Project Summary
This knowledge synthesis project responds to the theme of Involvement and inclusion in governance structures with its focus on changing technological landscapes of participation by more diverse communities in Canada and the UK, and Systems of governance, with a particular view towards "the central role played by municipalities in recent crises" and the workings of "levels of governance and responsibilities between national, regional and local governments."
The project's overall aim is to distil knowledge of how multi-level governance is constructed in Canada and the UK in an era of urban crises identifying clearly the knowledge gaps in the literature. Looking at how such crises are now conceptualized as poly- or permacrises, we will focus on how governance mechanisms and responsibilities have been changing. In doing so, and in slight digression from the conventional "methodological nationalism," we prioritize an urban view (looking at crisis urbanization as an ongoing process) and a city view (looking at specific crisis urbanisms as instances of crisis) in examining the emerging systems of governance across levels and scales of government. This changed epistemological stance does not see cities (their politics and governance) as primarily constituted "from above" but primarily "from below" (both contested concepts in a globalizing world). We further posit that the governance of urban crises is not separate from, but interwoven with, urban ways of life and must reflect how urban residents and communities are experiencing, navigating and countering crises. We focus, therefore, on contextualised accounts of the impacts, dilemmas and possibilities of living with and beyond crisis and on how the literature has reflected this interweaving of urban life and governance. This synthesis of knowledge, through an urban lens, will advance thinking on just and sustainable responses to crisis in cities in Canada and the UK resulting in an agenda for future research.
In sum, this project will study the challenges facing, and agency shown by civil society, community activists, urbanists, focusing on diverse and often marginalised urban residents and communities living with crisis. From that perspective we will focus on how just and resilient structures can be built into urban life and how institutions and processes of governance can support them. We will analyze contextualized and experiential accounts of crisis governance, as a contributing factor in the crisis of liberal democracy, taking seriously the capacity of people to develop skills to deal with crisis, and innovative ways of viewing crisis governance through dialogic comparison in a transatlantic perspective.
Expected Contributions and Impacts
We will make an essential contribution to the scholarly and policy literature on multi-level governance from an urban perspective in Canada and the UK. It builds on past and ongoing joint work by the applicants on urban and regional governance and politics.
The significance of this project lies in its direct response to the experience of urban communities over the past few years when, for example, the COVID-19 pandemic universally tested the resilience of municipal actors and as cities around the world have been threatened by wildfires and impacted by flooding, and other disasters. In Canada, this focus includes a look at the role of crisis in Indigenous communities (from boiled water advisories to racist violence) and the central role of Indigenous governance in that country's governance architecture. The project's "urban lens" promises empirical and conceptual insights on contemporary forms of crisis as they interweave with urban life and governance.
This research is funded through an award from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), in conjunction with UK Research and Innovation Arts and Humanities Research Council (UKRI-AHRC) and the Economic and Social Research Council (UKRI-ESRC) through the Knowledge Synthesis Grants competition on Envisioning Governance Systems that Work (2024-26).
Roger Keil is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus at the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University in Toronto and a Fellow of CIFAR’s Humanity’s Urban Future program. Keil was the inaugural Director of the CITY Institute (2006). He researches global suburbanization, urban political ecology, cities and infectious disease, infrastructure, and regional governance. He is the author of Pandemic Urbanism (Polity, 2023, with S. Harris Ali & Creighton Connolly) and Suburban Planet (Polity, 2018). He has recently edited two volumes on Peripheral Centralities (with Nick Phelps and Paul Maginn, 2025) and previously The Globalizing Cities Reader (Routledge, 2017, with Xuefei Ren), After Suburbia (UTP, 2022 with Fulong Wu) and Turning Up the Heat: Urban political ecology for a climate emergency (MUP, 2023, with Maria Kaika, Tait Mandler & Yannis Tzaninis, 2023).
Contact: rkeil@yorku.ca
Ross Beveridge is a Senior Lecturer in Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow with diverse teaching and research interests in the field of urban politics and governance. An interdisciplinary urbanist, Ross studied History at the University of Manchester and International Studies at Newcastle University, before conducting EU-funded research on urban infrastructures in Europe. Ross's doctoral project focused on the politics of urban development and privatisation in 1990’s Berlin at Newcastle University. He joined Urban Studies at the University of Glasgow in 2015 from the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) in Germany, where he had worked for six years in various research and teaching roles. Initially at Glasgow, Ross held an Urban Studies Foundation (USF) Senior Research Fellowship before moving to his current position. Ross's most recent book, How Cities Can Transform Democracy, was co-authored with Philippe Koch (ZHAW Zurich) and published by Polity Press in 2022. Ross is a member of the editorial board for the journal Geography Compass and is the co-founder and editor of the Urban Political Podcast, which addresses contemporary urban issues through discussions with activists, scholars, and policy-makers from around the world.
Contact: Ross.Beveridge@glasgow.ac.uk
Luisa Sotomayor is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning and Director of the Planning Program at the University of Toronto. She previously served as Director of the CITY Institute at York University and as Associate Professor in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change at York. Her research examines urban inequality from a governance and spatial planning perspective, with a particular focus on housing precarity, socio-legal exclusions, and the emergence of new socio-spatial peripheries in Latin America (notably Colombia and Mexico) and Canada. She also studies the role of activists, resident groups, and legal actors in mobilizing, negotiating, or contesting urban policies and planning agendas. Luisa has led several externally funded research projects. Currently, she is the principal investigator of the SSHRC Insight Grant Vertical Peripheries: Planning and Citizenship in Colombia’s Commodified Peri-Urban Housing Towers. She has published in leading journals such as the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Journal of Planning Education and Research, Urban Geography, Housing Policy Debate, Antipode, and Cities. She holds degrees in Sociology from the Universidad Nacional de Colombia (Bogota) and in Planning from the University of Toronto.
Contact: luisa.sotomayor@utoronto.ca
Ewan Kerr is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Glasgow. A political sociologist, he researches state-society relations, crisis governance and theory, and urban politics. His work has been published in Capital & Class, Scottish Affairs, Critical Sociology, The Political Quarterly, and Economic and Industrial Democracy. He has co-edited a special issue on pandemic governance in Europe for Critical Sociology, and recently co-edited The Organisation of Irresponsibility, published by Brill (2026), which explored the governance of state-society relations during crisis periods. He is an Associate Editor for Critical Sociology and is a founding member of the Trade Union and Labour Environmentalism network.
Contact: Ewan.Kerr@glasgow.ac.uk
Maryam Lashkari is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the City Institute at York University. She holds a Ph.D. in Human Geography from York University. Maryam has taught city studies workshops, urban geography, and economic geography, where she designed courses on migration, urban policy, economy, and globalization. Her research examines crisis urbanism and urban geopolitics, focusing on nation-state politics and migration policies.
Contact: maryamlk@torontomu.ca
Sotomayor, L., Kerr, E., Lashkari, M., Beveridge, R. From Minneapolis to Toronto and Bogotá, cities showcase new ways to address crises (2026, February 18). The Conversation. https://theconversation.com/from-minneapolis-to-toronto-and-bogota-cities-showcase-new-ways-to-address-crises-275262
Beveridge, R., Keil, R., & Lashkari, M. (2025). The modalities and politics of crisis urbanism: A new reparative conjuncture? Dialogues in Human Geography, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/20438206251398556
Gómez-García, C. I., Keil, R., Krishendeholl, A., Sotomayor, L., & Li, E. (2025). Re-territorializing democracy: Social service regionalism and ‘recalibrated’ governance in Ontario’s Peel Region. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/23996544251406474
Goodfellow, A. (2026, February 20). York research shows how community networks strengthen cities in crisis. YFile. https://www.yorku.ca/yfile/2026/02/20/york-research-shows-how-community-networks-strengthen-cities-in-crisis/