We live in a world of expanding city regions. The Toronto and Waterloo region are prime examples of a global dynamic that involves tendencies of both intensified and sprawling urban form. As inner cities have once more become attractive to creative economic activities and residential use, the expansion of the suburban footprint into the region […]
Publications
Special Issue: Planetary Urbanization
A special issue on planetary urbanization featuring MCRI affiliated researchers is now available in Environment and Planning D: Society and Space. Drawing on discussions between urban scholars at the City Institute at York University and the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto, the special issues features papers from the Planetary Urbanization Workshop held […]
New Book Considers the City from its Periphery
Roger Keils' new book, Suburban Planet: Making the World Urban from the Outside In was recently featured in a yFile article: "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 […]
MCRI Researchers Publish Foundational Papers on Governance, Land and Infrastructure
GOVERNANCE Michael Ekers, Pierre Hamel & Roger Keil (2012). "Governing Suburbia: Modalities and Mechanisms of Suburban Governance." Regional Studies. 46:3, 405-422. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.658036 Abstract: This paper traces the major modalities of suburban governance through a review of the extant literature on the matter. Based on the existing debate on suburban governance it appears that three modalities […]
New Publications by MCRI Researchers
Moos, M., Mendez, P., McGuire, L., Wyly, E., Kramer, A., Walter-Joseph, R., Williamson, M. (2015) "More Continuity than Change? Re-evaluating the Contemporary Socio-economic and Housing Characteristics of Suburbs." Canadian Journal of Urban Research. Vol. 24, No. 2 http://cjur.uwinnipeg.ca/index.php/cjur/article/view/14 Abstract: Suburbs that developed in metropolitan Canada post-World War II have historically been depicted as homogeneous landscapes […]
MCRI research featured in "Inside Hanoi's Gated Communities"
MCRI researcher Lisa Drummond and a former postdoctoral fellow with the MCRI, Danielle Labbe, are quoted in the Guardian's "Inside Hanoi's gated communities: elite enclaves where even the air is cleaner." Lisa Drummond, an urban studies professor at York University in Toronto, has been studying Hanoi for decades. She says a “chasm has begun to […]
Sprawling segregation or compact integration? The challenge of the suburbs
New research from Kirk Brewer and Jill Grant examines patterns in the mix of uses and building unit densities in suburban developments over time. Their findings outline how market forces, conflicting regulations, demographic shifts, and local conditions may undermine efforts to transform suburban areas in ways that would make them more compact and integrated. Their […]
Two new articles explore suburbanism in Africa
The journal African Studies includes two new articles by researchers with the Global Suburbanism's project's Africa cluster. Chloe´ Buire's "The Dream and the Ordinary: An Ethnographic Investigation of Suburbanisation in Luanda" looks at how the social order of Angola's capital is reproduced as "individual dreams of home ownership meet top-down attempts to discipline urban behaviours." "New African […]
Danielle Labbé's new book looks at the changing outskirts of Hanoi
Danielle Labbé, formerly a post-doctoral fellow with the Global Suburbanisms project (and contributor to Suburban Constellations) has just published "Land Politics and Livelihoods on the Margins of Hanoi, 1920-2010," exploring how a rural village was absorbed into the city. From the publisher: Danielle Labbé considers a century of change to the settlement of Hòa Mục -- a […]
What Toronto Can Learn from Montpellier
You can now read A Metropole Among the Vineyards, the result of 11 students' work in the 2012 Critical Planning Workshop. The 100-page report looks at Montpellier, in the south of France, and considers what lessons can be learned when it comes to better planning Toronto's suburbs. As Ute Lehrer writes in her introduction: "With […]
