Saturday October 21
12:45pm - 2:00pm
Room 136, FES Lounge, Health, Nursing & Environmental Studies Building
Reports of the death of suburbs have been greatly exaggerated. Worldwide, the urban periphery of the 21st century is becoming home to more and more people, providing new sites for economic activity and revealing new forms of everyday life. This exhibit brings together various research projects and teaching experiences of the Global Suburbs project. Through interactive installation and photographs, vivid and stunning visuals depict the complexities of suburbanisms today.
Graphic by Markus Moos & Robert Walter-Joseph
Drawing on work from Markus Moos and Robert Walter-Joseph’s recently edited volume Still Detached and Subdivided? Suburban Ways of Living in 21st Century North America (Jovis), which offers an accessible yet rigorous account of “suburbanisms” as particular ways of living, this work demonstrates that aspects of this lifestyle occur simultaneously in urban and suburban places. Visual impressions of urban infrastructure, taken by undergraduate students from York University who explored suburban areas in Canadian cities (Montreal, Toronto, Waterloo, Winnipeg, Vancouver) under the directorship of Roger Keil and Ute Lehrer, are displayed alongside photographs taken by graduate students who participated in international planning workshops on Global Suburbanisms (Leipzig, Germany; Montpellier, France; Shanghai, China; and Johannesburg, South Africa.) A visual essay with aerial photography, which is part of the forthcoming book The Suburban Land Question , co-edited by Richard Harris and Ute Lehrer (UTP), explores similarities and differences of urban forms at the periphery.
Ute Lehrer is a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Studies at York University. She has been involved in comparative urban research on Zurich, Frankfurt, Berlin, New York, Los Angeles and Toronto, investigating new urban forms, the land question, processes of spectacularization, megaprojects, gentrification and condominium development.
Markus Moos is Associate Professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. His research is on changing housing markets, suburbanisms, youthification, generational change, and the economy and social structures of cities.
Robert Walter-Joseph has several years of experience in social and economic research and policy development in the public and academic sectors. His work has been featured in a number of publications including the Huffington Post, City Lab, and Curbed New York, and the Ontario Planning Journal .
Montpellier, France photo: Ute Lehrer
