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