urban planning Archives | Research & Innovation

91��ɫ MES students explore shrinking cities in Germany

fmaquito — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 08:00:00 +0000

What do urban planners do when cities are shrinking, not growing? This is hard to imagine in a city like Toronto, where real estate is at a premium and construction cranes are a constant feature of the skyline. However, many German cities have been steadily shrinking in population size over the last three decades, resulting in thousands of empty buildings and an increase in demolitions rather than construction projects.

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.

The post 91��ɫ MES students explore shrinking cities in Germany appeared first on Research & Innovation.

City Institute grad student Simon Black on cultural funding and long-term urban planning

fmaquito — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 10:00:00 +0000

Rappers Kardinal Offishall and Saukrates, singer Jully Black, video director Lil’ X and deejay collective Baby Blue Soundcrew may not be familiar names to Torontonians over the age of 40, but anyone born after 1969 who loves hip hop and R & B is aware of these artists’ foundational roles in Canada’s urban music culture, wrote 91��ɫ graduate student Simon Black, a researcher at the City Institute at 91��ɫ, in an op-ed for the :

Beyond their shared talents, what these names have in common is a little-known initiative of Ontario’s [former] NDP government: a program called Fresh Arts. Fresh Arts was developed under the umbrella of JobsOntario Youth, part of the larger JobsOntario training and employment program the NDP government introduced to address the labour market fallout of the early ’90s recession.

The spirit of the now legendary program lives on in the Remix Project, a community arts hub that provides space for Toronto’s new generation of urban artists to flourish. Remix participants come primarily from the city’s priority neighbourhoods.

Remix’s funding is neither stable nor predictable, which makes long-term planning difficult.

Indeed, as policy wonks trumpet the idea of the “creative city” and the economic benefits of a vibrant cultural sector, it’s confounding why projects like Remix should have to struggle for every dollar. The city and the province must do more to support such proven successes.

Yet visions of what we can achieve collectively through government are threatened by promises of cutbacks and tax savings. As the latest city budget demonstrated, cuts to services are the order of the day, with our new mayor promising more in the near future.

This is short-sighted. Fresh Arts demonstrated the potential of community-driven programs partnering with government to improve the lives of the city’s marginalized youth. Remix is now doing the same.

Programs like these are not part of a “gravy train.” As the success of Fresh Arts and Remix graduates demonstrates, they are smart social investments that benefit us all.

Moreover, they are central to building a strong, socially inclusive city that is creative, prosperous and just.

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

The post City Institute grad student Simon Black on cultural funding and long-term urban planning appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professor Mark Winfield: GTA's urban growth raises important questions

fmaquito — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 10:00:00 +0000

91��ɫ environmental studies Professor Mark Winfield of the Faculty of Environmental Studies, who sits on a provincial smart growth advisory panel and studies urban sustainability, said the Star’s analysis – the first of its kind – raises important questions about how the 2006 Places to Grow plan is playing out, Jan. 15, in a story about growth plans recently unveiled by the GTA’s four regions and 25 municipalities, and Ontario’s Places to Grow scheme to curb urban sprawl:

“On the surface, (the plan) may have given municipalities too much flexibility and enabled some of them to deviate less from the traditional path than the plan sought to and they needed to,” said Winfield. “You’ve got some strong responses in places like Markham. Toronto itself has stepped up. But in other places the response is somewhat weaker,” he said, after poring over the Star’s numbers. “Mississauga is quite striking. You clearly have leaders thinking in a more ambitious and creative way, and you have others who are basically wedded to the sprawl model and trying to respond to the province within that framework.”

Brampton, Winfield points out, pre-empted the growth plan by designating the entire area inside its city limits for urban expansion – including vast stretches of farmland – so it wouldn’t have to justify allowing new growth outside what’s termed the “urban boundary.”

Winfield said the province still needs to do a deeper analysis that looks at what’s happening across the GTA: not just the densities being planned, but also the population allocations and the kind of communities being planned.

He says it’s time to assess the impact of the province’s massive interventions in regional planning, including creating the Greenbelt – which made a huge swath a no-go zone for developers – and Places to Grow, which oversees what’s left.

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

The post Professor Mark Winfield: GTA's urban growth raises important questions appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Professor Carl James on breaking the cycle of violence in Toronto's Flemingdon Park neighbourhood

fmaquito — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 08:00:00 +0000

The slayings in Flemingdon Park this summer have brought a shadow of violence back to a community where, on the surface, it appeared to have lifted, :

Flemingdon Park is one of Toronto’s “priority” areas. Census data from 2001 showed that 71 per cent of the 22,000 residents were immigrants, and 34 per cent lived below the poverty line. The average family lived on less than $45,000 a year.

. . .

Since 2009, the city has spent $1.5-million to create parks and playgrounds in the neighbourhood. But right now, Flemingdon doesn’t have a bank and its only grocery store is scheduled to open in the fall.

. . .

To help with safety concerns, Toronto Community Housing installed 120 security cameras in Flemingdon Park in 2006, at a cost of close to $1 million. Many cameras have been vandalized, rendering 22 inoperable.

None of these initiatives are likely to break the cycle of violence, according to , a sociology professor in 91��ɫ’s and director of the 91��ɫ Centre for Education & Community. The way to get through to Flemingdon’s most vulnerable – its youth – is to provide them with opportunities and hope, including better access to education and jobs.

The complete article is .

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

The post Professor Carl James on breaking the cycle of violence in Toronto's Flemingdon Park neighbourhood appeared first on Research & Innovation.

Panel to highlight two suburbia research projects based in 91��ɫ Region

fmaquito — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:00:00 +0000

A lunchtime panel featuring presentations by 91��ɫ researchers and urban planning professionals will wrap up two recent research projects tomorrow – "In-Between Infrastructure: Urban Connectivity in an Age of Vulnerability", based out of the City Institute at 91��ɫ (City), and geography Professor Lucia Lo's "Infrastructure in 91��ɫ Region: A GIS Analysis of Human Services".

The panel discussion, "Suburbia in Transition: Infrastructure and Planning in Toronto's In-Between City", will take place Thursday, March 25, from 12:30 to 2pm in the 7th Floor Lounge of the 91��ɫ Research Tower, Keele campus.

Suburbia, long a feature of Canadian urbanization, has begun to change face. One of the pervasive features of the new suburbia has been its growing diversity in ethnocultural and socio-economic terms. Part of the challenge of coming to terms with this growing diversity has been the provision of hard and soft, technical and social infrastructures in a rapidly expanding region.

Between 2006 and 2010, 91��ɫ held two grants under their Peer Reviewed Research Studies program to study these challenges with specific reference to the suburbs of Toronto. At the same time, suburban communities such as Vaughan have begun to reassess their future development and have developed ambitious new official plan documents. This panel of researchers and planners will examine the pressing problems and emerging solutions in the new suburban infrastructural landscape and report back on recent research findings.

"In-Between Infrastructure: "Infrastructure in 91��ɫ Region: A GIS Analysis of Human Services" was funded by Infrastructure Canada and Citizenship and Immigration Canada.

"In-Between Infrastructure: Urban Connectivity in an Age of Vulnerability" was a three-year research project funded in large part by Infrastructure Canada with a contribution from Toronto Community Housing. It explored the infrastructure in what is called the "in-between city", the part of the urban region that is perceived as not quite traditional city and not quite traditional suburb. As a concept, the in-between city explodes the myth of the city and country divide, and opens new ways of understanding infrastructure needs in a globalizing Canadian urban region. A key goal of this research project was to explore the connectivity between different scales through the lens of urban infrastructure.

The project addressed whether it is possible to design a system of social and cultural infrastructure that has everything a community needs and meets global needs as well, and what the impact of economically driven decisions of hard infrastructure is on communities. The geographical area that was the subject of this project lies partly in the City of Toronto and partly in the City of Vaughan.

Another team of 91��ɫ-led experts investigating the availability of infrastructure and services to recent immigrants, low income residents and seniors in 91��ɫ Region is finding that funding for services is not keeping pace with growth in the area. "Infrastructure in 91��ɫ Region: A GIS Analysis of Human Services" was funded by Infrastructure Canada & Citizenship and Immigration Canada. The findings of the project have implications for suburbs across Canada, according to principal investigator Lo. The 91��ɫ infrastructure project has catalogued services and surveyed residents of 91��ɫ Region over a two-year period to determine where the most vulnerable populations lie and to identify gaps in services.

Preliminary findings suggest a divide between the northern and southern areas of 91��ɫ Region, whereby rural areas are paradoxically better served on a per capita basis than the more urban south, but find services less accessible due to existing transit infrastructure. Similarly, better educated residents are more able to find and avail themselves of existing services, creating an environment where the most in need are the least served.

“There is a traditional belief among politicians and others that people who move to the outer suburbs, to those big houses, that they are fine,” said Lo. “That is a kind of myth. Given the want [by politicians] for urban intensification, a lot of the resources are being poured in to the traditional city.”

Situated north of Toronto, 91��ɫ Region is an archetypal suburban area where the population increased from 169,000 in 1971 to 886,575 in 2006 and is estimated to grow to 1,280,000 by 2026. Immigration propels this growth and seniors and low-income households are growing proportions of the population. The project addresses the infrastructure needs that have arisen during the region’s rapid transition from a low-density, ethnically and socially homogeneous suburban region to a diverse, rapidly intensifying suburb.

, CITY director and principal investigator of the "In-Between Infrastructure" project, will chair a panel with fellow project researchers 91��ɫ geography Professor Patricia Wood, 91��ɫ social science Professor Douglas Young and John Saunders, a resident faculty member of the CITY and the project's research coordinator. Other panellists include, Leigh McGrath of Urban Strategies Inc., who will present on the firm's recent work on the Vaughan Official Plan, and Lo, chair of 91��ɫ's Department of Geography, who will address some of the results of the "Infrastructure in 91��ɫ Region" project.

Saunders, who teaches in 91��ɫ's Department of Geography and the Urban Studies Program, will talk about "The Landscape of Citizenship in the In-between City: Downsview Park, Toronto".

Wood will discuss "Residents' Vulnerability and Resilience in an Anti-Residential Landscape". Her research focuses on diversity, identity politics and citizenship, particularly in cities. She does both contemporary and historical work in Canada, the United States and Ireland, and conducts research primarily with immigrant groups and indigenous peoples, with an emphasis on participatory, collaborative research practices. She is the author of Nationalism from the Margins: Italians in Alberta and British Columbia (McGill-Queen's University Press, 2002) and co-author of Citizenship & Identity (Sage Publications, 1999).

Young will talk about "Planning Challenges in the In-Between City". He has worked as an architect, municipal planner and developer of non-profit housing cooperatives and is co-author of a book on urban politics, Changing Toronto: Governing Urban Neoliberalism, (University of Toronto Press, 2009) and co-editor of the forthcoming book, In-between Infrastructure: Urban Connectivity in an Age of Vulnerability.

McGrath will look at "Social Services, Land Use Planning and Vaughan's New Official Plan". Her professional work has included a breadth of projects from implementing elements of Ontario's Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe to research and development of an Environmental Master Plan for the City of Red Deer, Alta. McGrath is a member of the Urban Strategies Vaughan Official Plan team, a project underway since 2007 that is expected to be completed later this year.

Lo will discuss "Vulnerability and Human Service Provisions in 91��ɫ Region". She is the former economics domain leader of the Centre of Excellence for Research on Immigration & Settlement (CERIS), now known as CERIS - The Ontario Metropolis Centre, and the transportation and commerce research thrust leader, as well as a member of the Research Management Committee of Geomatics for Informed Decision Making, a Canada network centre of excellence. Her current research interests include vulnerability in the suburbs and human service provision; immigration and banking; recession and return migration; and entrepreneurship in mid-size cities.

Refreshments will be served. Everyone is welcome.

For more information, visit the CITY Web site.

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

The post Panel to highlight two suburbia research projects based in 91��ɫ Region appeared first on Research & Innovation.