public transit Archives | Research & Innovation

New report shows 91��ɫ Region is a healthy and vital community

fmaquito — Fri, 07 Oct 2011 08:00:00 +0000

91��ɫ’s Knowledge Mobilization (KMb) Unit, in partnership with the 91��ɫ Region Community Foundation (YRCF), has released its first Living in 91��ɫ Region Vital Signs report.

Titled "Living in 91��ɫ Region: Our Community Check-up", the report presents context indicators for 12 issue areas and summarizes the opinions of more than 1,000 91��ɫ Region residents who attended focus groups and completed an online survey between March and June 2011. The project is part of a national initiative covering 22 Canadian communities.

The report provides baseline indicators and resident perceptions of how well the region's communities are faring in key quality of life areas such as learning, health, housing and the environment. It emphasizes the importance of connections in an area encompassing some 1,756 square kilometres of rural, forested and urban landscape and concludes that 91��ɫ Region is a healthy community.

“91��ɫ has been pleased to be part of this important project in 91��ɫ Region,” said Robert Haché, vice-president research & innovation at 91��ɫ. “This report will provide a baseline against which our knowledge mobilization and social innovation initiatives can be measured. We will now have the ability to describe the difference that research is making in the lives of our local communities.”

Staff from 91��ɫ's KMb Unit served on the project steering committee to support the strategic and operational objectives of the report. David Dewitt, former assistant vice-president research, served as the University's representative on the project's leadership council, which provided strategic oversight around the development, rollout and sustainability of the project. 91��ɫ alumna Marie Murnaghan (PhD '10) contributed to the project by seeking and analyzing data in the 12 indicator areas.

“This report, based on research and data as well as the experiences and voices of 91��ɫ Region residents, holds great potential in mobilizing action around the human services provision,” said Michael Johnny, 91��ɫ's knowledge mobilization manager. “The KMb Unit at 91��ɫ will continue to work with leaders and decision makers, using this report, to help support informed decision making on important issues to all residents of 91��ɫ Region.”

The report found that 91��ɫ Region residents have great pride in their communities, whether they are long-time residents or newcomers, but years of sustained growth – and the prospect of much more to come in the future – have created pressures in two key areas that require urgent attention.

The first area, subtitled Getting Around, highlights that infrastructure and services – and most importantly public transit – must keep pace with growth so people are able to move conveniently and efficiently within 91��ɫ Region and connect to neighbouring communities.

The second priority, subtitled Housing, asserts that there be more affordable choices and supports for people in emergency situations.

To these two priority issues the report adds a third that speaks of the need to build awareness and to better communicate 91��ɫ Region’s existing strengths. The issue, subtitled Navigating Existing Resources, highlights the importance of ensuring that people know what services and programs already exist in the region and how to access them.

The Living in 91��ɫ Region Vital Signs report is part of the Vital Signs national initiative comprised of annual community check-ups that are conducted by 22 community foundations across Canada to measure the vitality of communities. The project received funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation.

The full report can be downloaded from the �ɱ��ٱ�.��

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

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City Institute researcher Simon Black on urban youth and the federal election

fmaquito — Mon, 02 May 2011 08:00:00 +0000

Which party speaks for urban youth this federal election? Over the past few weeks, media commentators have pointed to two important trends, wrote Simon Black, a graduate student researcher at The City Institute at 91��ɫ, in the :

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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Two 91��ɫ Professors part of team creating art for St. Clair streetcar stops

fmaquito — Thu, 27 Jan 2011 10:00:00 +0000

From Yonge Street to Keele Street, 24 original artworks have been installed above the new streetcar shelters as part of Toronto’s St. Clair Avenue West Transit Improvement Project. Six of these installations – a quarter of the entire series – are the work of 91��ɫ artists.

This massive public art project had four separate calls for entries: two open and two invitational. In developing their proposals, artists were asked to be sensitive to the site, the location of the artwork elevated above grade and the fact that people would be viewing the works while moving past them as well as when they were stationary.

Submissions were categorized based on the media used to create the pieces: digital interlay protected by glass, specialty glass, perforated metal screen and mixed media. All the works share the same dimensions: 30 inches high and a monumental 40 feet long, made up of four 10-foot-long panels.

More than 350 entries were submitted by artists from across the Greater Toronto Area for the two open competitions. Two independent juries, each judging two competitions, selected the winning works.

“The quality of the artworks and their scale and siting are setting a new standard for transit art projects in Toronto,” said Rina Greer, the art consultant who coordinated the project with Catherine Williams for the City of Toronto.

Five 91��ɫ artists have transformed the streetscape with their unique creations.

Spadina Road features the first of two works contributed by Professor Judith Schwarz,��hair of the Department of Visual Arts. Her abstract piece Weather Sampler, made of mill-grade stainless steel sheets, is a playful representation of various kinds of weather experienced by Torontonians. Geometric shapes are organized and repeated to represent sunspots, heat rising from the pavement, overcast days, clouds moving overhead, sleet and rain.

Above: Weather Sampler by Judith Schwartz

One stop west at Tweedsmuir Avenue, commuters will encounter Professor Yam Lau’s Nearness and Distance – A Chinese Ruler. It’s a digitally printed interlay representing the traditional, but now obsolete, system of measurement that would have been used to build inspirational places like the Forbidden City in Beijing and the Great Wall of China. For Lau, systems of measurement are never simply abstract. They can embody a world that is both poetic and emotional.

Above: Nearness and Distance – A Chinese Ruler by Yam Lau decorates the Tweedsmuir Avenue stop

Moon Transit by 91��ɫ visual arts alumna (BFA ‘79) is found at Christie Street. The work is constructed of two layers of laminated tempered float glass with pigmented glass enamel accents. It depicts the phases of the moon in an arcing passage through drifting clouds. This upward view was inspired by the escarpment location of St. Clair Avenue, high on a ridge above downtown Toronto. A month of moons unfolds like successive frames of a film or a series of time-lapse photographs. The sequence is integrated into a gestural sky whose graphic conventions are drawn from historical engravings like those depicting early views of Toronto.

Above: Titled Moon Transit, this artwork can be found at Christie Street. It was created by 91��ɫ visual arts alumna Jeannie Thib

Schwarz’s second contribution, Origami Remix, is installed at Dufferin Street. It features organic shapes and patterns on a garden theme, rendered in stainless steel. The stylized profiles evoke flowers, petals, stamen, floating pollen and vines. These images expand and recur along a sinuous curve to suggest process and alteration over time. Repeated and remixed at a different scale, the shapes coalesce into designs suggestive of garden ornamentation, decorative fences and patterns that allude to retro linoleum, wallpaper and picnic oilcloth.

Above: Schwartz's Origami Remix can be seen at the Dufferin Street

Caledonia Road is the site of Sidewalk Tango by 91��ɫ alumna (MFA ’94). Nind’s digitally printed interlayer expresses the richness and cultural diversity of the street life along St. Clair West. The street’s ambience offers a cacophony of colours, odours and tactile experiences: baskets of fruits and vegetables, displays of shoes and clothing, pots overflowing with flowering plants, domestic paraphernalia of hardware and household supplies.

Above: 91��ɫ alumna Sarah Nind's Sidewalk Tango

Art / Work, by photographer (MFA ‘07), marks the stop at Silverthorne Avenue. Inspired by 1920s modernist art photography and film and the then-novel techniques of montage, collage and transitional dissolves, Art / Work draws on the archival record of construction on St. Clair Avenue in the twenties, as found in the Toronto Transit Commission files in the City of Toronto Archives. A long-time local resident, Ingelevics makes this history visible through images of labour and labourers from this earlier period.

Above: Art/Work by 91��ɫ alumnus, photograper Vid Ingelevics marks the stop at Silverthorne Avenue

The distance between Yonge Street and Keele Street is just over six kilometres. The public art installations at transit stops are the finishing touches on the dedicated right-of-way streetcar lane for the 512 St. Clair streetcar loop. As a special initiative, the TTC is offering a two-hour time-based transfer for Route 512 that allows passengers to get on and off the streetcar to enjoy the artworks as well as the shops and restaurants along the way.

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

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City Institute researchers say perceptions must shift for mixed-income neighbourhoods to work

fmaquito — Mon, 10 Jan 2011 10:00:00 +0000

If mixed-income neighbourhoods are to work, such as the one proposed for Lawrence Heights, there has to be a mental shift in the way people view renters, said a professor in 91��ɫ’s Faculty of Environmental Studies, wrote :

“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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"In-Between City" neighbourhoods face poor services and rough justice

fmaquito — Mon, 17 May 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Last week was not a good one to be living in the “in-between city”, the term urbanists use to describe areas wedged between the outer suburbs – with their sprawling residential neighbourhoods – and the downtown core of office towers, condos and cultural institutions, wrote Simon Black, a graduate student in the City Institute at 91��ɫ, in an :

In Toronto, the in-between city roughly corresponds to the postwar suburbs, or inner suburbs, that grew with the booming economy of the 1950s and ’60s. As urban researchers have observed, their highrises, diverse immigrant populations and lower-than-average incomes are the stuff of the inner city; but their bungalows, strip malls and wide roads are quintessentially suburban.

But all is not despair: the in-between city is a city of activists, concerned parents, urban entrepreneurs and young leaders. Independent media outlets like cover community issues and give young people a voice that they don’t have in the mainstream media.

Groups such as the Black Action Defence Committee are engaged in gang exit, youth employment and leadership development programs. Jane-Finch Action Against Poverty, the St. Alban’s Boys & Girls Club, and youth drop-in SPOTEND are all working around issues of social justice, effectively mitigating the marginalization experienced by their community.

Across Toronto, in neighbourhoods like Jane-Finch, hundreds of community organizations work tirelessly on issues of transit justice, tenant rights and food security, sometimes with the help of the city through initiatives like the Neighbourhood Action Plan and Youth Challenge Fund, and often on shoestring budgets.

Such efforts give residents of the in-between city hope. Hope that one day their lives will not include the drama of police raids, struggling schools, low wages and long commutes. Hope that governments at all levels will recognize the need for a comprehensive urban agenda that combats social exclusion and addresses the needs of the in-between city.

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

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Professor Roger Keil: Cutting Transit City could increase racialized poverty, social dislocation

fmaquito — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Economic spinoff arguments for transit can be complex, wrote NOW Magazine April 29 in a :

If people use their cars less, for example, they may have more cash to spend on clothes or theatre tickets, but there might be less work for those doing car and road repairs.

So if that’s the promise of building Transit City, what’s the flip side if we don’t complete it? More social dislocation in the suburbs and less equity in a city where poverty is racialized and located around the outer edges.

"We will have another generation growing up in poverty,” says Roger Keil, director of the City Institute at 91��ɫ. “The racialization of poverty is not a snapshot; it’s a slow and grinding film.”

. . .

Even if Smitherman plays the progressive card to get the plan back on the rails, says Keil, the genie is out of the bottle. “Public transit is under such a barrage of criticism right now that it may be difficult to defend Transit City in the mayoral election. This is an incredible position to be in.”

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

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