SFU Temporarily Urbane

https://www.sfu.ca/publicsquare/blog/2021/recap-of-taking-it-to-the-streets.html

More info: https://www.sfu.ca/publicsquare/blog/2021/recap-of-urban-resilience-new-realities.html

Normal was not good enough before the pandemic — especially when talking about housing affordability, access and sustainability. On January 27, 2021, we and SFU Urban Studies invited panelists for a discussion on on rethinking housing accessibility as we revise our local and regional plans like the Metro 2050 plan. This event was part of SFU Urban Studies’ 2020-21 lecture series, Pandemonium: Urban Studies and Recovering from COVID-19. The panelists were: Laura Colini – Senior Policy Advisor, EU UIA/URBACT Niamh Moore Cherry – Associate Professor, School of Geography, University College Dublin Erin Rennie – Senior Planner, Regional Planning and Housing Services, Metro Vancouver Regional District Rebecca Schiff – Associate Professor and Chair, Department of Health Sciences, Lakehead University Sierra Tasi Baker – Sky Spirit Consulting

(S2E2)Employer Transit Subsidy Study by SFU Temporarily Urbane

The pandemic wrought economic devastation unseen since at least the Great Depression and government intervention in the economy on a scale comparable only to the two great World Wars. The shake-up in our urban economies has been far-reaching, with even more fundamental changes to sectors, drivers, demand, and structures still on the horizon, poorly understood. Opportunities to lead are becoming apparent, as are more radical opportunities to take hold of the need for new understanding of what the economy and wealth are for. What do we know so far about how has the game changed and the economic direction in which we are heading? Speakers: Tamara Vrooman, CEO of YVR and Chancellor of SFU Matti Siemiatycki, University of Toronto School of Cities Lynsey Thornton, Shopify Vancouver Angela Marie MacDougall, Executive Director, Battered Women Support Services, Co-Chair of Feminists Deliver Wade Grant, Intergovernmental Relations, Musqueam Nation Moderator: Peter Hall, Professor and Associate Dean, SFU Urban Studies

When Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry implored British Columbians to “be kind” at the onset of the pandemic, the message seemed disconnected from the urgent matter of our health. More info: https://www.sfu.ca/publicsquare/upcoming-events/pandemonium/being-kind-how-much-sociability-matters.html

How is the COVID-19 pandemic affecting the basic tenets of city planning and the direction of longer-term planning processes currently underway? More info: https://www.sfu.ca/publicsquare/upcoming-events/pandemonium/pandemics-long-range-planning.html

This research project, led by Annika Airas, a postdoctoral researcher at SFU Urban Studies, and Meg Holden, examines the ways in which what gets lost in translation to English surrounding questions of urban sustainability can be crucial to progress toward sustainability goals. In this podcast, Annika and Meg engage in conversation with other research team members, including Danish researcher Majken Toftager Larsen, who presents her synthesis of the meaning of the interntionally-popular term 'hygge' and its relationship to urban livability and sustainability within a Danish context. Finnish researcher Salla Jokela introduces a Finnish word, 'Säästäväisyys', that similarly has no direct English translation, and that carries meaning that takes more work to translate across cultural contexts as well. These terms, in their native Nordic languages, may have more to teach about urban sustainabiiity than 'international best practices' can convey.

Traffic is a perennial urban problem – or is it? The treatment of “traffic” in urban studies and urban policy over the past generation appears to keep making about-faces – from evil, to necessary evil, to evil-with-benefits, and back again. The three Urban Studies alumni who are guests on this episode work within the Gordian knot of traffic congestion as public transportation planners and transportation demand managers, and are helping to unravel it, as well as tie it up in new ways. Alumni: Patricia Lucy, Devon Farmer, and Danielle Devries

Taking urban studies personally, and taking the crimes and injustices done to people in the city, sometimes as part of urbanization, sometimes as its aberration – is radical work. In this episode, we honour Black History Month, the 29th annual February 14th Women’s Memorial March, and the choice to do urban research that is at the frontier of disgrace, dispossession, and sometimes abject horror. With alumna Stephanie Allen and with Shadbolt Fellow Lucia Lorenzi, we raise questions of home, identity, violence and evil along with the attitudes and efforts that can carry this hard work forward. Aluma: Stephanie Allen Jack and Doris Shadbolt Fellow in the Humanities: Dr. Lucia Lorenzi

Two decades ago, there was not a city or urban development firm in the country with a job position for "sustainability." Now, urban sustainability is the subject of whole departments in the public and private sectors alike, and can cover policy and practice matters from green buildings and mobility solutions to equity, measurement systems, and a whole lot of futures thinking. Urban Studies graduates have filled key sustainability staff roles throughout this evolution. In this episode, we ask three sustainability staff members what this kind of job really entails. A big part of the answer lies in the kind of challenge we think urban sustainability is, and the kind of leadership that moving toward urban sustainability demands. Alumni: Rebecca Holt, Patrick Ward, and Graham Twyford-Miles

The title for this episode is a specific reference to the eastern border of the City of Vancouver, which is a street called Boundary Road, and the fact that in this west-coast Canadian city in particular, we tend to be rather self-absorbed in the way that we approach many aspects of urban studies; perhaps more than any other field of study. In this episode, we consider the question of what newcomers to Vancouver and to Canada, and those who do not see Vancouver as ground zero for all matters urban, can learn and can contribute uniquely in SFU Urban Studies. Alumni: Hamidreza Bakhtiarizadeh, Azadeh Hadizadeh Esfahani, Alireza Farmahini

This episode asks: when is an urban community not a city? And what are some of the best trained urbanists in BC doing in small and remote communities? We will start from the classical understanding of the urban-rural divide, but we will find out from these urban studies alumni what happens when they find out that some urban studies lessons are a better fit in small towns than they are in the big smoke of Vancouver. Alumni: Darcy McCord, Kaitlyn McDougall

Many Urban Studies students enter the program with a vision of themselves as graduates with a job in making plans, policies, and other initiatives for a municipal organization. Some carry such careers through their time in the Urban Studies program and emerge on the other side of their studies with a renewed view of their work, or a new position within the organization. Working for a city organization is a tried and true career choice for urbanists. Or is it? And is working for a big municipal organization anything but becoming an “organization man” lacking individuality? Find out from our alumni in this episode how they work in municipal organizations to stay true to what they learned in Urban Studies, and how their urban studies credential adds creativity, and a bit of chaos, to their work. Alumni: Lainya Rowett, Cathy Buckham, Peter Marriott, David Sadler

What happens when Urban Studies graduates wind up working in ways that conventionally are considered to be “pro-development” and how can this work promote the future of progressive cities? Business Improvement Associations, development companies, and other business groups have been treated in urban studies scholarship as forces of conservativism and privatization of urban spaces. Have things really changed? We talk with urban studies alumni who have gotten involved on the “development side” of cities and been surprised by the scope for change in these organizations and the exciting work to be done, too. Alumni: Landon Hoyt, André Isakov, Duncan Wlodarczak, Patrick Santoro

It is no secret that Urban Studies students are looking to be and make change happen in our cities. In this episode, we hear how some successful change agents have used their work in the Urban Studies program to gain skills, capacities, confidence, and the other qualities they needed to be the change they want to see in their city. And we’ll hear from them what keeps them going, what is needed to sustain their activist work, and the space that exists for new joiners to the “good fight.” Alumni: Laura Benson, Erin O’Melinn

In this episode, we speak with Urban Studies alumni who have been called to elected leadership. What drives them to run for office and what keeps them at it? What have they learned about how theory can inform practice from the trenches of elected leadership, and what did they learn about leadership from their time in Urban Studies? These alumni will offer their litmus test questions for how other urban studies students and alumni might know if they too are cut out for a life in the public eye as elected officials, and what they can look forward to if they are. Alumni: Jonathan Coté, Brandon Yan, Wes Regan