A new chapter
I have a very exciting announcement: I have been accepted into the Planning program at the Faculty of Environment and Urban Change at York University in Toronto. This will allow me to work towards professional designation as a Planner, as well as affords me the opportunity to refresh my thinking, learn from some of the best at the EUC and pursue a project close to my heart: The legacy of modernism in residential architecture. My working title is: Retrofitting Resilience: Mitigation and adaptation among the built morphologies of peripheral living.
The strands pulling me toward the Faculty of Environment and Urban Change (EUC) and its MES Planning program relate to sustainable development in terms of public health and climate change, policy, politics, and the potential for planning as my point of engagement. Covid-19 has profoundly changed social and political priorities globally in a crisis of public health that public figures such as Mark Carney say foreshadows climate change’s potential mortality. Climate change will, by mid-century, cause similar mortality as Covid-19, but this level will be tallied annually (Leyl, 2021). David Miller, former Mayor of Toronto sees cities producing 70% of Green House Gas emissions (Miller, 2020) while Heidelberg Professor of Public Health, Rainer Sauerborn (2021), suggests cities make up 70% of global GDP. Both recognize investment, policy and planning in cities as crucial. A recent City of Toronto mapping of the disease shows a correlation with Hulchanski’s mapping of the “Three Cities Within Toronto” (Hulchanski, 2010). Covid-19 deaths evidence tragic mistakes in policy, planning and politics, hitting vulnerable populations hard. This also points to where, in our city, climate change mitigation investment could be most important.
Pulling these strands together, my research interests seek leading urban policy and planning practices, concrete efforts to mitigate vulnerability to public health and climate change shocks, including extreme heatwaves. I am interested in strategies to retrofit the older areas of high-density developments in urban peripheries, those that house potentially vulnerable populations. Variables to research include: local socio-cultural and economic specificities; housing tenure (private, corporate, trusts, community land trusts, public); governance structures; architectural forms and microclimates in their environmental situation, potentials for fostering beneficial ecosystem services, alternative HVAC strategies.
My focus would be comparative, exploring leading practices and failures we see in the Jane and Finch or Parkdale neighbourhoods in Toronto, for instance, and elsewhere. The legacy of modernist mass housing, housing marginalized communities on the peripheries of wealthy urban areas would be the common thread. Where and how is engagement possible, what can be accomplished, affordable and scalable across the region? What are the practical implications for planning, policy and practice to support social inclusion, managing issues of gentrification? All efforts towards the achievement of sustainable development goals must take on issues of the social determinates of health and the significant challenges of social and environmental factors.
This winter of global pandemic has had me thinking about what constitutes meaningful public and academic engagement, and builds upon my Ph.D. research in urban water infrastructure and comparative political economy with the recently deceased Leo Panitch (in December 2020 from Covid-19), and is for me both a reboot and a renewal.
So, soon, I get to hit the books again! All suggestions of what else I should be reading are most welcome.
References
City of Toronto (2021). data for February 9, 2021 available at https://www.toronto.ca/home/covid-19/covid-19-latest-city-of-toronto-news/covid-19-status-of-cases-in-toronto/
Hulchanski, D. (2010). The Three Cities Within Toronto: Income Polarization Among Toronto’s Neighbourhoods, 1970-2005 Toronto: Cities Centre Press, University of Toronto. Available at http://www.urbancentre.utoronto.ca/pdfs/curp/tnrn/Three-Cities-Within-Toronto-2010-Final.pdf
Leyl, S. (2021). “Mark Carney: Climate crisis deaths 'will be worse than Covid'.” BBC News, Business, February 7, 2021. Available at
https://www.bbc.com/news/business-55944570?piano-modal).
Miller, David (2020). Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
Stapleton, J. and Kay, J. (2015). The Working Poor in the Toronto Region: Mapping working poverty in Canada’s richest city April 2015 ISBN 978-1-927906-07-1. Available at https://metcalffoundation.com/site/uploads/2015/04/WorkingPoorToronto2015Final.pdf
Sauerborn, R. (2021). “Bottom up meets top down: How urban citizens can reap health benefits from climate-friendly actions” Sustainable Megacities: Health, Risks, Resources - Part 3,Hosted by the German Center for Research and Innovation (DWIH) New York. Available through: https://www.dwih-newyork.org/en/event/sustainable-megacities-health-risks-resources/ (Recording forthcoming)
