The shut-down of non-essential work in response to COVID-19 has decimated labour markets. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 20.5 million more workers lost their jobs in April, as official unemployment skyrocketed to 14.7%. It is the largest single-month increase in unemployment since the data series started in 1948. In Canada, the news […]
As many people work from home, and as many are suggesting a preference to work from home, perhaps permanently, are people leaving the city for the countryside to live in exurbia, where larger homes on larger lots give people access to natural greenspaces? Exurbia has long been an interest of Laura Taylor, with her first article […]
The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the fragilities and inequities within the globalized industrial food system: ecosystem collapse through deforestation, loss of animal habitat, monocultural production, long supply chains dependent on fossil fuel based transportation, loss of access to land through trade agreements, lack of state support for small producers, forced migration and farm labour […]
Professor Luisa Sotomayor’s new SSHRC Partnership Engage project examines community responses to the siting and development of new homeless shelters and supportive housing in Toronto. As Sotomayor explains, “the introduction of new housing for a low-income or vulnerable group in a community is typically not without local conflict. In fact, the acronym NIMBY—or Not-in-My-Backyard—refers to an increasingly common […]
Between 2009 and 2015, FES/DIGHR postdoctoral fellow, Mark Terry, produced feature films for the United Nations (UN) reporting on the climate research in the polar regions: The Antarctica Challenge: A Global Warning and The Polar Explorer, both films back-to-back winners of the Audience Choice Award at the American Conservation Film Festival. The films broke new […]
There is a body of research that indicates the benefits of green spaces on mental health and well-being. As the lockdown caused by the coronavirus pandemic has forced us to stay at home, socially distance from our family and friends, and limit our outdoor interactions, the call to connect with nature and have safe access […]
The megadisaster of Lac-Mégantic offers important lessons on how disasters and recovery are negotiated within local capacities and contingencies of smaller towns. Born and raised in Nantes, a rural community in Quebec where the catastrophic train disaster happened in 2013, Professor Liette Gilbert, is very familiar with the case and the region. She then started to […]
The issues around flooding have increasingly received attention in a variety of fields, and Jakarta has been a primary case study for a lot of researchers including Abidin Kusno, professor and director at the York Centre for Asian Research. Existing research has significantly contributed to our understanding of the inadequate institutional, organizational and individual capacities for flood […]
Historical models show that Ghana’s climatic patterns are getting increasingly drier. The average temperature increased at about 0.21°C per decade and 1.0˚C per annum, with rainfall declining at an average of 2.3mm per month (or 2.4% per decade) since the 1960s. The northern savannah ecological zone experiences the most rapid and intense climatic changes and […]
As a person who identifies as a homosexual Afro-Asian cis-man, Jc Elijah (Eli) M. Bawuah has experienced complex intersectional facets of oppression and isolation that dissociates him from several urban spaces. Drawing on such experiences for his MES project, he delves into creating an exploratory documentary that looks at the socio-spatial impacts of exclusionary planning and design […]