Foundational Research

Global Suburbanisms conducted foundational research in four areas. The MCRI’s three conceptual components – governance, land and infrastructure – were developed through workshops and state of the art literature reviews. It was our intention to broaden and deepen our understanding of these conceptual areas through a interdisciplinary, multi-linguistic, multi-experiential conversation among team members. The team leads for these projects were Pierre Hamel, Richard Harris and Pierre Filion respectively. Through this process, we developed a common language, approach and methodology, which aspired to be post-colonial and critical in the ways in which they described, explained and analyzed global suburbanisms. In addition, our Universal Benchmarking project produced fundamental data from large metropolitan areas across Canada, in order to quantify and map the spread of suburbanization in the country. This study, led by Markus Moos, provided a comprehensive image of these processes in Canada and produced a blueprint for similar studies in other countries and regions.

A1: Universal Benchmarking | A2: Governance | A3: Land | A4: Infrastructure