Changing Urban Waterfronts

Drawing together researchers from social scientific, humanities and scientific disciplines, this project investigates Toronto's waterfront during the past hundred years. The project uses the ideas of social nature and political ecology to study the waterfront, a special place where land and water meet, as an interactive space in which the social and the natural are constantly remaking one another. That is, urban waterfronts are always both social and natural and need to be studied as such. The overarching question our research addresses is: How have various discourses and practices combined to produce and regulate Toronto's waterfront as a socio-economic and ecological space? We approach this question by observing that during the last few decades, policy makers, planners and developers have looked to waterfronts in North American and European cities as sites for massive urban revitalization projects that contribute to expanding the roles of metropolitan regions and the formation of new urban hierarchies in a globalized economy.

ACCESS TO DOCUMENTS IN THE "PROJECT IMAGES AND NOTES" COLLECTION IS RESTRICTED TO MEMBERS OF THE CHANGING URBAN WATERFRONTS RESEARCH GROUP.

The "Project Images and Notes" collection is the private workspace for members of the Changing Urban Waterfronts research group. Access cannot be granted to non-project members.