the dramatic changes happening in cities around the world.In the groundbreaking, Web-based work Out My Window by the National Film Board of Canada, Farrell’s story is one of 13 offering glimpses of lives within otherwise anonymous housing developments.

. . .

[Director Katerina] Cizek and [NFB producer Gerry] Flahive are also collaborating with academic research on how cities are changing, such as the multiyear at 91��ɫ’s City Institute, which looks at how cities have inverted: The suburbs are now the lower-income peripheries and the inner city is the wealthier urban core.

Many people in this changing suburban periphery “don’t have cars. They’re not stereotypically suburban. ... They are invisible, to some extent politically invisible. But they are also physically invisible because they are not living in Chinatown or Little Italy. They are living in these anonymous high-rise blocks,” Flahive says.

“And that’s a really good place for documentaries,” he adds. “The overall Highrise project is not about architecture and urban planning. Primarily, it’s about how people live. The attempt is to peel back some of those stereotypes.”

The individual segments for Out My Window were made by local photographers and crews, with Cizek often directing the segments from thousands of kilometres away in Toronto via Skype, e-mails and phone calls.

Yet, for all of its emphasis on technology, Cizek and Flahive are actually going for something far older: A non-linear way of telling the story of people’s lives in the lower-income high-rises, doing so in the way people in the real world perceive things, in small dollops of information, rather than regular, documentary-length stories.

The Global Suburbanisms Project is led by Professor Roger Keil in the Faculty of Environmental Studies and funded by the (SSHRC).

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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“You can’t tell people the way to go is to own property,” said Roger Keil, who is also director of the University’s City Institute. “The attitude has to change. We have to move away from the thought that rental housing is for lower-class people.”

With a large revitalization project such as Lawrence Heights, Keil said the key thing to keep in mind is how to balance needs and wants.

“The housing area is dilapidated,” he said. “The need part is putting in new windows, making upgrades, but also for landlords to treat residents in housing better. Toronto has an official plan and wants to make it a denser city. The problem is the want part. Other interests that want housing in that area really drive the process. With Regent Park, the whole place was torn down to create change in population and change in those areas. They tear the place down, kick inhabitants out, and when shiny new buildings are built, as far as the old residents go, either the rent is too high or they feel uncomfortable living there now with the new population and new class structure. This is a given. We know this is going to happen.”

Keil noted several ways to “soften the blow” to help ensure mixed-income neighbourhoods would succeed, including a guaranteed quota of low-income housing, rental attitude changes and creation of social institutions within those communities. “The question is how to manage it and not make it into a catastrophe,” he said. “Housing is a tiny aspect. We need schools, community centres, religious institutions that support the community there so we don’t ghettoize them in the new housing. Mobility is a major issue. It needs to be built into the renovation project and that’s why things like Transit City are so important.”

Ute Lehrer, professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies and member of the City Institute, said the reason why not all residents return is mainly due to cost. “To relocate costs money,” she said. “People can’t really afford relocation twice. Then there is the issue of social networks with their kids. You have to take them out of their old school, put them in a new one, and if you move back, put them back in the old school. Employment situations might have changed. They might feel uncomfortable in their new environment, rubbing shoulders with people who they have very little in common with. There needs to be subsidies and guaranteed rental space, which needs to be implemented and politically supported.”

The Global Suburbanisms Project is funded by the (SSHRC).

Posted by Elizabeth Monier-Williams, research communications officer, with files courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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