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CITY Holds its 2019 Annual General Meeting

Background of a city skyline with bold, white text in a black border reading "THE CITY INSTITUTE'S ANNUAL GENERAL MEETING." The bottom left and right have RSVP, and date, time and venue information respectively.

On April 15th2019, the City Institute held its Annual General Meeting for all CITY affiliates to discuss the institute’s progress over the 2018-2019 academic year and its future endeavours. Director Linda Peake discussed the City Institute’s year-to-date financial report and long-term funding as well as how university-wide budget cuts will impact the institute over the next two years. Attending members also discussed the institute’s key accomplishment over the 2018-2019 year, prime of which was passing the re-chartering process. Linda also discussed some of the institute’s additional accomplishments, which included: increasing the institute’s membership, submitting new grant applications, holding a series of successful events (5 seminar series, 1 grant writing workshop, 2 Feminist Urban Studies reading group sessions, and 1 Early Career Professional Skills Workshop). Linda also discussed CITY’s new plans and priorities for the period of 2019-2024 (our new chartering period). These initiatives included: two new projects (“Toronto the Better: Renewing Local Democracy” headed up by Patricia Wood and Alexandra Flynn, and Joe Mihevc’s Town and Gown Initiative), the inclusion and recruitment of Urban Arts & Humanities scholars to CITY, the creation of CITY working groups (as in the case of the Smart Cities group led by Teresa Abbruzzese), the upcoming FES and Geography Department’s merger, and preparing for the Urban Studies Summer Institute in 2020 (in conjunction with the Manchester Urban Institute and the University of Toronto). CITY’s post-doctoral fellow Dr. Elsa Koleth also discussed the development of a series of podcasts regarding early career professional training and development that she will help develop with PhD Candidate Laura Waddell. Linda and CITY’s coordinator Francesca D’Amico-Cuthbert also discussed the Visiting Scholar process that has recently been reviewed and revised by the institute’s executive board. Among the new visitors joining the City Institute at York will be former councillor of Ward 21 Joe Mihevc who will be leading the Town and Gown initiative. At the AGM, members also heard student reports from a number of student affiliates including Laura Waddell (regarding graduate associates), and Brandon Hillier (regarding upcoming initiatives for the Federation of Urban Studies Students and the Toronto Urban Journal). Attendees also heard from members of the GenUrb project regarding their recent online conference (in March 2019) and successful SSHRC Connections grant; their forthcoming writing retreat in Greece (in April 2019), conference on feminist urban futures (in September 2019), and course in the summer 1 session (directed by Dr. Elsa Koleth); and their upcoming Rockefeller Foundation application submission. Finally, members of the Global Suburbanisms project provided members with their two-year update and the details of the culmination of their project.