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Finding urban urban connectivities in Toronto

Finding urban urban connectivities in Toronto

A new article by Douglas Young and Roger Keil, appearing in the  International Journal of Urban and Regional Research explores the "In-between city" and how politics and infrastructure have shaped, and are shaping the suburbs of Toronto. From the abstract of Locating the Urban In-Between Tracking the Urban Politics of Infrastructure in Toronto:

We pose the question of location of urban politics from a specific deficit in the geography of centre, suburb and metropolis. We argue that in today's regional political socio‐spatiality, politics will have to be found ‘in‐between’ the old lines of demarcation. Following Tom Sieverts' (2003) advice to look at the ‘in‐between’ cities that are neither old downtown nor new suburb but complex urban landscapes of mixed density, use and urbanity, we reveal the political vacuum that is at the heart of the urban region today. Using the politics of infrastructure in Toronto as our empirical example, we will show that vulnerabilities and risks for urban populations in that Canadian metropolis' in‐between city are co‐generated by the failure of conventional political spaces and processes to capture the connectivities threaded through those places that are in‐between the centre and exurbia.