York U. Lecture: Unsettling Urban Reform: A Reflection on Cities, Cultures, and Fear of Change
Internationally Renowned Australian Urban Planner Leonie Sandercock to Argue City Planners Must Listen to Minorities, Women to Build Better, Safer Cities

TORONTO, March 21, 2000 -- With women of all backgrounds demanding safer communities for themselves and their families, urban planners have been busy examining how they can better accommodate cultural diversity and women's issues as they strive to build better and safer cities. Internationally renowned Australian urban planner Leonie Sandercock, who is also a professor at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia, is leading this cause.

During a York University public lecture entitled Unsettling Urban Reform: A Reflection on Cities, Cultures, and Fear of Change, Thurs., March 23, 7:30 p.m., Room 306, Lumbers Building, York University, Sandercock will draw upon her research and discuss how planners can develop new ways of planning which are sensitive to cultural diversity and women's needs. She will argue that planners must move beyond traditional notions of planning -- land use, transportation -- and take on social planing and welfare as part of their role.

As part of her lecture, Sandercock will discuss her recent widely acclaimed book: Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities (Wiley, 1998), which explores how cosmopolitan cities, including Toronto, have responded to the economic, political and cultural demands and needs of many diverse groups -- witness Toronto's Safe City Committee.

Formerly at the University of California in Los Angeles, Sandercock has written nine books (and ten screenplays), including Cities for Sale (Melbourne University Press, 1975), The Land Racket (Silverfish, 1979), Urban Political Economy: the Australian Case (Allen and Unwin, 1983), and Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning (University of California Press, 1998).

Sandercock's lecture is sponsored by York's Faculty of Environmental Studies and the Urban Studies Program in the Faculty of Arts.

WHO:
Leonie Sandercock, professor, Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne, Australia

WHAT:
Lecture: Unsettling Urban Reform: A Reflection on Cities, Cultures, and Fear of Change

WHEN:
Thurs., March 23, 7:30 p.m.

WHERE:
Room 306, Lumbers Building, York University, 4700 Keele Street

-30-

For more information, please contact:

Prof. Barbara Rahder
Faculty of Environmental Studies
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22612
rahder@yorku.ca

Ken Turriff
Media Relations
York University
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22086
kturriff@yorku.ca
YU/035/00