Revitalizing Toronto's Inner Suburban Neighbourhoods: A Study Of The Markham And Lawrence Area Of Scarborough

This study investigates issues and challenges facing the inner suburban neighbourhood of arkham and Lawrence in Scarborough – Toronto’s east end. Like many other mature suburbs throughout North America, Markham-Lawrence has begun to see decline and deterioration that has resulted in lower quality of life and the flight of the middle class. Recognizing the importance of healthy, well-balanced communities for Toronto’s future, this case study aims to better understand challenges in the Markham-Lawrence area and proposes a series of recommendations for community improvement that are capable of expanding the life chances of impoverished residents, re-establishing a strong middle class, and spurring greater economic development.

Revitalizing Toronto's Inner Suburban Neighbourhoods: A Study Of The Markham And Lawrence Area Of Scarborough

This study investigates issues and challenges facing the inner suburban neighbourhood of arkham and Lawrence in Scarborough – Toronto’s east end. Like many other mature suburbs throughout North America, Markham-Lawrence has begun to see decline and deterioration that has resulted in lower quality of life and the flight of the middle class. Recognizing the importance of healthy, well-balanced communities for Toronto’s future, this case study aims to better understand challenges in the Markham-Lawrence area and proposes a series of recommendations for community improvement that are capable of expanding the life chances of impoverished residents, re-establishing a strong middle class, and spurring greater economic development.

Visiting, attending and receiving: Making kin with local woods

In an endeavour to build intimacy with a section of woods as can only be done through visceral and embodied experience, an ongoing drawing project was embarked upon with the forest as co-author. In a practice of sympoesis with the earth, small drawings of selected niches in an unprotected section of established forest bordering a suburban neighbourhood were done on regular and frequent walks through changing seasons. Upon completion, each drawing was hidden or buried at the site, to be retrieved on a subsequent visit. The aim is to inhabit and bond with this particular wild place through art-based dialogue, and through finding and returning to very specific places via animistic sensing and with tacit knowledge rather than the customary reliance on human-made indexical technologies. In this regard, the trees and plants play an active and sometimes storied role as participants in the creative exchange.

Suburban status and neighbourhood change

This article examines suburban neighbourhood trajectories from 1970 to 2010 in the 100 most populous metropolitan areas in the US within the context of discussions around suburban decline and reinvestment. A weighted composite index of neighbourhood change indicators was used to identify the relative status of urban and suburban neighbourhoods. Index values were ranked by metropolitan area, and neighbourhoods were assigned to a corresponding quartile. The quartiles formed a status trajectory sequence, categorised as Reduced, Reduced with recovery, Stable or Improved. Neighbourhood trajectories were compared across city and suburb as well as across prewar, postwar, and modern suburban types. Despite increased discussion around suburban decline and suburban poverty, suburban neighbourhoods maintained a higher status than the city, were more likely to recover from reduced status and had higher frequencies of status improvement. The majority of suburban neighbourhoods occupied the highest status ranking in all decades. Stability was the most common trajectory for suburbs, and stable suburban neighbourhoods were higher status than stable urban neighbourhoods. The findings highlight geographies of neighbourhood inequalities and contribute to our understanding of regional and suburban neighbourhood change dynamics.

Reflected Bodies: Women’s Perspectives on the Marital Experience and the Transformation of the Maternal Body. A Case Study of Middle-Class Women in Suburban Romania

Even if concepts of marriage and motherhood are subject to continuous changes and reinterpretations, women and men still marry and have children following more traditional or more unconventional patterns. My major interest in this research was to unveil Romanian middle-class women’s narratives regarding their perceptions over their own bodies and identities, by focusing my analysis on lived experiences, intimate scenes, daily practices and activities within marriage and motherhood. Qualitative empirical work was conducted in 2012 and 2015 in a post-socialist suburban neighbourhood, known as a place mostly inhabited by young, middle-class families. The analysis unfolds women’s class affinities and dispositions, their perception of the marital experience, identity and corporeal transformations, and their reflections on maternity as a transformative stage in terms of subjectivity, agency and body.