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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    Barriers and Facilitators to Autism Diagnosis for Transgender, Non-Binary, and Gender Diverse People
    (2026-03) Hart, Rory; Morrow, Marina; Ahmad, Farah
    Transgender, non-binary, and gender diverse (hereafter ‘trans’) people are eleven times more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) than the general population (Kallitsounaki & Williams, 2023). A study by Warrier et al. (2020) found that trans people are more likely than cisgender people to suspect that they might have undiagnosed autism. Using semi-structured interviews with five autistic and trans adults in Ontario, Canada, this exploratory study sought to identify some of the barriers and facilitators trans autistic people face in accessing an autism diagnosis. Using inductive and deductive content analysis, I identified the following themes from participant responses: masculine and feminine presentations of autism; informational and institutional erasure; masking; cost of assessment; clinician bias; hesitancy to disclose one’s trans identity; fear of being outed to one’s parents; and co-occurring diagnoses camouflaging autistic symptoms.
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    Permitted Subsidies: The Costs of Subsidizing Private Automobile Storage in Public Space
    (2026-08-31) Wener, Nathan; Rolheiser, Lyndsey
    This major research paper aims to understand how the City of Toronto administers its residential on-street permit parking program and asks what costs; economic, environmental, social, or otherwise, the city incurs through the operation of the program. This research paper approaches the question through a mixed methods methodology foregrounding a quantitative data analysis to draw associations between permits per person and other variable such as income and mode share through a quantile regression analysis. The research was further supplemented by interviews with professional planners and engineers working both in private and public sector to provide a framework of the current state of on-street parking and residential on-street permit parking programs (ROPPPs). The findings from this research make methodological, empirical, and theoretical contributions to the existing literature that can aid in a better understanding of the challenges facing ROPPPs. The quantile regression analysis found that the effect of median income, public transit mode share, and active mode share varies across quantiles of permits per person with public transit mode share having the strongest effect on permits per person. Participant interviews provided an outline of the challenges facing ROPPPs and on-street parking policy more generally along with the myriad solutions municipalities are implementing to mitigating these challenges. The conclusion puts forth three policy pathways with increasing emphasis on the reallocation of space on the street for those outside of motor vehicles.
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    “The Cost to Build Per Square Foot” Planning for Direct Action for Citizenship in Toronto’s Downtown East
    (2026-08-31) Weir, Ian; Lehrer, Ute
    This paper attempts to discuss the role planning plays at recognizing or denying citizenship within Toronto’s downtown east. Currently, housing is analyzed and addressed through a lens of crisis, which justifies supply side rationale through planning process and political decisions ideologically rooted in the classical economics of supply and demand. Crisis urbanism greatly benefits private capital and its political enablers while exacerbating existing urban social inequalities. The case study focuses on a nearly two-decade long struggle between community activists, developers, and Toronto city council in deciding the best use of the land at 214-230 Sherbourne Street in Toronto’s downtown east. The paper historically situates a community driven development plan for social housing at 214-230 Sherbourne St., a proposal based on community desires and needs that runs counter and disparate to surrounding profit-based market development. The paper closes with a discussion on 230 Fightback’s campaign to continue the struggle for social housing at that location.
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    Governing Green Infrastructure: Multi-Level Dynamics Shaping Climate Resilience and Equity in Toronto
    (2026-08-31) Walsh, John; Winfield, Mark
    Green infrastructure has emerged as a central planning approach for addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and urban livability. However, its growing popularity has also resulted in considerable conceptual ambiguity, as governments and practitioners define and implement the concept in different ways. This paper examines how differing definitions and governance arrangements across federal, provincial, regional, and municipal levels influence the implementation of green infrastructure in Toronto and considers the implications for climate resilience and equity. Drawing on Urban Political Ecology, spatial justice, and the broader literature, the research develops a working definition of green infrastructure that emphasizes climate resilience, equitable distribution, and conceptual clarity. A classification system of green infrastructure typologies is used alongside the working definition to systematically evaluate government publications and assess how each level defines green infrastructure, employs related terminology, identifies qualifying typologies, and frames the intended functions and benefits of the approach. Illustrative examples of intergovernmental projects are subsequently examined to demonstrate how differing conceptualizations shape implementation in practice. The findings reveal variation and incompleteness in how green infrastructure is defined, inconsistent relationships with overlapping concepts such as natural infrastructure, nature-based solutions, and low impact development, and minimal guidance on its physical forms and functions. This ambiguity constrains the range of features that can be included and ultimately limits the scope of ecosystem services that can be realized through implementation. These differences complicate collaboration and create uncertainty regarding eligible interventions and intended outcomes. The paper concludes that improving conceptual clarity, while preserving sufficient flexibility for local contexts, would strengthen coordination across governments and support more equitable and climate-resilient implementation of green infrastructure in Toronto and across Canada.
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    Visions for a Robust Canadian National School Lunch Policy: Lessons from Brazil
    (2026-08-31) Ventura Sura, Andrea; Stiegman, Martha
    What can Canada learn from Brazil's Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE) to build a stronger, more equitable National School Food Program (NSFP)? This paper argues that well-intentioned national programs can still reproduce colonial and inequitable logics if they aren't designed with care. Using a threefold theoretical framework – policy transfer and lessondrawing theory (Dolowitz & Marsh, 2000; Rose, 1991) and food sovereignty theory (Wittman, Desmarais, & Wiebe, 2010; Holt-Giménez et al., 2012; Coté, 2016), held throughout by a decolonial critique of extractive knowledge transfer (Rivera Cusicanqui, 2012) – this paper compares Brazil's PNAE, a decades-long, rights-based, and universally accessible program, with Canada's newly emerging NSFP. PNAE is treated here not as a blueprint but as a source of transferable design principles, deliberately reversing the usual assumption that policy expertise flows from the Global North to the Global South. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with nine food policy advocates, dietitians, educators, and researchers across five Canadian provinces, along with a comparative literature review, this study identifies eight recurring themes – funding, governance and accountability, universality, procurement, cultural relevance, community authority, food literacy, and political durability – that shape both the promise and the limits of Canada's program as it stands. The findings suggest the NSFP currently reflects a politics of aspiration rather than obligation, and that PNAE's most instructive lessons aren't technical but structural: legal enshrinement of the right to food, mandated local procurement, community governance with real authority, and integration with broader social protection. This paper contributes to a still developing literature on Global South-to-North policy learning in school food systems.