Urban Studies

Students from U of T and India’s Ashoka University explore urban challenges in Pune

Christopher.Sorensen — Thu, 28 Nov 2024 14:20:19 +0000

Students from U of T and India’s Ashoka University explore urban challenges in Pune

Christopher.Sorensen Thu, 11/28/2024 - 09:20

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Students from U of T and Ashoka University accompany waste pickers who belong to the SWaCH collective in Pune, India – part of a course offered through the U of T India Foundation and School of Cities India (photo courtesy of Reyansh Lokare)

Adam Elliott Segal

Topic

Global Lens

School of Cities

Entrepreneurship

Faculty of Arts & Science

Global

India

Innis College

Urban Studies

Subheadline

Undergraduate course in partnership with Ashoka University, near New Delhi, is one of many initiatives now facilitated by the U of T India Foundation

Samantha “Sam” Guevara says accompanying two waste pickers in Pune, India as they went about their daily work offered a window into the social dynamics of the city of more than seven million.

“What interested me was the stigmatization that waste pickers tend to receive from the general public juxtaposed with the pride they have in their work,” says Guevara, a fourth- year student at the University of Toronto who is pursuing a double major in human geography and political science.

The workers she joined belong to SWaCH Waste Pickers, a co-operative of self-employed waste collectors who are contributing to the region’s environmental and financial well-being.

Guevara, meanwhile, is one of nine students from U of T who, along with nine students from India’s Ashoka University, a private liberal arts institution near New Delhi, recently explored three city-building projects identified by Indian non-profit and civil society organizations as part of a U of T undergraduate course.

Students from U of T and Ashoka gather at the Centre for Development Studies and Activities in Pune for a lecture by a local consulting firm (photo courtesy of Reyansh Lokare)

Offered through the U of T India Foundation and School of Cities India, the International Multidisciplinary Urban Capstone Projects course also saw students join guides for walking tours in Mumbai, attend lectures and develop what Aditi Mehta, an assistant professor, teaching stream, in urban studies at Innis College, calls “critical consciousness.”

The course is one of numerous activities facilitated in recent months by the U of T India Foundation, a partnership between U of T and Tata Trusts. Others include: a pitch competition and incubation program with Social Alpha, an incubator for social impact startups, that saw U of T faculty members participate on the technical jury that helped select 10 winning India-based entrepreneurs; and research projects that bring together U of T faculty members and India-based partners to work on building more resilient and sustainable cities.

Kunjpreet Arora, co-founder and director of India-based brick and paver upcycling startup Angirus, delivers a presentation at a social launch event (photo courtesy of Jake Karpouzis)

For the students involved, Mehta says questioning “why things are the way they are” and understanding their place in the world is a crucial part of their education – and one of the many takeaways they will bring back to Toronto.

“It’s about seeing how things are done in the east and thinking about how we can bring some of this problem solving back to the west,” says Mehta, who accompanied the students to India.

Jake Karpouzis, a fourth-year student in public policy and urban studies, spent his time exploring how the makeshift parking lots and garbage dumps beneath city overpasses, or flyovers, in Pune can be transformed into more valuable spaces that better serve surrounding communities.

“We're putting together a blog of the trip so the various organizations involved can read about it and take those experiences back to the classroom,” says Karpouzis, adding that he was excited by the opportunity to gain first-hand experience in urban studies in another country.

Ashoka University students speak to a vegetable vendor under a flyover in Pune (photo courtesy of Jake Karpouzis)

Kaitlyn Chan, a fourth-year urban studies student, concentrated on transgender studies while in India.

“Our program focused on skill development for the transgender community in Pune,” Chan says. “That includes access to government interventions, employment opportunities, self-efficacy and creating safe spaces.”

Professor Mehta, who created much of the programming with the U of T India Foundation, says the course was often life-changing for U of T students.

“The Indian students were amazing. They really took it upon themselves to be hosts for the Canadian students and they just kept asking, ‘When can we come to Toronto?’,” she says, adding that she is working on a reciprocal learning exchange in both countries.

Karan Singh, a professor of computer science and the associate director of School of Cities India, sees the capstone course as an opportunity to further strengthen U of T’s global reputation.

“We’re looking at U of T as a global brand and in India that is increasingly evident,” he says.

Professor Aditi Mehta (second from left) with students from U of T and Ashoka University and SWaCH workers on the streets of Pune (photo courtesy of Reyansh Lokare)

Andrea Russell, director of international relations in U of T’s Office of the Vice-President, International, says she’s thrilled with how the experience resonated with U of T students.

“It’s a wonderful example of global collaboration and an amazing opportunity for our students to increase their global fluency.”

Can a ‘problem’ be a solution? U of T’s School of Cities rethinks Toronto’s aging apartment towers

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 05 Oct 2021 19:34:17 +0000

Can a ‘problem’ be a solution? U of T’s School of Cities rethinks Toronto’s aging apartment towers

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 10/05/2021 - 15:34

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U of T researchers are studying whether Toronto's aging concrete apartment towers, surrounded by green spaces, can play a role in addressing the city's future climate risks and socio-economic challenges (photo by Chris Jongkind/Getty Images)

Berton Woodward

Topic

City & Culture

Groundbreakers

Institutional Strategic Initiatives

School of Cities

Cities

Computer Science

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

U of T Scarborough

Urban Studies

In Toronto and other cities around the world, clusters of aging high-rise apartments surrounded by trees are a familiar fixture on the urban horizon.

Once touted as a haven of middle-class living, the “tower in the park” planning model was popular in the 1950s and 1960s but is increasingly viewed as anti-urban and an obstacle to further densification. At the same time, many of these concrete giants are falling into disrepair and increasingly house low-income and marginalized tenants.

Fadi Masoud

Yet, where many see a problem, the University of Toronto’s Fadi Masoud sees a potential solution.

The assistant professor of landscape architecture and urbanism at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture Landscape and Design says the buildings and, in particular, the surrounding open spaces may actually carry with them the seeds of urban resilience – a way to counter future climate risks as well as socio-economic stresses arising from income inequality and mental and physical health challenges.

“Green spaces – specifically trees and mature canopies – have the potential of alleviating an urban heat island effect, cleaning the air and reducing flooding,” says Masoud, noting that many of Toronto’s concrete apartment towers were placed amid green areas such as the Black Creek subwatershed in the city’s highly urbanized northwest region.

“But rarely do we consider these green spaces as critical infrastructure for dealing with climate change.”

The idea is being explored by Masoud and his interdisciplinary team through a project called “Towers in the Park: A Prospective for Equitable Resilience.” The project aims to evaluate the social and environmental value of public and private open-space assets – including parks surrounding Toronto’s apartment towers – as they relate to the city’s overall resilience goals. It will also explore the potential for integrating adaptation and mitigation strategies in the tower neighbourhoods.

It is just one of the innovative interdisciplinary research projects supported by U of T’s School of Cities. The school is part of the university’s Institutional Strategic Initiatives (ISI) program, designed to address complex global challenges by harnessing U of T’s top-quality academic talent across many fields of expertise. Each initiative brings together flexible, multidisciplinary teams of researchers and students from across faculties and campuses, as well as partners from industry, government and the community.

Karen Chapple

“I like to say that the School of Cities teaches the world why cities matter for prosperity, sustainability, justice and inclusion,” says Karen Chapple, the school’s new director. “Cities have the solutions to a lot of our issues, whether it's climate change or inequality or systemic racism. And cities can only be the solution, and the school can only teach the world, if we can draw from interdisciplinary research.

“That's why our status as an ISI is so important to us.”

The school, in fact, was a model for the ISI program. It was founded in 2018 as a way to bring together the university’s formidable resources to address the myriad challenges facing the world’s urban areas, where more than half the population now lives.

“Instead of the traditional approach, involving city planning and maybe some of the social sciences, the thinking was, ‘Why don’t we draw also from computer science, biology, ecology, history, English and all the wonderful things that the university has to offer?” says Chapple. “That has been our founding concept from the get-go.”

Case in point: Masoud’s team includes faculty from six other university departments on two campuses, including experts in landscape architecture and urban design, environmental science, civil engineering, geography, public health, social psychology and physics. The project was sparked by the City of Toronto’s resilience strategy in 2019 – which included renewal of the city’s aging apartment towers, as well as their surrounding greens spaces, as a key element.

“Often, it’s thought that further densification – turning these under-utilized and under-programmed green spaces into more buildings – is the best way to deal with tower communities,” Masoud says, adding that the city is also intent on seeing the towers retrofitted to improve their energy efficiency.

But he notes the nearly one million people who live in tower communities across the Greater Toronto Area risk being unable to afford the higher rental costs that would inevitably be passed on to them by landlords, leading to displacement, gentrification and less affordable housing.

“So, we started to say, ‘Well, if the retrofitting of the mechanical systems of the towers themselves might create issues, what about all the open space around them?” says Masoud. “Can we capitalize on the green and grey surfaces – the trees, the ravines, the public parks, the strip malls and plazas, which are the fabric of this city – in a way that would help alleviate some of the issues to make sure that these tower communities become more resilient?”

The team is holding conversations with community representatives to hear their views of how to improve apartment tower communities through a series of “knowledge exchange” events organized by the Centre for Connected Communities. Team members have been mapping the city to see the overlap between these vertical neighbourhoods, urban heat islands, local flooding and canopy cover. At the end of the project, the group will produce a report with recommendations to the city.

The research is conducted under a School of Cities Urban Challenge Grant, which is designed to tackle major issues in the field.

Chapple notes that, along with the Urban Challenge Grants, which have also covered such topics as supply chains, food sources and smart villages, the school holds global online seminars that have reached out to urban institutes in 162 countries. At U of T, it also brings together student researchers from across departments – both at the post-graduate level and for fourth-year projects that partner with community organizations in the Multidisciplinary Urban Capstone Project design course. The course is led by Mark Fox, a professor of industrial engineering in the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering and computer science in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

Danielle Kwan-Lafond

Urban studies student Randa Omar, sociology student Yi Li, international development studies and human geography student Rajpreet Sidhu and business student Tianyi Wang were among those who participated in a capstone project involving Indigenous public art during the 2020-21 academic year. It was supervised by Danielle Kwan-Lafond, an assistant professor, teaching stream, of sociology at U of T Scarborough who describes herself as mixed-race and a member of Toronto’s Indigenous community who does not self-identify as Indigenous.

As the project evolved, the students focused on examining the well-being of Indigenous artists within the arts industry and developing recommendations that non-Indigenous art organizations could implement to create supportive working environments and sustainable relationships with Indigenous artists. With funding from School of Cities, the students worked with Haudenosaune/Anishinaabe artist Lindsey Lickers and held a roundtable involving several other Indigenous artists and professionals.

“We started by going back to the basics that make up good working environments and relationships for Indigenous artists,” says Omar.

Li says she learned a lot about Indigenous history and culture.

“Some artists mentioned feeling tokenized – just used and never contacted again,” Li says. “It was almost like there was little interest in building relationships, which is an important part of their culture. It does a lot of damage to Indigenous artists. There's a lot of trauma.”

Sidhu adds that in cities, it’s important for everyone to be exposed to artwork that reflects Indigenous ways of knowing and of life. “If you’re walking in a park and it’s just statues of old colonial white men who have committed genocidal acts, as an Indigenous person you’re not going to feel comfortable,” she says. “And as a settler, you should be seeing Indigenous public art on Indigenous lands and begin to have a better understanding of your role and the space you occupy.”

Kwan-Lafond says the project reflected the diversity and community orientation that the School of Cities upholds, as well as its stress on interdisciplinarity. “It shouldn't be just designers and urban planners planning a city,” she says. “Sociologists have interesting things to say and so did our business student.

“We would have had very different conversations had we all come from one field.”

Chapple agrees, noting that the school has already had an impact on the hundreds of students it has brought together, as well as its global partners. “This kind of approach acknowledges that problems are wicked and complex, in cities in particular, so you need to have multidisciplinary teams to emerge and solve them.”

The same is true when it comes to re-imagining Toronto’s aging, concrete apartment towers as a potential answer to the city’s sustainability challenges.

“Without the School of Cities, we would not have been able to do this project,” says Masoud. “I would not have been able to meet other academics from across U of T and work with them collaboratively. The research would have been much harder to do.”

This article is part of the Groundbreakers series about U of T's Institutional Strategic Initiatives program - which seeks to make life-changing advancements in everything from infectious diseases to social justice - and the research community that's driving it.

Five startups to watch from U of T Engineering’s 2021 virtual Demo Day event

Christopher.Sorensen — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 21:10:06 +0000

Five startups to watch from U of T Engineering’s 2021 virtual Demo Day event

Christopher.Sorensen Tue, 09/28/2021 - 17:10

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Nightingale.ai, an AI-enabled platform that enables physiotherapists and their patients to connect remotely, is one of five startups that won prizes at The Entrepreneurship Hatchery's annual Demo Day event (photo courtesy of Nightingale.ai)

Tyler Irving

Topic

Our Community

Institute of Biomedical Engineering

Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Alumni

Artificial Intelligence

Cities

Computer Science

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship Hatchery

Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering

Faculty of Arts & Science

Geography and Planning

Hospital for Sick Children

Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing

Mathematics

Rotman Commerce

Rotman School of Management

Startups

University College

University Health Network

Urban Studies

UTIAS

From crowdsourcing new treatments for rare diseases to catalyzing the work of urban planners, five University of Toronto startups are one step closer to commercial viability after participating in The Entrepreneurship Hatchery’s virtual Demo Day 2021.

A total of 17 teams competed in the Hatchery’s NEST process, an experiential learning opportunity that instills and nurtures an entrepreneurial mindset in participating U of T students and faculty.

Over the summer, participants met potential co-founders, developed their business plans and connected with mentors who offered support in various areas, including market research, branding and securing intellectual property. The program culminated on Demo Day, with teams pitching their startup ideas to a panel of judges, including entrepreneurs and investors – some of whom are themselves former Hatchery participants.

The five winning teams will share $80,000 in seed funding, which will help take their companies through the next phase of their development.

“Hatchery Demo Day is my favourite way to kick off a new academic year,” says Chris Yip, dean of the Faculty of Applied Science & Engineering, where the Hatchery program is housed. “I’m always impressed by the creativity, the professionalism and the energy of these dynamic students, and I look forward to watching them grow in the years to come.

“On behalf of the faculty, congratulations to all the teams that participated this year, as well as to Joseph Orozco and his whole team at the Hatchery for making this possible.”

Here are this year’s winning teams:

Civvic – AI-enabled web platform for developers and urban planners

Civvic has designed a web-based platform to bring together all the diverse information required by urban panners in one place. (Image courtesy of Civvic)

Planning a new urban development is complex. It requires assembling information about the historical, social and economic attributes of a particular site or neighbourhood – plus liaising with a wide range of stakeholders. Civvic aims to streamline the research process by bringing all of this information together in a single platform.

“The process of getting ready for Demo Day has been one of the most challenging, yet rewarding, activities our team has faced,” says CEO Lewis Walker, a former University College student who recently graduated from U of T’s departments of human geography and planning and urban studies in the Faculty of Arts & Science.

“We realized that there’s often a gap in what we think is going on versus what is actually happening out in the field. Being willing to learn and able to pivot on the go has been critical for our team.”

Civvic plans to continue development of its online platform through the end of 2021 and is looking to hire new members for its team.

In addition to Walker, Civvic includes recent U of T graduates Michelle Zhang (urban studies, peace, conflict and justice, human geography); David de Paiva (urban studies, political science); Khaled Elemam (bioinformatics and computational biology); Patrick Thang (Rotman Commerce, Rotman School of Management); and master’s student Ian Hwang (geography and planning).

Fovea — Wearable sensors for people living with blindness

Using an array of 100 coin-sized vibrating motors, Fovea aims to translate visual information into tactile signals for people who are blind (image courtesy by Fovea)

Fovea aims to help people who are blind by translating visual information into tactile signals relayed via a wearable vest.

Embedded within the vest is an array of 100 coin-sized motors – each of which is capable of vibrating based on input from a wearable camera. The system can provide certain basic information upon entering a room, including the number of objects and roughly how far away they are from the user.

“We provide an alternative to photonic-based sight in order to allow blind people to neuro-spatially sense their surroundings, better orient themselves and become more independent,” says Alaa Shamandy, a machine learning researcher at University Health Network’s Peter Munk Cardiac Centre and a member of the Fovea team. “With our non-invasive technology, we are working towards a more accessible world.”

Shamandy says the team has developed a rudimentary prototype of the device. They will use the funding from The Hatchery to develop a second version and facilitate volunteer testing by individuals with blindness. They also plan to apply for pre-market approval from regulatory agencies such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Health Canada.

“The Hatchery has been extremely helpful throughout our development – from weekly pitching in front of distinguished mentors and investors to helping us perfect our business models and cash flows, and everything in between. We are in a much better place than when we started.”

In addition to Shamandy, Fovea includes: Sai Spandana Chintapalli, a PhD candidate in biomedical engineering at University of Pennsylvania; and Kevin Fan, an emergency resident physician at Aventura Hospital & Medical Center in Miami. The company is also looking at expanding its team in Toronto.

Nightingale AI — Improving physiotherapy with vision-based AI tools

Nightingale.ai connects physiotherapists and their patients remotely, leveraging vision-based AI to analyze patient progress. The goal is to lower the cost of providing physiotherapy while enhancing outcomes, both in the near and long term. (Photo courtesy of Nightingale.ai)

Nightingale.ai is an online platform that can be used by physiotherapists and their patients who are rehabilitating following knee or hip replacement surgeries. It uses vision-based artificial intelligence to detect and analyze the same kinds of parameters that physiotherapists look for during in-person visits, including how the surgical incision looks, how the patient is walking and how a new joint is moving.

Using this information, the platform can recommend a treatment plan or schedule in-person appointments as needed. By facilitating more frequent interaction and a better exchange between physiotherapists and their patients, Nightingale.ai can improve outcomes while lowering the cost of care. It also provides rich data on recovery outcomes that can be used to further optimize care for future patients.

“As a group of clinicians, engineers and researchers who have worked in the physiotherapy field for many years, we are very familiar with the problems encountered by both patients and providers during the rehabilitation journey,” says Sameer Chunara, CEO of Nightingale.ai and an advanced practice physiotherapist and owner of a community clinic in Toronto.

“We have been surrounded by a team of advisers who have helped us focus on what is really important at this stage.”

The team plans to use the funding they received to augment their core team of engineers and continue developing and testing their platform. They hope to have a beta version in the next six months.

In addition to Chunara, Nightingale.ai includes: Donovan Cooper, manager of site operations at Altum Health; Assistant Professor Charlene Chu (Lawrence S. Bloomberg Faculty of Nursing); Meng-Fen Tsai (biomedical engineering PhD candidate), and Chao Bian (biomedical engineering PhD candidate).

ParkinSense – Medical monitoring system for people living with Parkinson’s disease

ParkinSense is a medical monitoring system that uses wearables to provide detailed, real-time data on the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. It can be used to objectively determine the effectiveness of treatment. (Image courtesy of ParkinSense)

Parkinson’s disease is a neurological disorder that affects more than 100,000 people in Canada. One common symptom of the condition is a tremor, an involuntary quivering movement or shaking of the hand, leg or foot.

ParkinSense is creating a monitoring system that can provide continuous, real-time data about tremors that can expedite the treatment of Parkinson’s patients by enabling more effective interactions with physicians. It also provides a mobile application that can remind patients when it’s time to take their medications, as well as to track the effectiveness of those medications over time.

“Having like-minded, passionate people who wanted to see us succeed made the start of our journey very meaningful to us,” says Carolina Gorodetsky, a pediatric neurologist and movement disorder specialist at the Hospital for Sick Children. “The funding will help out with our prototyping and volunteer testing plans so that we can refine our product and launch it in the near future.”

In addition to Gorodetsky, ParkinSense also includes Akshata Puranik (a master’s student at the U of T Institute for Aerospace Studies) and Christopher Lucasius (a PhD candidate in electrical and computer engineering).

Varient — Crowdsourcing treatment efficacy data for rare diseases

People suffering from rare diseases may resort to off-label use of existing drugs in a search for an effective treatment. However, this is often done in an undocumented way, meaning resulting data on whether or not the treatment is actually effective gets lost.

Varient aims to change this through crowdsourcing. The team has built an online platform that can collect and aggregate de-identified data on treatment effectiveness from groups of people who are all living with the same rare genetic condition or disease. The goal is to take the guesswork out of the process, pointing the way toward drugs that are most likely to be effective.

“Typically, rare-disease patients rely on word-of-mouth avenues to learn about helpful off-label medicines,” says Katheron Intson, a PhD candidate in pharmacology and toxicology at the Temerty Faculty of Medicine. “We can quantify the success of tried treatments and become a dynamic information provider to these populations.”

The team plans to use the funding to do comprehensive testing of their alpha product, with a goal of launching in 2022. Intson says the Hatchery provided a valuable bridge between technology and business.

“I’ve been a scientist for my entire professional life, and the rest of my team are software developers,” she says. “The business aspect of starting a company was a real blind spot to us. The Hatchery provided us with guidelines that helped us redefine where we focused our energy and effort.”

In addition to Intson, Varient includes: Chen Zong Lu (computer science); Zuoqi Wang (computer science); Jingyi Sun (computer science), Shukui Chen (applied mathematics); Yexiong Xu (computer science); and Siyang Liu (computer science).

Urban studies course forges bond between students and seniors during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 08 Jan 2021 15:14:51 +0000

Urban studies course forges bond between students and seniors during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 01/08/2021 - 10:14

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In response to COVID-19, Aditi Mehta, an assistant professor of urban studies, paired students with seniors over Zoom for her qualitative methods course – prompting friendships to blossom during a difficult time (photo courtesy of Aditi Mehta)

Topic

Faculty of Arts & Science

History

Innis College

Undergraduate Students

Urban Studies

In one of her recent classes, Hannah Curtis did something unexpected in a time of physical distancing: she made a new friend with someone who is more than five decades her senior.

The University of Toronto fourth-year student got to know Bill Bartlett, a resident of True Davidson Acres long-term care home, via Skype. In wide-ranging video calls that often lasted over an hour, Curtis learned about the danger and stigma Bartlett and his friends faced as gay men in Toronto during the 1970s and later during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

The unlikely friendship blossomed after the two were paired for an oral history research project, part of the seminar course INI342H1 taught by Aditi Mehta, an assistant professor of urban studies, teaching stream, at Innis College and American journalist Alexa Mills.

Prior to COVID-19, Mehta instructed her students to research a public space like Toronto’s Nathan Phillips Square. This year, however, she reimagined her qualitative methods course by arranging for students to interview elders who were based in retirement communities in Toronto and Columbus, Ohio.

“In urban studies, especially North American urban studies, you learn about processes such as suburbanization or the construction of highways,” Mehta says. “It was really cool to see the students hear about people’s lived experiences of those historical processes, which doesn’t normally happen.”

Mehta was inspired to connect her students with elders after reading about seniors who were separated from their loved ones because of measures put in place to control the pandemic. Her goal was to foster a relationship between students and elders at a time of scant opportunities for social interaction, and to get her class to learn about the past through the stories of people who lived it.

It didn’t take long for Curtis, a 21-year-old urban studies major, and Bartlett, a 76-year-old former chef, to hit it off. After learning that Curtis grew up in the United Kingdom, Bartlett teased her about English cuisine.

“You must have grown up on some pretty bland, beige food,” he once told her.

There were, in fact, a lot of boiled vegetables in her childhood, she agrees.

After Curtis told Bartlett she identifies as queer, they discussed the nature of the word and how it evolved from its status as a slur in his day. Bartlett described what it was like having to hide a central part of his identity in public and the sense of relief he felt when he was in a place where he could be himself.

“He mentioned that teachers, doctors and others who worked in the public sector had to enter and exit queer spaces through the back door,” Curtis says.

When Bartlett went out to a gay bar, he made sure to park his flashy red convertible blocks away so he wouldn’t be spotted, according to Curtis.

“It was the personal connection with one another, I think, that’s how we were able to delve into some difficult topics,” Curtis says. “It almost felt like we both got it … there was no explanation needed.”

Each of the other students in the small class took their projects in an original direction. One connected with a retired professional clown to explore the role of humour as medicine in hospitals, while another focused on the waves of immigration that shaped the Cabbagetown neighbourhood in Toronto’s east end.

By chance Angel Yang, a third-year student, was matched with a senior who comes from Steveston, B.C., a historic fishing village near Vancouver that is only a 10-minute drive from Yang’s family home. Nancy Yano (who previously went by the surname Terauchi), who is the daughter of Japanese immigrants and was born in 1942, described her early memories of Japanese-Canadian internment during the Second World War, when some 21,000 Japanese in B.C. were detained under the War Measures Act and their property seized.

“Her entire family was interned and actually split up,” Yang says, “so she, her mom and her siblings stayed in B.C. and her grandmother was sent to Manitoba, and her father was sent to northern Ontario.”

Only a few years old when she and her family were transferred to an internment camp, Yano’s most vivid memory from the time is of picking wild strawberries with her sister.

After the war, Yano’s family settled in Manitoba and she later moved to Toronto and worked as a secretary in a law firm.

Yang took the project one step further by interviewing other people who lived in Steveston during the war or shortly thereafter as well as the chair of the local Japanese Canadian Cultural Centre.

For Yang, interviewing an elder left a bigger impression than a typical university assignment: The two grew close over many hours of talking online.

On one occasion, Yano showed Yang her wedding album with black-and-white pictures of her younger self getting married on a snowy day in Toronto. “Nancy, since she’s also Asian and I’m Chinese – I felt like she was the grandmother I never had,” Yang says.

Mills, the journalist who taught the course with Mehta and works as a writing coach at the New York Times, says she hopes the students learned that everyone has important stories to tell, and that they learned to listen.

“Some people dedicate their lives and careers to storytelling, but all of us humans have the capacity to tell a good story,” she says.

“University is a great place to learn that skill because storytelling is part of every subject and discipline. No matter what data you take in, no matter what you research – it helps to be able to express what you learned in a digestible format.”

What began as a course redesigned for COVID-19 restrictions may live on long after the pandemic.

“I may continue teaching the class this way because there's so much to learn about your city from elders,” Mehta says.

Yang, for one, plans to keep in touch with Yano by old-fashioned mail.

“I’m so glad I met her and am grateful for the things that she taught me.”

From longer holidays to compassion in the classroom: Supporting U of T students during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 21:28:01 +0000

From longer holidays to compassion in the classroom: Supporting U of T students during COVID-19

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 12/18/2020 - 16:28

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(photo by David Lee)

Geoffrey Vendeville

Topic

Our Community

��Ƶ

Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Faculty of Arts & Science

Geography and Planning

Undergraduate Students

Urban Studies

Earning a university degree isn’t easy – and this year the challenge is made more difficult by a global pandemic that has forced students to dramatically alter the way they live, study and socialize.

That’s why University of Toronto President Meric Gertler recently extended the winter break by one week to Jan. 11. for students in first-entry undergraduate divisions and some graduate and professional programs.

“It’s prompted by the fact that we’ve all been under an extraordinary amount of stress for months now, because of the burdens imposed by the COVID-19 pandemic,” he said in a letter to the U of T community.

“The entire leadership team across our three campuses cares deeply about the wellness of each and every one of you. We want to make sure that you’re able to rest and recharge, and to make the most of the upcoming holiday break.”

In light of the added pressure COVID-19 has placed on students, Micah Stickel, acting vice-provost, students, is also calling on faculty to double down on kindness and compassion.

“This is a unique time for everybody,” he told U of T News, adding that the university has been listening closely to students through consultation sessions and surveys.

“The message that we shared with everybody is to focus on care, compassion and flexibility.”

In practical terms, Stickel says that means opening up a pathway for honest communication between students and professors while paying close attention to the demands that students are facing in their lives.

He recommends a healthy balance of large and small assignments so students don’t have to juggle too many bite-size assignments – or worry about a single, large assignment that could make up the bulk of their grade.

Overall, the time spent in class and on work outside a class should be in the ballpark of 10 hours per week, per course, he says.

“That’s our ask, but obviously there’s some flexibility there,” he said. “Generally, the message is to think about students’ experience not just in your own course, but in all the courses that they’re taking.”

Professors across Canada can get tips for supporting student mental health from the Centre for Innovation in Campus Mental Health. And, to ensure that faculty, staff and librarians who support students also take care of their own mental health, U of T offers a wide range of resources and supports.

Since the pandemic began, professors across U of T’s three campuses have also been sharing their experiences with each other online and in webinars organized by the Centre for Teaching and Learning, offering advice on how to re-think assessments and assignments and examples of how to lower stress and improve learning for students.

“The biggest thing that I’m doing differently this year is having a “radical generosity” policy for extensions,” Kathy Liddle, assistant professor, teaching stream, in sociology at U of T Scarborough, told the Centre for Teaching and Learning. “Students can get extensions on anything for any reason, without any documentation and without penalty.

“My decision was based on the fact that my priority is for them to learn the material, but I don’t want to tie the assessment to their ability to turn in something by a particular time. Especially this year. They don’t have to ask for the weekly quiz or the weekly discussion post – I just leave them open and then they catch up as necessary. For assignments, I have them contact their TAs to ask for a specific amount of time so that they are making a specific plan for themselves. But we accept every request.”

Liddle says “the outpouring of gratitude and appreciation from the students has honestly been overwhelming.”

Fiona Rawle, a professor of biology and the associate dean, undergraduate at U of T Mississauga, coined the phrase “the pedagogy of kindness” to describe her teaching method, which also emphasizes communication, compassion and flexibility.

In her biology course of more than 1,000 students, she aims to foster connections within the class and bridge the “divide” between student and teacher.

Today was our last class. Students surprised me by making posters & holding them up at the same time

Was a great ending, highlighting the importance of connection to learning@UTM @UofT @AcademicChatter #WomenInSTEM

(you can see me in the upper corner crying a bit...) pic.twitter.com/mY2wEsMnGI
— Dr Fiona Rawle (@FiRawle) December 8, 2020

“We know that the more connected our students feel, then the better they learn,” she said in a guest-hosted episode of the U of T podcast, The New Normal.

“We want students to know that they are more than a number.”

In the last class of the semester, Rawle’s students showed her some kindness in return, surprising her on Zoom by holding up posters expressing their thanks. Rawle tweeted a screenshot of the class, adding: “You can see me in the upper corner crying a bit…”

Fabian Parsch, an assistant professor, teaching stream, in the department of mathematics in the Faculty of Arts & Science, says the experience of teaching remotely during the pandemic has taught him the value of giving students more time to complete tests.

In one of his classes he gave his students 24 hours to write an exam, providing them with some leeway if their computer crashes or in the case of another unforeseen calamity.

“All these things contribute to students being able to focus on the course content instead of being stressed out by their surrounding conditions during an already stressful time,” he says.

David Roberts, director of the urban studies program at Innis College and an assistant professor, teaching stream, in the department of geography and planning, says he agrees that teaching during a pandemic “requires greater compassion and care for our students and a heightened recognition of the struggles they are facing during this time.”

Whether in his first-year introductory course on urban studies and his fourth-year seminar on cities and mega-events, he says he prioritizes patience and understanding.

“While the pandemic has definitely exacerbated many situations, a lot of our students were struggling with various things prior to the pandemic,” he says.

“Recognizing this, I try to keep abreast of the various support programs available to students and encourage my students to make use of them. I try to be understanding and accommodating, while also being fair to my TAs and others.

“These practices have become more central to my teaching approach as more of my students have confided their struggles to me.”

While COVID-19 has brought student mental health into even sharper focus, the well-being of students was already a top priority for the university, Stickel says.

As part of its response to recommendations by the Presidential and Provostial Task Force on Student Mental Health, the university recently launched a new mental health website for students, where they can access a toolkit of resources for building resilience, find health-focused events across the three campuses and book a counselling appointment online.

Stickel also urges faculty to demonstrate a personal commitment to supporting student mental health by including a statement on their syllabus and using it as an opportunity to discuss mental health with students and periodically check in with them.

Megan Frederickson, an associate professor of ecology and evolutionary biology, made a point of checking in with her students – all 1,933 of them – in the final class of BIO 120 last week.

“I always tell my students their grades are not a measure of their worth as a human being,” Frederickson told U of T News. “They’re so focused on getting high grades and there are so many wonderful students who are not going to be high-achieving in terms of marks, but that doesn’t mean they’re not going to go on to do amazing things with their lives.”

To help keep students engaged this term, Frederickson delivered lectures from locations across the city, including ravines, museums and the zoo, in a series of pre-recorded videos that could be viewed asynchronously. In her last video, sitting at her kitchen table, she thanked them for their patience and good humour and spoke about how tough the year has been for everyone and how much she hopes to eventually meet them in person.

“I really do hope that you’re taking good care of yourself and your loved ones and your communities – and I really genuinely think that is more important at this moment in time than getting a high grade in BIO 120,” Frederickson says. “So I wish you good luck on your final test. But remember it is just a test.

“It’s not the most important thing in life – or even in your university career.”

Cities lead the charge on the coronavirus front lines: U of T expert

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 03 Apr 2020 14:42:56 +0000

Cities lead the charge on the coronavirus front lines: U of T expert

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 04/03/2020 - 10:42

Cutline

A crew works on building a 68-bed emergency field hospital specially equipped with a respiratory unit in New York’s Central Park (photo by Mary Altaffer/AP Photo)

Topic

How many times have we heard over the past few weeks that we have entered an unprecedented era?

The rapid spread of COVID-19 has upended lives and livelihoods. In cities around the world, the repercussions of scaling back as a result of physical distancing measures have had exceptionally damaging impacts.

And at the same time, observers marvel at the ways in which urban life continues.

Cities appear to be on the front lines of coronavirus outbreaks and hot spots. In fact, researchers from the University of Chicago show that larger cities are susceptible to relatively larger outbreaks of COVID-19.

More contacts, more spread

This is due to the increased number of contacts that individuals residing in larger centres tend to have. One of the key responses to containing the pandemic – stringent physical distancing measures – acts to disconnect social interactions.

Some scholars and pundits are pointing to COVID-19 pandemic as evidence that cities should no longer be sites of concentration for jobs, culture and people.

But the history of declaring the death of cities is well-documented – and also widely disproven.

With workplaces and social spaces largely shuttered, and messages from public health agencies to stay home, the economic and social impacts of recommendations to physically isolate are difficult to bear. In city after city, as public health experts call on citizens to isolate and stay at home, images display the shutdown of urban life.

A city police officer walks by the deserted Trevi fountain, in Rome, on March 14, 2020 (photo by Karl Ritter/AP Photo)

Empty office buildings, closed shops, vacant restaurants, transit without passengers, streets without cars and squares without people.

And yet despite the radical, though temporary, disconnection of physical proximity, cities and citizens have found ways to support resilience, to prop up the value of urban living without the customary interactions of city life.

The role of government

The coronavirus pandemic has made it clear that governments are more important than ever. The ability of national governments to enforce public health rulings, commit to massive stimulus packages, close borders and lend expertise to international efforts is unparalleled.

City governments are less powerful, and are subject to being overridden by more senior levels of government. However, a common refrain about city governments is that they are the level of government that is closest to the people.

In this regard, it should come as no surprise that municipal government leaders continue to be the first to act in response to the spread of the coronavirus.

On March 6, the mayor of San Jose, Calif., Sam Liccardo, proposed a measure to temporarily prevent evictions for renters whose incomes declined as a result of coronavirus shutdowns.

The San Jose moratorium went into effect on March 11. By the end of the month, a range of cities across the state, including San Francisco and Los Angeles, had also enacted eviction moratoriums.

Newsom discusses California’s response to the coronavirus on March 24 in Rancho Cordova, Calif (Photo by Rich Pedroncelli/AP Photo)

On March 27, California Gov. Gavin Newsom announced a statewide moratorium on evictions for renters.

Similarly, in Toronto, Mayor John Tory announced a series of tax relief measures to assist Torontonians. On March 16, the city introduced a 30-day grace period for businesses on property tax, water and solid waste bills.

The grace period was extended to 60 days, and expanded to cover businesses and residents later that week.

Presumably, municipal-led measures will continue to evolve as the reality of the pandemic, and timelines for getting back to some version of normal, remain uncertain.

Streets and public life

Admonitions for people to stay home have translated into rapid and significant declines in vehicle traffic on city streets around the world. Streets comprise, on average, about 30 per cent of land in cities and represent about 80 per cent of a city’s total public space.

In Chinese cities, images of streets and highways empty of vehicles depicted the initial, stark results of lockdowns. Vehicle traffic declined sharply.

In this Jan. 28, 2020 photo, people wearing face masks walk down a deserted street in Wuhan in central China (photo by Arek Rataj/AP Photo)

As efforts to physically distance take shape, residents in cities like New York have taken to cycling at the expense of public transit use.

The coronavirus has also led cities to reconsider street spaces dedicated to vehicles. Both New York and Bogotá have added temporary bike lanes to safely accommodate increases in cycling traffic.

Cyclists ride past a deactivated employee turnstile at Boeing Co.‘s manufacturing facility in Renton, Wash. on the first day of a shutdown due to the spread of the new coronavirus (photo by Ted S. Warren/AP Photo)

Cities are also experiencing increased pedestrian activity as people cooped up indoors head outside for a walk. Calls for cities to create pedestrian-only streets, where people can get fresh air, exercise and maintain physical distance, have ensued.

Calgary and Philadelphia are examples of urban centres that have temporarily opened some streets to pedestrians, while similar discussions are underway in numerous other cities.

In Italian cities, videos depicting neighbourhood balcony concerts give hope to residents, while entertaining viewers around the world.

Balcony concerts in Italy.

In Mallorca, Spain, police well-being checks have also presented opportunities for streetside music.

And, nightly at 7 p.m. in Vancouver, residents emerge to bang their pots and pans in support of health-care workers.

The impacts of the coronavirus on cities are extraordinarily difficult. There is tremendous uncertainty as to how long the virus and its impacts will endure, and how devastating it will be. Yet around the world, cities are responding rapidly and decisively to the crisis and its implications for urban life.

Shauna Brail, an associate professor, is the director of the urban studies program at Innis College and associate director, partnerships and outreach at the School of Cities at the University of Toronto.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Cities need to innovate to improve transportation and reduce emissions: U of T expert

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 25 Nov 2019 13:56:55 +0000

Cities need to innovate to improve transportation and reduce emissions: U of T expert

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 11/25/2019 - 08:56

Cutline

Singapore is touted as an example of forward-thinking urban transit planning; vehicle ownership permits are limited and available by lottery (photo via Shutterstock)

Topic

Public Transportation

Sustainability

The Conversation

Urban Studies

Mobility is essential to urban life. It contributes to people’s ability to access work, food, education, leisure and more. It also contributes to climate change.

According to C40 Cities, cities are both a significant contributor to the climate crisis, responsible for 70 per cent of the world’s CO2 emissions, and the place where actions can make the greatest difference.

Transportation is one of the leading contributors of greenhouse gas emissions and air pollution worldwide. Given the role that cities play in climate change, we need to re-think and plan for a future in which cities work intentionally to direct change.

Sixty-four per cent of all vehicle kilometres travelled on a global basis are in cities, and this is anticipated to grow exponentially.

Finding alternatives

To address the stubborn challenge of reducing transportation-based emissions, cities need to lean on car-free alternatives such as public transit and active transportation. They also need to effectively engage with private firms to leverage disruptive transportation technologies, such as ride-hailing apps. Amongst urban pundits, there is tension between these two.

My research on ride-hailing, regulation and cities suggests, however, that both strategies are necessary.

Car-free or car-lite?

There is no one-size-fits-all solution.

In Paris, Mayor Ana María Hidalgo successfully eliminated cars from the Seine’s quayside. The strategy is enabled by extensive investment in public transit, improved features for pedestrians and significant political will.

In Singapore, the government is moving towards a “car-lite” society. In this unique city-state, the right to purchase a private automobile is granted by lottery and the government caps the total number of vehicles permitted to operate. In addition, Singapore boasts a globally admired public transit system, with continuous building of transit stations, integrated bus networks and strong transit connections to mixed-use neighbourhoods.

Vancouver has implemented a strategy to encourage active transport – walking and biking – by investing in public realm improvements and protected bike lanes. The Greenest City Action Plan established a goal of having 50 per cent of trips by walking, bicycle and transit by 2020, representing a 10 per cent increase from 2008. The city exceeded this goal, reaching 53 per cent in 2018.

Sidewalk Labs is proposing that private automobiles be prohibited in Toronto’s Quayside neighbourhood. If the city approves, active transportation, public transit and a system of shared vehicles would be the primary mobility options in this proposed community.

Cities approach the wicked challenge of reducing transportation-based greenhouse gas emissions in different ways. There are, however, three strategic directions in which many places have found success in changing transportation options, travel behaviour and, ultimately, transportation-based emissions.

1. Conducting pilot studies

Pilot studies (also known as trials) are an increasingly popular way for governments to test out whether and how an idea might work in practice. Pilots can be limited in terms of geography, and also can have a limited period of time in which testing is conducted.

The King Street Pilot in Toronto is an outstanding example of a transportation pilot developed by the city. Initially implemented as a trial in fall 2017, the initiative prioritized transit on a 2.6-kilometre stretch of a congested downtown thoroughfare. As the city’s busiest surface transit route, limiting cars and privileging transit sped up commute times and made the street more appealing to cyclists while keeping pedestrian volume essentially the same.

Establishing the transit priority of the route resulted in a 16 per cent increase in ridership overall. In a fall 2018 survey, seven of every 100 riders indicated that they had switched from travelling by car to travelling on the King Street streetcar. On April 16, 2019, the King Street Pilot was made permanent.

Transit agencies are also experimenting with innovative technologies to increase ridership and efficiency. On-demand bus hailing essentially uses the algorithms and technologies that underlie ride-hailing apps and applies it to public transit routes. In September 2017, Belleville, Ont. replaced its nighttime bus service on some low ridership routes with an on-demand bus-hailing system. The pilot saw an increase of 300 per cent in ridership, while the number of kilometres driven per vehicle declined by 30 per cent.

2. Looking for work-arounds

Sometimes, firms make decisions to look for work-arounds in order to test emerging transportation options. For example, autonomous vehicles are not allowed on public streets in New York. However, private streets have private rules. An autonomous vehicle pilot running on private roads in the Brooklyn Navy Yards is an opportunity to test the technology, build public trust in driverless cars and prepare for a possible future in which self-driving cars are permitted to operate on public streets.

Taking a page out of the work-arounds playbook, Bird Scooters launched a trial in Toronto’s Distillery District in September 2019. Though roundly criticized for testing scooters on the Distillery District’s cobblestone streets, the firm was attracted by the fact that the Distillery is private property. They thereby evaded government regulations. While the firm may have been hoping to help encourage the city to permit scooters on Toronto’s streets, the city elected to do the opposite – unlike Edmonton, where the scooters are in use. Shortly after the scooter trial, council voted to prohibit scooters on city streets and sidewalks until further study.

3. Partnerships

Innovation in transportation requires significant and concerted effort, investment, specialized expertise and the participation of people from different sectors.

One common thread running through all of the above examples is partnerships with universities. From the King Street Pilot to Belleville’s on-demand bus hailing system, Brooklyn’s autonomous vehicles and – most likely – the City of Toronto’s upcoming study on scooters, universities and university researchers are involved. University partnerships span the full spectrum of transportation innovation – from development of autonomous technology, software and algorithms to the study of travel behaviour, air quality, efficiency and best practices in regulation.

Only with intentional and strategic effort can we hope to move the needle on transportation-based emissions while also ensuring that people have access to the mobility resources they need.

Shauna Brail is an associate professor of urban studies at the University of Toronto.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

U of T’s School of Cities establishes Community-Builders Fellowships in partnership with the United Way

noreen.rasbach — Mon, 30 Sep 2019 04:00:00 +0000

U of T’s School of Cities establishes Community-Builders Fellowships in partnership with the United Way

noreen.rasbach Mon, 09/30/2019 - 00:00

Cutline

From left, U of T's Lara Muldoon, Shauna Brail and Nouman Ashraf; United Way of Greater Toronto president and CEO Daniele Zanotti; and Nakia Lee-Foon, a PhD candidate at U of T (photo by Nina Haikara)

Topic

Dalla Lana School of Public Health

Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work

Graduate Students

Rotman School of Management

Urban Studies

Nouman Ashraf, an assistant professor of organizational behaviour and director of equity, diversity and inclusion at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management, prepares to start his seminar by connecting his laptop to the teaching podium.

“We Are Family” booms from the classroom’s speakers and draws a light chuckle from the participants gathered as Sister Sledge sings:

Living life is fun and we've just begun
To get our share of this world's delights
(High) high hopes we have for the future
And our goal's in sight

It’s a fitting start to the first session held last week of U of T’s School of Cities’ Community-Builders Fellowship program, in partnership with the United Way of Greater Toronto. Over the next nine months, six teams of three will be working on an initiative or project related to neighbourhood change in the Toronto region.

“The Community-Builders Fellowship is a really important initiative,” said Shauna Brail, an associate professor of urban studies and the school’s associate director of partnerships and outreach, in her welcome to the first cohort of community fellows.

“The university has a lot of resources that are not readily available to outside community. We thought, if we leverage some of our resources – including our very talented human resources – we can create a new pathway into the university that will not only help you in developing neighbourhood change, but that also helps us in building new capacity.”

The proposed team projects include:

A network of marginalized and low-income residents in the Annex
Build parents’ capacity in Thorncliffe Park
Civic engagement of young women in Scarborough
Eagle Spirits Indigenous Village in Mississauga
Storytelling in Mount Dennis
Telling stories of communities in York Region

“Thanks for bringing your excitement to partner with us,” said Ashraf, faculty lead for the program’s curriculum. “This is a journey we’ll take together.”

Ashraf told fellows they’ll learn leadership frameworks and models to apply to their experiences, as well as take their project from idea to application in the community.

“I don’t believe in leadership traits. I believe in leadership behaviours. Communities have the commitment to make change. Dream big. Prototype small,” he said.

Nakia Lee-Foon, a PhD candidate in the social and behavioural health sciences division of U of T's Dalla Lana School of Public Health, will be working with the community-based teams, pairing them with mentors and supporting their project outcomes.

“This program supports novel, community-informed projects that can build individuals and their community members' capabilities for years to come,” she said. “Mentorship is a vital component. It can help each group refine their project, gain access to various resources that may be inaccessible to them, and provide mentors with the opportunity to gain new partnerships.”

To close the first seminar, United Way of Greater Toronto’s president and CEO Daniele Zanotti took part in a fireside chat with Brail.

He shared his experiences as an Italian-Canadian kid growing-up in Toronto’s Keele and Lawrence neighbourhood. As a child he expected he would become a factory worker like his father.

Zanotti said his path wasn’t linear and he stumbled in and out of a lot of jobs. It was a role at Progress Place, a community centre for those living with mental illness, that prompted him to leave his creative writing degree and pursue his master’s at U of T’s Factor-Inwentash Faculty of Social Work.

“The one thing about leadership that I bleed, that I hope you never lose, is compassion. When you don’t feel, get out of community work.”

He described Toronto today as a series of islands segregated by income. An individual’s opportunities are limited by race, immigration status and postal code.

Zanotti encouraged fellows to be the “roar which lies on the other side of silence,” a quote from George Eliot’s Middlemarch that a community member once wrote on a Post-it and handed to him years ago.

Zanotti also described the whipped egg yolk, sugar and espresso zabaglione his uncle used to make: “Part of leadership is having the courage to break some eggs.”

U of T students mark global day for public use of city streets by taking over Toronto parking spot

Christopher.Sorensen — Mon, 23 Sep 2019 14:23:18 +0000

U of T students mark global day for public use of city streets by taking over Toronto parking spot

Christopher.Sorensen Mon, 09/23/2019 - 10:23

Cutline

U of T students take over a parking space on Bloor Street West to mark PARKing Day, a global effort to draw attention to the need for public space (photo by Gabriella Shiyuan Zhao)

Nina Haikara

Topic

City & Culture

Department of Germanic Languages and Literature

School of Cities

Faculty of Arts & Science

Geography and Planning

Graduate Students

Humanities

Innis College

Undergraduate Students

University College

Urban Studies

Woodsworth College

What started as a course assignment in urban landscapes and planning resulted in a real-life guerrilla installation by University of Toronto students that’s designed to bring attention to the need for public space around the world.

PARKing Day has been marked annually since the first PARK in San Francisco in 2005. Taking place the third Friday in September, the event sees urban enthusiasts around the world select a parking space – normally reserved for automobiles – and transform it into a mini-park for public use.

The U of T installation in front of 273 Bloor Street on Friday received funding to initiate the project from U of T’s School of Cities.

“We think of Toronto as being a global city. Yet this is a global initiative that's unrepresented here,” says Kelly Gregg, a PhD candidate in the department of geography and planning in the Faculty of Arts & Science. She was also the course instructor who assigned the parking day proposal last term.

“My hope is that it challenges people to think of the street as a public space, not just for automobiles, but for human use as well.”

Where We Gather: U of T’s School of Cities partners with Toronto Public Library for lecture series on public space

Christopher.Sorensen — Fri, 20 Sep 2019 19:35:53 +0000

Where We Gather: U of T’s School of Cities partners with Toronto Public Library for lecture series on public space

Christopher.Sorensen Fri, 09/20/2019 - 15:35

Cutline

Ann-Marie Nasr (left), Toronto’s director of parks development and capital projects, with U of T’s Shauna Brail, Alissa North and Alex Josephson at the first talk hosted by U of T’s School of Cities and the Toronto Public Library (photo by Chiao Sun)

Topic

Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Faculty of Arts & Science

Innis College

Urban Studies

How do public spaces shape city life? What do we want for society and for our city?

The University of Toronto’s School of Cities has partnered with the Toronto Public Library for a four-part lecture series to answer some of the key questions and challenges surrounding public space.

“Toronto is a growing city and we’re growing vertically,” said Shauna Brail, an associate professor of urban studies and the school’s associate director of partnerships and outreach. “There’s a real challenge in ensuring that as dwelling units get smaller, we create spaces outside of private spaces.

“We need to think about public space differently as a 21^st century city.”

At the first talk, Tuesday evening, Alissa North, an associate professor at the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design and author of Operative Landscapes: Building Communities Through Public Space, said the image of parks while growing up in Toronto were flat, open spaces, but that view no longer holds true.

“What’s amazing about Sorauren [Avenue] Park is that it’s been imprinted by community use. It started with the pumpkin festival, there’s a really amazing market, Raptors games, movie nights, and then the plaza came along,” she told the crowd gathered at the Toronto Reference Library.

“But you know your community park has arrived when you get the bake oven. It shows that community park is working. When Toronto invests in neighbourhoods – that’s how you have a win.”

In fact, Toronto has 1,500 parks, about 12.6 per cent of city land, equal to 8,000 hectares of parkland. It’s a lot for the city to work with, while also looking at ways to improve, said U of T master’s in planning alumna Ann-Marie Nasr, director of parks development and capital projects for the City of Toronto’s Parks, Forestry and Recreation.

“Our culture has grown. There’s an expectation what public spaces need to be for daily living,” she said. “People used to think about going to a park on the weekend, and now it’s just a seamless extension of people’s living space.”

Alex Josephson, a lecturer at Daniels and co-founder of architecture and design firm PARTISANS, said architecture requires many interdisciplinary inputs, from visionaries to engineers, as well as the public.

Attendees listen to a panel discussion at Where We Gather: Public Life in Toronto at the Toronto Reference Library (photo by Chiao Sun)

PARTISANS is currently revitalizing Toronto’s Union Station, one of Canada’s most significant heritage buildings. Josephson said they looked at the project through the perspective of the individual, rather than the crowd.

“We feel like we brought a layer to Union Station that’s all about programming – continuous, temporary programming. We flipped the idea of a train station into a cultural hub, a platform for Toronto’s most diverse, culinary, retail and cultural offerings,” he said.

“As much as it feels the city is fully built-out, it’s not even close. I think it’s about [Toronto] recognizing what we have, and leveraging it fearlessly and boldly, where any [visitor] would come here, just to experience our public realm.”

Further discussions this fall will examine city streets, digital space and privacy.

“In Toronto we’re grappling with these questions around digital technology and the impact on our public and private spaces,” said Brail, citing Sidewalk Labs’ partnership with Waterfront Toronto and their redevelopment proposal for Quayside, a parcel of land on Toronto’s eastern waterfront.

“What happens in the public realm when you have a private partner – particularly a private partner with strong ties to one of the largest tech companies in the world [Google] – and what does that mean for people who use that space?”

The next installment of Where We Gather: Streets of Toronto takes place Oct. 7 at the Toronto Public Library’s Bloor/Gladstone branch.

Urban Studies

Students from U of T and India’s Ashoka University explore urban challenges in Pune

Can a ‘problem’ be a solution? U of T’s School of Cities rethinks Toronto’s aging apartment towers

Five startups to watch from U of T Engineering’s 2021 virtual Demo Day event

Civvic – AI-enabled web platform for developers and urban planners

Fovea — Wearable sensors for people living with blindness

Nightingale AI — Improving physiotherapy with vision-based AI tools

ParkinSense – Medical monitoring system for people living with Parkinson’s disease

Varient — Crowdsourcing treatment efficacy data for rare diseases

Urban studies course forges bond between students and seniors during COVID-19

From longer holidays to compassion in the classroom: Supporting U of T students during COVID-19

Cities lead the charge on the coronavirus front lines: U of T expert

More contacts, more spread

The role of government

Streets and public life

Cities need to innovate to improve transportation and reduce emissions: U of T expert

Finding alternatives

Car-free or car-lite?

1. Conducting pilot studies

2. Looking for work-arounds

3. Partnerships

U of T’s School of Cities establishes Community-Builders Fellowships in partnership with the United Way

U of T students mark global day for public use of city streets by taking over Toronto parking spot

Read more about the School of Cities' public space lecture series

Where We Gather: U of T’s School of Cities partners with Toronto Public Library for lecture series on public space