Dear All,
As the CITY Institute at York University enters into its second decade of existence, it is my honour to serve as the current Acting Director. CITY has been at the forefront of pathbreaking and innovative research for close to twenty years. As an environmental and disaster sociologist, urban and regional issues have long been a central part of my own research oeuvre. I have often drawn from the research of CITY members in my own work on disaster management and environmental issues, but especially in my research on infectious diseases and cities that I have conducted on the basis of a very fruitful and enduring research partnership with the inaugural Director of the CITY Institute - Professor Roger Keil. Indeed, that particular line of research dates back to our collaborative studies of the SARS outbreaks in Toronto, Singapore and Honk Kong in the early to mid-2000s. From my initial introduction to CITY through Roger, I have since been involved in the Institute in various capacities, both as a participant and administrator, including quite happily, the CITY-sponsored book launch of our own book, the co-edited volume Networked Disease: Emerging Infections in the Global City, as well as serving on the CITY Executive under the Directorship of Professor Linda Peake.
As we enter a period that some scholars have characterized as the “polycrisis”- an emergent circumstance in which social, environmental, economic and political crises converge – cities are confronted with unprecedented and vexing challenges. It has become glaringly evident that to address the complex issues that arise in the wake of the polycrisis will require the adoption of decidedly interdisciplinary, cross-sectoral and perhaps unorthodox approaches. In that context, I see the CITY Institute at York University as being uniquely well-situated in terms of being able to address the myriad of challenging issues faced by the cities of today, embedded as they are in the polycrisis circumstance. The range of issues faced at our particular historical conjuncture are indeed formidable, ranging from issues pertaining to: traffic and the implementation of different modes of public transit and cycling, the contested use of public space, issues pertaining to migration, settlement, housing and racial tensions, to governance and planning issues implicated in the ever-changing dynamics of local, provincial, national relations (including most prominently the rapidly changing relationship between rural and urban centres); the “cultural wars”, political polarization, political violence and the authoritarian turn, that ostensibly pits those perceived as the “liberal urban elites” against those residing in other locales, and the intensification of environmental problems, such as most recently the spread and intensification of wildland fires, and of course climate change and the many material and social consequence wrought by that, including disease outbreaks and pandemics (to name just a few).
I believe the CITY Institute is well-positioned to address such issues because a quick look at the type of research and public sector engagement of those associated with CITY will reveal approaches that are characteristically quite holistic, nuanced, creative/innovative and sophisticated, rather than narrow, reductionist and technocratic in scope. The type of research and engagement of those involved with the CITY Institute is exactly what is needed to address the complex urban (and the always interconnected and intertwined other) issues faced today. In that light, today within the context of the polycrisis, it is perhaps no longer strategic or analytically advantageous to define or conceptualize the "urban" in a relatively narrow sense, as has hitherto tended to be the case, at least conventionally. It is with this broad and expanded vision of the “urban” that I hope to encourage the CITY Institute to embrace and move forward with, as we face head-on the challenges of the polycrisis– keeping front-and-centre the faith and optimism that underlies the critical research and engagement that the CITY Institute brings into play in addressing the urgent social, cultural political, economic and environmental issues of our time.
Sincerely,
S. Harris Ali
Acting Director, CITY Institute
Previous
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Prof. Luisa Sotomayor's Directors Message
Prof. Linda Peake's 2021-2022 Director's message
Prof. William Jenkins' 2020-2021 Interim Director's message
Prof. Linda Peake's 2018-2019 Director's message
Prof. Linda Peake's 2017 Director's message
Dr. Alison Bain's (2015-2016) Acting Director's message
Prof. Linda Peake's 2014 Director's message
Prof. Linda Peake's 2013 Director's message
Vice-President Shapson's 2006 CITY Institute launch speech
Prof. Roger Keil's 2006 CITY Institute launch speech
Prof. Engin Isin's 2006 CITY Institute launch speech