YorkSpace

YorkSpace is York University's Institutional Repository. It supports York University's Senate Policy on Open Access by providing York community members with a place to preserve their research online in an institutional context.

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Communities in YorkSpace

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Recent Submissions

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    Planning with Eyes of Kinship
    (2026-08-31) Joseph, Aaron; Gilbert, Liette
    Every planning tradition inherits an image of the world before it inherits a method. This major research paper examines how modern planning has been shaped by a representational imagination that approaches the city as an object to be rendered visible, ordered, and eventually completed. It argues that the contemporary crisis of planning is therefore not solely technical, procedural, or political-economic, but hermeneutic: cities become increasingly legible through data, financial calculation, and spatial representation while the relations through which urban life is reproduced recede from life. Every planning tradition inherits an image of the world before it inherits a method. This major research paper examines how modern planning has been shaped by a representational imagination that approaches the city as an object to be rendered visible, ordered, and eventually completed. It argues that the contemporary crisis of planning is therefore not solely technical, procedural, or political-economic, but hermeneutic: cities become increasingly legible through data, financial calculation, and spatial representation while the relations through which urban life is reproduced recede from life. In response, my research develops Eyes of Kinship, a planning orientation grounded in sociogenic hermeneutics. Eyes of Kinship asks how inherited conceptions of the human, dwelling, property, care, and community become materialized through planning practices before any intervention begins. Its central theoretical movement, The Poetics of Planning, then reimagines planning not as the administration of completed objects but as the rhythmic composition and disclosure of living worlds. Through poiesis, opacity, metabolic transparency, symmathesy, and the hermeneutic spiral, planning becomes the cultivation of conditions through which memory, ecology, participation, and relation may continually gather without being finalized or possessed. The paper subsequently names Subprime Kinship as the financial capture of these compositional capacities, through which debt and property reorganize housing, family time, community, care, rest, and the political imagination around accumulation. Non-urban Urbanism offers a speculative response by asking how production, reproduction, extraction, dwelling, ecology, and care might become mutually responsible. Through Villagization and the Metropolitan Waystation, the paper proposes no completed model of the good city. Instead, it turns planning towards the unfinished vocation of disalienating the city and its citizens: making concealed metabolisms publicly intelligible while preserving the opacity through which collective life acquires memory, intimacy, and meaning.
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    Agricultural Land Tenure Systems: Implications for Farmland Succession, Access, Governance, and Food Systems Transformation
    (2026-08-31) Fournier, Madeleine; Rotz, Sarah
    Farmland in Canada is undergoing significant transformation as rising land values, farmland consolidation, financialization, and barriers to farm succession increasingly challenge access to land for new and young farmers. These challenges are rooted within longer histories of colonial land dispossession and the imposition of private property systems. In response, a growing number of people and organizations are developing Agricultural Land Tenure Systems (ALTS) that seek to reimagine relationships of land ownership, access, governance, and stewardship. However, despite increasing interest in these models, little empirical research has documented their prevalence, diversity, and potential contributions within the Canadian context. The overall objective of this research is to better understand the emergence and potential of ALTS in Canada as responses to contemporary challenges of farmland access, tenure security, and food systems transformation. This research addresses two key questions: (1) what ALTS currently exist in Canada, how are they defined and implemented, and how do they differ from conventional private ownership in terms of structure, governance, and goals?; and (2) what motivations, opportunities, and challenges shape the development and implementation of ALTS in Canada, and how do those involved in creating and managing these initiatives understand their potential contributions to farmland protection, succession, governance and access for new and young farmers? This paper investigates these questions through two complementary research components in collaboration with the National Farmers Foundation. First, it develops an online national database of ALTS to identify and characterize the diversity of alternative farmland tenure arrangements currently operating across Canada. Second, this research examines the motivations, experiences, benefits, and challenges of organizations involved in ALTS through semi-structured interviews. By documenting the emerging landscape of ALTS in Canada and examining the experiences of those building these models, this research contributes to broader conversations about farmland futures, food sovereignty, and alternative property relations. While ALTS alone cannot resolve the structural challenges facing Canadian agriculture, they provide important examples of how farmland can be governed differently. This research highlights the need for continued experimentation, institutional support, and policy innovation to strengthen more equitable and sustainable pathways for farmland access and food systems transformation.
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    The Politics of Care and Criar la Vida: Precarious and Non Status Latin American Women Building their Lives in Toronto
    (2026-08-31) Elgueta Faundez, Nira; Gilbert, Liette
    My research explores and maps out the resistance processes and territories of racialized, Latin American migrant women with precarious or non-status while examining their settlement efforts, survival, and political actions in the Toronto Area. This research aims to bring academic visibility to the agency mutual aid and community building and networks of support that, against all odds, allows them to build their own version of citizenship and belonging despite restrictive migration systems. Utilizing a qualitative methodological approach, my research weaves deep thematic narrative life histories collected through extensive qualitative interview and a critical social cartography developed during collaborative focus groups to map the counter-geographies of Toronto that precariousstatus migrant women inhabit. My research pays attention to the narratives of the migrant women to understand how they resist these processes in their aim remain autonomous and citizens of a city on their own terms.
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    Aging in High-Rise Condos: Exploring Age-Friendly Community Planning and Housing in Toronto
    (2026-08-31) Eccles, Angelica; Taylor, Laura
    This Major Paper explores seniors’ experiences with aging in place in high-rise condominium buildings in North York, Toronto, and how these environments support or hinder age-friendly community planning, housing, and the well-being of seniors. With the aging population in North York and other areas of Ontario increasing, it is important for governments, planners, and developers to plan and design homes and communities that respond to seniors’ needs. This study examines the accessibility, safety, affordability, social inclusion, and environmental sustainability of high-rise condominiums, as well as proximity to healthcare services and access to age-friendly transportation that influence seniors’ ability to age in place. The study uses a qualitative case study methodology to investigate how seniors perceive and experience age-friendliness in their residential and community environments. Data collection includes semi-structured interviews with seniors, city and developer planners, and condominium stakeholders, with a residential mobility study embedded within the interviews. Additional methods include participant observation, on-site field observations, an accessibility audit, literature and policy analysis, and an analytical framework. Findings are interpreted through a multidimensional theoretical framework comprising interpretivism, intersectionality theory, the press-competence model, and Nancy Fraser’s (2013) framework of social justice. The findings highlight that aging in place in high-rise condominiums is influenced by interconnecting factors such as building design, accessibility, social relationships, condominium governance, and easy access to transportation and neighbouring services. Senior participants in this study were content with their living conditions and would rather remain in their homes and communities than move to senior homes. Senior participants also mentioned feeling safe, part of the community, and supported by building maintenance and nearby green spaces. Some issues were recognized, particularly with affordability and the fact that accessibility needs can vary as seniors age, necessitating home modifications. Overall, the findings indicate that condos can facilitate aging in place; however, as senior residents’ needs change over time, certain adjustments to condominium design, services, and supports will be required.
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    Canadian Resilience, Grassroots Campaigns and Biosecurity Policy: Navigating Ecological and Economic Risks from New Invasive Species Through Soil-Focused Advocacy
    (2026-08-31) Dyment, Sullivan; Winfield, Mark
    Invasive species can create compounding risks to the resilience of Canadian ecosystems, agricultural productivity, and native biodiversity, introducing cascading impacts across forests, provincial parks, and the forestry sector that can complicate efforts regarding our national climate carbon commitments. Utilizing a mixed-methods approach that combines case study analysis of recent grassroots campaigns with a critical review of Canadian biosecurity legislation, this research explores the systemic barriers that impede rapid responses to new invasive species threats. Investigating whether citizen-led advocacy can successfully model a traction-gaining framework for future environmental campaigns, the emergence of invasive jumping worms in Canada becomes our primary case study. While biological invasions pose recognized threats to Canadian ecosystem services, agricultural productivity, and the resilience of natural habitats, governing bodies often experience delays in active response. Grassroots initiatives often serve as early-warning systems and vital educators for local populations, yet such agility is frequently undervalued. Conversely, formal policy frameworks are often constrained by administrative lag and structural silos that hinder rapid responsiveness—ultimately creating regulatory and policy gaps that allow high-risk invasive species to proliferate unchecked. To evaluate how grassroots initiatives can catalyze regulatory change, this study combines a literature-informed risk assessment of jumping worms—examining their taxonomy, locomotive traits, fecundity, and lack of natural predators—with an analysis of their potential impacts on urban agriculture, forestry, nature-based tourism, and northern boreal peatland carbon dynamics. By combining scientific evidence with strategic policy interventions, including targeted correspondence with decision-makers and custom graphic asset mobilization, the project demonstrates how a citizen-led campaign introduced an environmental issue to the policy agenda. These findings confirm that specific outreach tactics—in tandem with grassroots mobilization—provide a viable, replicable framework for future environmental advocacy and biosecurity policy development. Ultimately, the research highlights that safeguarding Canada's soil health and ecological integrity requires an adaptive policy framework that values public participation as a supportive component of national environmental security.