Changing Urban Waterfronts' Seminar Series Report - Revised

Abstract

This Seminar Series Report summarizes research presentations made by members of York University's Changing Urban Waterfronts' (CUW) research project in the spring of 2008. The Series focused on the central theme of the project - the interrelationship of society and nature in the historical transformation of Toronto’s waterfront. This focus spans a chronological period of approximately one hundred years, culminating in the current redevelopment plans for the waterfront. The project’s emphasis on the intertwined processes of social and natural transformations in the changing landscape of Toronto’s waterfront suggests that political decisions, governance arrangements, engineering practices, and management techniques have a direct role in the shaping of natural places and forms. The natural landscape of Toronto’s waterfront has been produced by multiple human interventions. This focus necessitates an interdisciplinary research approach where researchers address both social and natural processes in their specific substantive areas and geographical sites of waterfront research. The CUW research project is a SSHRC funded project that began in 2005, with faculty and graduate student researchers from the Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, the York University Archives, the Department of Geography, University of Toronto, and the Department of Environmental Studies, University of Vermont.