Cities and the Climate Crisis

Cities cause climate change. What are we doing about it? Dr. Taylor will provide an informative and timely discussion of the issues and challenges of cities and climate change, drawing upon her experience in the Toronto area. Cities are undergoing a paradigm shift to deal with climate change through a variety of actions to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from energy use and to prepare to be more resilient to climate impacts, while promising environmental justice and social equity.

Dr. Laura Tayloris an Associate Professor in the planning program in the Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change, York University, and a consulting planner in climate change policymaking in the greater Toronto area. As a researcher in political ecology and landscape studies, she is most interested in exurbia–the rural residential countryside–where she studies the processes and discourses of landscape settlement and landscape conservation at (and beyond) the urban-rural fringe. Recently, she has become more interested in climate change, which has become the most pressing issue facing cities. Reducing emissions and adapting landscapes to extreme weather have become the focus of her work. Laura is co-editor of two books, A Comparative Political Ecology of Exurbia and Landscape: Planning, Environmental Management and Landscape Change (2016) and The Ideology of Nature: Green Sprawl (2013).

This webinar is presented by theCity Institute at York University (CITY)as part of York University’s Climate Change Research Month.