Location: Hybrid | Woodside Hall, 杏吧原创 Dominion-Chalmers Centre.
All ages are welcome to attend.
Date and Time: Monday, April 22nd, 2024, 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm. 

Please register below for this event.

Zoom Link
Time: Apr 22, 2024, 07:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Meeting ID: 944 6759 7472

COVID protocols will be in effect for in-person attendees, and masks will be required. Hand sanitizing stations will be available. Access: ASL, AI Captioning and Visual Notetaking will be available for in-person and online attendees.

Description: Infrastructure barriers, inequitable urban planning, and discriminatory bylaws and policies disproportionately impact and prevent marginalized communities, particularly those who are poor, disabled, or racialized, from fully participating in urban life. As a result, Ottawa is home to some of the most pressing social issues, including food scarcity, inaccessible transit, housing insecurity, police violence and surveillance, a poisoned drug supply, and more. 

(DJCCC) invites you to engage with some of Ottawa’s emerging and established disability justice activists and artists striving to make the city a more accessible and just environment for all its inhabitants. Disability justice centres the transformative role of disability politics, cultures, and communities to collectively dismantle ableism and build, through cross-movement solidarity, more accessible and socially just relations in the national capital region and beyond. Join us as we explore what it means to transform our city through the lens of disability justice.

Panelists or Invited Speakers: Robin Browne (613-819 Black Hub), Kenzie McCurdy (StopGap Ottawa), Dr. Menna Agha (杏吧原创 University) and Cameron Jette (Disability Drag Collective)

Robin Browne started his Blacktivism in the late ’80s as a student organizing to get Montreal’s Concordia University to divest from apartheid South Africa. His work with the focuses on addressing systemic anti-Black racism and everyday white supremacy. His work is guided by a slightly modified version of the well known Margaret Mead quote: “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed individuals [SUING PEOPLE] can change the world. In fact, it’s the only thing that ever has.鈥�

Kenzie McCurdy, who has been making ramps as part of the core organizing team of Ottawa since 2016.

Dr. Menna Agha (杏吧原创 University) is an Assistant professor of design and spatial justice at 杏吧原创 University, where she is leading the Architecture Action Lab, a community service laboratory that aims to promote architecture activism in public space. The Lab has worked on several community service projects, such as the Public Foods community fridge and pantry in Centertown, Ottawa, and Wellness Hub for young women+ ageing out of the foster system. Currently, the Lab is working with the community in Russell Heights on the design and construction of a public kitchen and play area. Before coming to Ottawa, She coordinated a spatial justice agenda at the Flanders Architecture Institute in Belgium. In 2019/2020, she was the Spatial Justice Fellow and a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Oregon. Menna holds a Ph.D. in Architecture from the University of Antwerp and a Master of Arts in Gender and Design from K枚ln International School of Design. She is a third-generation displaced Fadicha Nubian, a legacy that infuses her research interests in race, gender, space, and territory. Among her publications are: Nubia still exists, The Utility of the Nostalgic Space; The Non-work of the Unimportant; and Liminal Publics, Marginal Resistance.

Cameron Jette (he/they) is a trans, neurodivergent and disabled drag performer, multidisciplinary artist, small business owner and community event planner. With his Bachelors of Arts in Human Rights and Social Justice from 杏吧原创 University, and nearly a decade of non-profit experience in so-called Ottawa, Cameron is passionate about disability justice, anti-zionist activism, community engagement, program development, and event planning.

In October 2022, as his drag alter-ego Boy Vey, Cameron founded the Disability Drag Collective, a global collective of disabled drag performers working to create change in their communities. He has also recently began planning diverse, community-focused events as Wheelie Productions, where he focuses on creating spaces that focus on accessibility, and disability justice.

Discussants: Megan Linton and Adele Ruhdorfer

Megan Linton (she/her) is a researcher, writer, and creator of the podcast. Her research uses critical disability & carceral studies to challenge disability institutionalization and their profit motives. Her writing has been published widely in , the , , and the . Megan is a doctoral student at 杏吧原创 University in the Department of Sociology & Political Economy, where she is also a member of the Disability Justice and Crip Culture Collaboratory.

Adele Ruhdorfer is an emerging writer, researcher, and curator with a creative practice centred on photography, lens-based, digital media, and collage. Drawing upon her own lived experiences as a neurodiverse and chronically ill person, she focuses on the embodied creative practices of disabled, mad, and sick artists in her research and curatorial practice. Her research complicates the definition of Disability Arts beyond a politics of visibility, to include non-representational, abstract, and immersive art. Focus is given to artists using an aesthetics of error in their lens-based, time-based, chance-based, digital media, and/or glitch art, highlighting how technological relationships extend their body鈥檚 capacity for creative expression, while remaining grounded in their embodied experiences and lived crip knowledge.

Event Organizers and DJCCC Co-Directors: Dr. Kelly Fritsch and Dr. Fady Shanouda

Dr. Kelly Fritsch is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at 杏吧原创 University. She is cross-appointed to the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation and the Institute of Political Economy and is co-director of the Disability Justice and Crip Culture Collaboratory. She is co-author of We Move Together (2021), a children鈥檚 book about ableism, accessibility, and disability culture, and co-editor of Disability Injustice: Confronting Criminalization in Canada (2022) and Keywords for Radicals: The Contested Vocabulary of Late-Capitalist Struggle (2016). 

Dr. Fady Shanouda is an assistant professor at the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation (FIST) at 杏吧原创 University and co-director of the . His scholarly contributions lie at the theoretical and pedagogical intersections of disability, mad, and fat studies and include socio-historical examinations that surface the interconnections of colonialism, racism, ableism, sanism, fatphobia and queer- and transphobia. 

The post Healthy Cities | Disability Justice in the City on April 22nd appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

By: Emma Sleigh, FASS Ambassador 2022-2023

Why does high school feel like a prison to so many students? Is that prolonged stress worth graduating for? Why is school even necessary?

These are some of the difficult questions I wrestled with when I was a high school student, which I was reminded of while attending the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences鈥� Healthy Cities: Back to School in the City event on September 27.

In high school, I moved in between different alternate forms of schooling. I was desperate to just get school over with. I could never visualize a learning environment that I could tolerate, let alone enjoy.

When I was finally introduced to the Enriched Support Program (ESP) at 杏吧原创 University, after meetings with a chain of guidance counselors and supports, I felt a new kind of chapter in my life emerge. Interestingly, it was the connections I made with those guidance counselors, and now a whole community of ESP staff and students, that truly ignited the desire I鈥檝e always had to learn. With those communities, I gained more than just a few skills, but actual opportunities to create those engaging environments that I couldn鈥檛 quite visualize before.

The journey of connections I鈥檝e made hasn鈥檛 stopped there. I find my life has become a sort of cycle of motivation, learning, unlearning, and action. Humans are extremely socially dependent and community is always at the center of this cycle, fueling each step of the journey. The integrating and privileging of social bonds within education was reinforced and crystalized as a kind of revolutionary, plausible reality when I listened in on the Healthy Cities roundtable discussion between three 杏吧原创 professors 鈥� Drs. Julie Garlen, Leila Angod, and Maria Rogers 鈥� and elementary school principal Sherwyn Solomon.

I came into the event as a now senior ESP mentor and a FASS Ambassador, ready to absorb as much information as I could. The three panelists and moderator added new layers of reflection onto the preliminary ideas I had. All speakers gave a different approach to their critique of the impacts and the resulting opportunities that the pandemic has created for students, teachers, parents, and so on. One reply by Mr. Solomon about the devastating statistics on racialized children highlighted the inherently discriminatory nature of today鈥檚 schooling.

The greatest message I took away from the speakers was this:

As an anthropology major, this is especially important to me as I learn how to decolonize my mind to better understand my place in relation to others on the traditional and never ceded territory of the Algonquin nation.

Increasing the quality and amount of social connectedness found in schools needs to be a primary goal of education. Just like when I was an ESP student, I find the most diversity, the most collaboration, and, consequently, the greatest successes to occur in spaces of community and support.

In these spaces, I must acknowledge that I am a white, middle-class, able-bodied, and cis-gendered female and that I鈥檝e been privileged to even have the opportunity to go to school my whole life. At the same time, if someone with as much privilege as me found school so intolerable, it only makes sense that there are larger systems of power creating a space that is fundamentally anti-human or at least anti-collaboration.

Altogether, the event felt like another stepping stone towards building the kind of academic spaces I strive to belong to.

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杏吧原创 the Author

Samphe Ballamingie

A senior undergraduate student, Samphe Ballamingie is completing a directed studies credit in Sociology, working with Dr. Tonya Davidson. After each Healthy Cities panel, she will produce summaries of the panelists’ contributions, including select supplementary readings.

Ballamingie’s recent accomplishments include winning the Extra Court Award at the Mobile Film Festival in Paris for her short film and completing a 2019 Summer Research Internship studying the role of public libraries and innovative practices at

Ensuring Adequate, Affordable Housing in the City of Ottawa

On February 24, 2020, panelists City Councillor Catherine McKenney, Dr. Abra Adamo, and Josh Hawley gathered at the 杏吧原创 Dominion-Chalmers Centre for the third Healthy Cities panel, Housing in the City, sponsored by the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Dr. Aaron Doyle, a Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, moderated the panel, asking panelists to reflect on how the city of Ottawa might develop healthier and more effective strategies to deal with our shared social problems of poverty, housing insecurity, and chronic homelessness. Doyle introduced the panel by bringing to the fore Ontario鈥檚 plans for a new jail in Ottawa, a project that would cost the provincial government a staggering sum of between $500 million to $1 billion. Homelessness often exists in a vicious cycle with incarceration, given the criminalization of poverty and addiction, and, as Ottawa faces what many have characterized as a 鈥渉ousing epidemic鈥�, Doyle suggested that the funds allocated for a new jail would be better spent on a more radical and comprehensive housing strategy.

The first panelist, , Councillor of Ottawa鈥檚 Somerset Ward, described elements of some dire housing situations for many in Ottawa. More and more people are living in shelters and experiencing chronic homelessness, Indigenous people are overrepresented within this population; since April 2019, six hundred women and children fleeing abuse have been turned away from shelters due to lack of space, and over seven hundred children in Ottawa are currently living in motels. Councillor McKenney explained that this crisis emerged over a long period of time, and so it became easy for us to ignore Ottawa鈥檚 homelessness crisis; they explained that people are dying because municipalities are failing them, and they asked: 鈥淲hat do we do next?鈥� In fact, McKenney put forward a motion 鈥� unanimously endorsed by City Council in January 鈥� declaring a state of emergency on housing and homelessness in Ottawa, in hopes of influencing 2020 Ottawa budgetary decisions and appealing to other levels of government for support.

McKenney explained that in developing its 10-Year Housing and Homelessness Plan (City of Ottawa, 2018), Ottawa sought to create a robust strategy with serious, measurable targets and actions. They cited many steps the city must take to eliminate chronic homelessness and housing insecurity, including (but not limited to): better support for people emerging from chronic homelessness; and stronger 鈥渉ousing first鈥� policies aimed at providing people with immediate, independent housing. While scholars such as Katz et al. (2017) argue that 鈥渉ousing first鈥� strategies prove successful in providing shelter, they echo McKenney鈥檚 call for better supports and treatments for those receiving immediate housing (p. 140). In order for 鈥渉ousing first鈥� strategies to succeed, a comprehensive suite of economic, social and physical supports must also be established.

McKenney further argued that Ottawa must reduce core housing need by fifty percent. The common yardstick of housing affordability is that families should spend no more than thirty percent of their income on housing (though, as some scholars point out even this simple measure can be further nuanced) (see Herbert et al., 2018). McKenney says they regularly receive emails from families who spend more than thirty percent of their income on rent and risk losing their homes. The city must also maintain and repair its rental stock, to avoid painful and disruptive evictions that push people out of their communities during renovations and development, fraying social connections in the process. McKenney stressed the need to develop mixed-income communities for cities to be healthy.

The second panelist, Dr. Abra Adamo, Advisor of Housing Policy and Research at the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, has over a decade of experience in urban planning related to housing and homelessness policy, largely focused on community partnerships in academic spaces at the federal level. Adamo described the myriad complexities of housing.  First, she provided a more fulsome definitions of housing affordability (i.e., beyond the 30 percent rule cited above): not only must people be able to pay rent, but they must also have enough income to afford other necessities of life. Second, Adamo asserted that while the notion of housing adequacy remains subjective, adequacy generally means a person’s home must meet their unique physical and cultural needs. Finally, Adamo stressed that housing must address the critical vulnerabilities people experience; whether they are fleeing violence, or establishing themselves in Canada, we must offer housing that caters to these more challenging situations.

Adamo also questioned whether the city of Ottawa builds adequately along a spectrum of possibilities, arguing that most of the city鈥檚 development consists of either condominiums or (at the other end of the continuum) detached, single-family, suburban homes. She affirmed the need for more size-appropriate housing types, like duplexes/triplexes or low-rise apartments, as well as different types of tenure, not just market housing but also affordable rental housing, subsidized housing, etc. In her doctoral thesis, Adamo (2012) described Canada as a (sub)urban nation (p. 4), and noted that a rise in suburbanization necessarily affected the socio-ecological landscape of Canada鈥檚 city centres. This shift towards suburbanization has forced city planners to reconsider what a healthy and sustainable city looks like in the 21st century, encouraging them to implement 鈥榮mart growth鈥� strategies for urban development that result in greater density and diversity of housing choices, which, in turn, confine growth to protect sensitive ecological terrain (Adamo, 2012, p. 7).

Our neighborhoods must be designed with smart growth strategies in mind, implementing 鈥渕ixed use urban development practices鈥� (Adamo, 2012, p. 7). Housing that is disconnected from services, schools, community spaces, and other social and transportation infrastructure leads to unhealthy communities, and in a city like Ottawa, where the vacancy rate lies at 1.8 percent, many are forced to live in places that are disconnected from services. Ottawa must design neighborhoods that are mixed use, with a full range of services available, and where reliable public transportation can reliably deliver you to your destination in a reasonable amount of time.

The final panelist, Josh Hawley, a PhD candidate in Sociology at 杏吧原创, who grew up in the Herongate community, has worked tirelessly with Herongate residents to fight the mass evictions jointly enforced by the development company Timbercreek and the City of Ottawa. Hawley began by boldly declaring: 鈥淭here is no housing crisis, rather we are experiencing the continual effects of colonialism and capitalism.鈥� He argued that there are no market solutions that will mitigate evictions and the housing crisis, and that the only way to affect change is through freeing the land from the logics of capitalism and colonialism. Hawley asserted that people have the power to stand up against landlords and the owning class, arguing for a shift in how we relate to each other and to the land settlers are unwelcome guests on. As individuals, we don鈥檛 have much power, but when we have trust and support in the people around us, we can come together to act collectively.

During the question-and-answer period, Dr. Tonya Davidson asked Hawley: 鈥淲hat do you think of rent strikes?鈥� (A rent strike is a form of protest against high rents or inadequate repairs or other grievances that involves tenants withholding their rent until their demands are met.) Hawley described an example of an effective rent strike in Toronto. When Nuspor Investments, the landlord of 1251 King Street West in Parkdale, introduced a 3.4% rent increase, residents protested in the form of a rent strike (Tierney, 2018). After nearly four months of withholding rent, the residents were victorious, as Nuspor Investments lowered the rent increase (Tierney, 2018). Hawley believes actions like rent strikes are essential to securing our right to affordable and adequate housing.

The Housing in the City panel brought to the fore a nuanced understanding of what it means to have healthy, adequate housing in a sustainable city. The lessons presented by Councillor Catherine McKenney, Dr. Abra Adamo, and Josh Hawley prove that Ottawa in particular, and Canada more broadly, must radically re-envision adequate and affordable housing to eliminate the growing homelessness crisis within our cities.

Photos from Housing in the City

Reference List

Katz, A. S., Zerger, S., & Hwang, S. W. (2017). Housing first the conversation: Discourse, policy and the limits of the possible. Critical Public Health, 27(1): 139-147.

Adamo, A. (2012). Intensifying inequality in the 鈥榮ustainable city鈥�: A political ecology of 鈥榮mart growth鈥� in an era of neoliberal urban governance in the City of Ottawa, Canada. Doctoral Thesis, 杏吧原创 University.  Ottawa, ON.  Retrieved from:

City of Ottawa. (2018) 10-Year Housing and Homelessness Plan. Retrieved from:

Herbert, C. Hermann. A. & McCue, D. (2018, September). Measuring housing affordability: Assessing the 30 percent of income standard. Joint Centre for Housing Studies of Harvard. Boston, MA: President and Fellows of Harvard College. Retrieved from:

Tierney, A. (2018, March 27). Group of Toronto striking renters declare victory. Vice. Retrieved from:

Willing, J. (2020, January 29). City council declares a housing and homelessness emergency.  Retrieved from:

The post Housing in the City Recap, Samphe Ballamingie appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

杏吧原创 the Author

Samphe Ballamingie

A senior undergraduate student, Samphe Ballamingie is completing a directed studies credit in Sociology, working with Dr. Tonya Davidson. After each Healthy Cities panel, she will produce summaries of the panelists’ contributions, including select supplementary readings.

Ballamingie’s recent accomplishments include winning the Extra Court Award at the Mobile Film Festival in Paris for her short film and completing a 2019 Summer Research Internship studying the role of public libraries and innovative practices at

Fostering Urban Resilience for the Approaching Climate Crisis

Myriad potential solutions to the contemporary climate crisis can be found in our urban centres.  On January 14, 2020, 杏吧原创鈥檚 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences hosted a panel on Climate Change and Sustainability in the City at 杏吧原创鈥檚 Dominion-Chalmers Centre.  Moderator Dr. David Hugill was joined by expert panelists, Drs. Elisabeth Gilmore, Zoe Todd, and Sheryl-Ann Simpson to discuss the question, 鈥淲hat makes a healthy city in 2020?鈥�

According to community researchers Claire Napawan, Sheryl-Ann Simpson, and Brett Snyder (2017), the climate crisis we collectively face is now widely recognized, but the general public lacks urgency in finding solutions (p. 52).  Psychological distance refers to one鈥檚 detachment between themselves and a particular thing, person, or event.  This distance creates a buffer between the reality in North America and climate catastrophes around the globe (Napawan et al., 2017, p. 53).

While devastating images of climate-induced crises like the bushfires in Australia or flooding in the Marshall Islands abound, these crises can feel distant and surreal when displayed on a 2D cellphone or laptop screen.  Even when the North American public recognizes these climate emergencies for what they are 鈥� nightmarish situations for people right now and frightening harbingers of things to come 鈥� they can feel overwhelming, and organizing can feel similarly hopeless (Napawan et al., 2017, p. 53).  As North American cities strive for greater adaptation and resilience, they must engage the public in a call to action that is future- and solutions-oriented (Napawan, 2017, p. 53).

The first panelist, Elisabeth Gilmore, cited the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)鈥檚 Working Groups 2: Impacts, Adaptation, and Vulnerability to stress that the climate crisis is current and urgent.  The narrative is shifting, she explained, from 鈥淭his would be the effect of climate change,鈥� to, 鈥淲e are seeing climate change now.鈥�  Gilmore believes cities are a critical site through which people can catalyze action, network and share knowledge.  As administrative and local officials educate themselves on climate change and the corresponding need for greater community resilience, a reaction to the climate crisis becomes institutionalized. Gilmore is hopeful that immediate action towards the climate crisis is underway.  She describes the IPCC as not just watching the climate crisis unfold, but also taking action as an autonomous and organized institution.  She believes finding solutions to the climate crisis should not feel overwhelming, and looks to a city-level response for creative and collaborative action.  Citizens must hold their municipal governments responsible for keeping them informed and providing the tools to act.  If cities think systematically about which structural vulnerabilities are amplified because of climate change, risk would be significantly mitigated.  Gilmore asserts that change begins when the public is empowered, and she believes even a little action can go a long way towards creating more resilient communities.

Next, Zoe Todd reminded the audience that the City of Ottawa exists on unceded Algonquin territory, and its governance is neither reciprocal nor ethical.  Around the world, Indigenous communities (comprising 5% of the world鈥檚 population) continue to experience genocidal impacts on their laws, languages, cultures and lands, yet Indigenous-managed lands protect 80 per cent of Earth鈥檚 species and biodiversity.  Todd asserted: 鈥淚ndigenous governance is what is protecting biodiversity.鈥�  As our cities brace for impending climate catastrophe, Indigenous knowledge and governance must be recognized not only as valid, but also for its potential to counter principles of extraction, domination, accumulation of capital, and hegemonic control.  A study conducted by the University of British Columbia showed that Indigenous-managed and co-managed lands in Australia, Brazil, and Canada had the highest levels of biodiversity (Schuster et al., 2019, p. 1).

Fostering and protecting Indigenous-managed lands are central to the protection of our planet (Klein, 2019).  The land, air, and water our cities occupy and impact are not our own 鈥� we share them with first peoples, future generations, and non-human species.  The dismissal of Indigenous governance around the globe results in direct degradation of the earth.  As Klein (2019) posits, 鈥淭he violation of indigenous rights [..] is central to the violation of our collective right to a livable planet.鈥�  If our municipal government took seriously the knowledge of Algonquin people, and governed Ottawa as such, our relationship to the land would change dramatically.  Todd affirmed we must look to Indigenous law in a non-appropriative way to address matters of adaptation and resilience.

Indigenous law opposes the very principles that implicitly govern North American cities 鈥� principles of domination, extraction, accumulation and control.  Capitalism generates wealth inequality and environmental degradation, leaving specific populations more vulnerable to the impending climate crisis.  Sheryl-Ann Simpson鈥檚 research brings to the fore the uneven distribution of vulnerabilities across communities in Oakland, California.  #OurChangingClimate, a project launched by Simpson and her colleagues Claire Napawan and Brett Snyder, employed participatory methods to engage youth living in vulnerable pockets of Oakland.

Under the hashtag #OurChangingClimate, youth shared photos that captured parts of their communities that held particular significance.  These social media posts were complemented by in-person workshops, before and during the online campaign, where broader themes were established and discussed (Napawan et al., 2017, p. 55).  By framing the climate crisis in terms of immediate and local impacts, this project shortened the psychological distance for youth, who engaged with the built environment and identified vulnerabilities on a place-specific, personal level (Napawan et al., 2017, p. 60).  Napawan, Simpson, and Snyder (2017) describe community resilience as 鈥渢he ability for a community to respond to change and disruption while still maintaining its general function, structures, form and identity鈥� (p. 51).  They argue for an approach to climate resilience that engages youth and the broader public.

The 鈥渃ontemporary climate crisis,鈥� as Simpson refers to it, threatens much of our society, but Simpson remains excited by the prospect for change.  She elaborated: 鈥淢aybe we will stop believing this narrative [of perpetual growth], and stop building our cities based on this premise.鈥�  She explained that the cost of living in cities is increasing, forcing people out of the urban core, but the climate crisis has the potential to make us reconsider what a healthy city looks like.  It also has the power to encourage us to find innovative solutions and implement them immediately.

Reflecting back on the knowledge shared by Dr. Zoe Todd, it is essential that governments recognize that White supremacy, colonization, and capitalism established the laws and practices that led to the current climate crisis.  During the panel Todd stated, 鈥淵ou cannot be the doctor, if you are the disease.鈥�  Our local and national governments cannot be the 鈥榙octor鈥� when they are the disease.  In other words, solutions to the climate crisis do not live in capitalist, imperialist principles embodied by local and national governments; we must in turn acknowledge Indigenous laws as real and necessary in tackling the climate crisis and bolstering adaptation and resilience within our communities.  By recognizing vulnerabilities within our communities, there is the potential to rethink our cities with resilience and adaptation in mind.

杏吧原创鈥檚 Faculty of Arts and Social Science鈥檚 first Healthy Cities panel, Climate Change and Sustainability in the City, provided valuable insight into what makes a healthy, resilient, and adaptive city in 2020.  Elizabeth Gilmore offered a deeper understanding of the IPCC鈥檚 changing narrative towards one that is more urgent and action-oriented.  Zoe Todd asserted Indigenous law as central to deconstructing capitalist principles which implicitly govern North American cities, and argued that municipalities must recognize Indigenous governance as integral to creating healthy cities.  Finally, Sheryl-Ann Simpson explored how a community-based, solutions-forward approach can engage those living in communities vulnerable to the climate crisis.  She also highlighted how the climate crisis poses an opportunity for cities to reject a perpetual growth mindset, and focus instead on fostering greater resilience. The public has the potential to recognize vulnerabilities within their communities and effect change on a municipal level.  As North American cities confront the looming effects of the climate crisis, it is time we rethink what a healthy city looks like in the coming decade.

References

Klein, N. (2019). The Amazon is on fire 鈥� indigenous rights can help put it out. Boston Globe. Retrieved from:

Napawan, N., Simpson, S., & Snyder, B. (2017). Engaging Youth in Climate Resilience Planning with Social Media: Lessons from #OurChangingClimate. Urban Planning, 2(4), 51鈥�63.

Schuster, R., Germain, R., Bennett, J., Reo, N., & Arcese, P. (2019). Vertebrate biodiversity on indigenous-managed lands in Australia, Brazil, and Canada equals that in protected areas. Environmental Science and Policy, 101, 1鈥�6.

The post Climate Change and Sustainability in the City Recap, Samphe Ballamingie appeared first on Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences.

杏吧原创 the Author

Samphe Ballamingie

A senior undergraduate student, Samphe Ballamingie is completing a directed studies credit in Sociology, working with Dr. Tonya Davidson. After each Healthy Cities panel, she will produce summaries of the panelists’ contributions, including select supplementary readings.

Ballamingie’s recent accomplishments include winning the Extra Court Award at the Mobile Film Festival in Paris for her short film and completing a 2019 Summer Research Internship studying the role of public libraries and innovative practices at libraries in northern European cities.

Appreciating the Benefits of Nature in the City

On January 14, 2020, 杏吧原创鈥檚 Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences hosted its second Healthy Cities panel on Nature in the City at the 杏吧原创 Dominion-Chalmers Centre.  Moderator Dr. Patricia Ballamingie was joined by expert panelists, Drs. Joanna Dean, Paul Villeneuve, and John Zelenski to discuss our entanglements with trees, and the myriad benefits of exposure to nature.  Dr. Ballamingie framed the discussion by posing three critical questions: (1) 鈥淗ow can we make our patterns of urban development more conducive to the protection of wildlife and biodiversity? (2) How can we build cities that both mitigate and adapt to climate change, and what role does nature play in this regard? (3) How can we ensure that access to nature and greenspace is accessible to all, including marginalized populations?鈥�

The first panelist, Dr. Joanna Dean, an Associate Professor in the Department of History at 杏吧原创 University, explored the history of our relationship with the more-than-human world.  Her book, tentatively titled The Trouble with Trees, uses historical anecdotes to tease apart the myriad pitfalls that come with incorporating trees into the urban landscape through outdoor parks, arboretums, and street planters.

Dean relayed three historical Ottawa-based stories to trouble our relationship with trees.  First, she told the story of the American Elms that lined the streets of Guigues and King Edward Avenues in Ottawa鈥檚 Lowertown in 1938. As the trees grew, it became obvious they had been planted too closely together.  The natural environment was encroaching on the built environment, and so the horticultural society lobbied for the city to prune and cut down the American Elms.  Next, Dean described how Manitoba Maples were planted in Lowertown throughout the 1940s – 60s.  She argued that while these trees were 鈥渧isually attractive鈥�, they proved 鈥渆cologically unsound鈥�, 鈥渦ntidy鈥�, 鈥渟hort lived鈥�, and were ultimately deemed 鈥渨eed-trees鈥�.  When Ottawa lost a swatch of elm trees in Lowertown, the Manitoba Maples sprung up.  In her final story, Dean described how the Centennial Crabapple trees were planted in 1967 in a 鈥渨ar on ugliness.鈥� While the trees in full blossom were beautiful in the spring, people loathed the crabapple fruits that dropped to the ground in the fall.  The trees also proved susceptible to disease.  In the end, in spite of their beauty, they were perceived as more of a nuisance than an ornamental joy.

In planning a sustainable, healthy city, Dean asserted how important it is to understand the trouble that trees can cause.  For those living in metropolitan areas, our knowledge of trees is based on the urban trees that we interact with in city centres (Dean, 2005, p. 46).  In her book, Dean (2005) writes: 鈥淲e understand the boreal forest through the trees in our backyard鈥� (p. 46).  Planners of a healthy city must understand both the benefits and potential disruptions associated with urban trees, and integrate trees strategically into the cityscape in ways that allow them to coexist with the built environment.

The next panelist, Dr. Paul Villeneuve, Professor in the Department of Health Sciences at 杏吧原创 University, discussed the health benefits of urban greenery and exposure to nature.  Villeneuve cited a healthcare study by Ulrich (1984) called 鈥淩oom with a View鈥�, which looked at two sets of patients recovering from gallbladder surgery: one set of patients was given a room with a view of trees, and the other was given a room with a view of bricks.  The study found that the patients who had  rooms with views of trees reported faster recovery times than those who did not.

In fact, Villeneuve argued, nature provides a myriad of health benefits.  Trees, shrubs, and bushes reduce air pollution; provide cooling and shelter from UV rays; absorb noise; counter stress; enhance social networks; and increase opportunities for physical activity.  Researchers can measure greenness in health studies by surveying satellite imagery or exploring Google street view. Villeneuve explained that through these methods, researchers can measure the amount of exposure to greenness a person experiences throughout their day.  He also described a study that mapped environmental exposures (such as noise, nitrogen dioxide, volatile organic compounds, and black, carbon ultrafine particles) around the Central Experimental Farm, noting that the areas closest to the farm had both lower particulate exposure and lower temperatures than other areas around Ottawa鈥檚 downtown core.

The final panelist, Dr. John Zelenski, Professor of Psychology and Director of the 杏吧原创 University Happiness Laboratory, proposed a sentiment that will surely resonate for many: nature makes us happy.  Zelenski described how humans evolved to coexist with nature, and so, it makes sense that living amongst greenery, or even in view of greenery, would improve our quality of life.  He cited prominent American biologist and naturalist E.O. Wilson鈥檚 (1986) biophilia hypothesis that we all desire innately to connect to other living things.  According to Zelenski, our connection to nature is subject to individual differences, as each person鈥檚 perception of nature is unique; however, he argued that across every perspective, spending time in nature is linked to improved wellbeing and happiness.

Zelenski also described the psychological benefits that playing in nature has for children. He described a study that included two sets of children: one set spent time at the Aviation Museum, while the other set attended a forest school. The children who were immersed in nature played cooperatively, proved more generous with their peers, showed a greater appreciation for nature, and expressed the desire to protect the environment (Dopko et al., 2019, p. 137).  This study offers strong evidence to support the value of incorporating forest schools (and other forms of outdoor education) into every school鈥檚 curriculum to ensure equitable access to greenery for children regardless of socio-economic background.

I left the panel with a desire to go for a walk through the Arboretum 鈥� to contemplate the need to think deeply and carefully about trees, and ponder the benefits of thoughtfully planning green space and nature in the urban environment.

Reference List

Dean, J. (2005). “Said tree is a veritable nuisance”: Ottawa’s street trees 1869-1939. Urban History Review, 34(1), 46+.

Dean, J., Ingram, D. & Sethna, C. (Eds.) (2017). Animal metropolis: Histories of human-animal relations in urban Canada. Calgary, AB: University of Calgary Press.

Dopko, R. L., Capaldi, C., & Zelenski, J. M. (2019). The psychological and social benefits of a nature experience for children: A preliminary investigation. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 63, 134 – 138.

Ulrich, R. S. (1984). View through a window may influence recovery from surgery. Science, 224(4647), 420鈥�421.

Wilson, E.O. (1986). Biophilia. Boston, MA: Harvard University Press.

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