To mark the final stretch of the Major Collaborative Research Initiative (MCRI) Global Suburbanisms, which has been housed at the City Institute at York University since 2010, organizers will present a four-part seminar series beginning April 3.
The Towards Suburbia seminar series is presented by Global Suburbanisms as a lead up to the project’s final conference, “After Suburbia: Extended Urbanization and Life on the Planet’s Periphery.” This series will bring world-renowned scholars of suburbanization to York University from near and far.
The series begins on April 3 with a talk by Paul Maginn from the University of Western Australia, who will speak about “Rockin’ the Suburbs: From Spaces of Domesticity to Spaces of Perver(c )ity?”
In his talk, Maginn challenges the notion of suburban conformity and reflects on the geography and regulation of the (sub)urban sexscape.
The second seminar in the series will take place on April 12, when Ellen Dunham-Jones, one of the world’s leading scholars and practitioners of urban retrofitting will speak about “Retrofitting Suburbia for 21st Century Challenges.” Professor Dunham-Jones will also meet with graduate students for a hands-on workshop on suburban retrofitting on the morning of April 12.
After a hiatus in the summer, the seminar series will pick up again with talks by Lawrence Herzog (San Diego State University) on Sept. 20 and Rob Shields (University of Alberta) on Oct. 11.
All events are free. RSVP at suburban@yorku.ca.
About Global Suburbanisms
We have redefined the way suburbanization as a process and suburbanisms as ways of life have been studied at a global scale. Using the conceptual prisms of governance, land and infrastructure, more than 50 researchers worldwide have worked with students and practitioners to produce an unprecedented amount of research on suburbia. Now that most empirical projects are completed, the results will be available in scholarly journals, popular media and a book series (utppublishing.com/pdf/Urban_Catalogue_2017.pdf).
On Oct. 19 to 21, MCRI will hold its final conference, “After Suburbia: Extended Urbanization and Life on the Planet’s Periphery” at York University, which will bring many of the world’s leading scholars on suburbanization to Toronto.
“It all comes together here, in the peripheries of the suburban planet,” said the research program’s principal investigator Roger Keil, York Research Chair in Global Sub/Urban Studies at FES. “Daily life now takes place for most people around the world in a peripheral space beyond the old central cities that have exploded. What is urban is now often defined through how we live, work and play on the fraying edges of the metropolis.”
For more information, visit suburbs.info.yorku.ca/aftersuburbia.