Metropolitics

“Build Canada Homes” Will Fail Without Confronting Anti-Black Racism

Prentiss Dantzler — 2026-04-28T05:00:00Z

Canada's new housing agency risks repeating the same injustices that produced today's uneven housing crisis unless it embeds anti-racist frameworks in its development plans.
When the federal government launched Build Canada Homes (BCH) in the fall of 2025, it promised a bold solution to the housing shortage: build faster, build smarter, and finally close the supply gap. The urgency is clear. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Canada must double new housing starts from

- Essays / housing, affordable housing, housing policy, racism, Canada, North America, housing crisis, inequalities

The Emergence of Transnational Queer Organizing Across a Hardening US–Canada Border

Elizabeth Hessek — 2025-09-30T05:00:00Z

LGTBQ+ refugees in the United States not only face the violence of the nation's immigration policy but are also constrained by international agreements that limit Canada's ability to offer refugee status to them. Elizabeth Hessek describes how these challenges have created opportunities for transnational networks to support queer refugees wherever they may be.
As migration control has surfaced as a barometer of national sovereignty in public debate, recent migration scholarship has rejected

- From the Field / LGBTQ+, queer, community organizing, refugees, United States, Canada, North America, borders, immigration, immigration policy, networks

Visible Minorities, Visible Risk: Toronto's Unequal Eviction Burden

Prentiss Dantzler & Khalil Martin & Abigail Meza — 2025-09-16T05:00:00Z

In Toronto, who gets evicted isn't random—it follows the city's racial and economic divides. Canada's data practices hide crucial details about who is most at risk.
Evictions are a leading cause of housing insecurity in cities worldwide, disproportionately affecting lower-income households and non-white racialized groups. In Canada, although attention to evictions is growing, there is limited research available. As the most populous city in the country, Toronto is home to a diverse set of

- Essays / evictions, social class, poverty, housing, tenants, rental, rental housing, minorities, precarity, Canada, Toronto

The Struggle to Preserve Hanlan's Point Beach as Queer Social Infrastructure

Ahmed Allahwala — 2024-05-28T05:00:00Z

The march of neoliberal urbanism poses grave threats to nature and the people that use it. In this article, Ahmed Allahwala considers how activism against the City of Toronto's plans for a music venue on Hanlan's Point Beach, an important site for 2SLGBTQ+ life and history as well as a sensitive coastal area, might inform preservation struggles against such threats, in and beyond Toronto.
Nestled along a wooded stretch of environmentally sensitive freshwater dunes, Hanlan's Point is a sandy

- From the Field / beach, LGBTQ+, queer, social infrastructure, Canada, Toronto

Montreal's Alleyways: A Laboratory for Democratic Life

Joëlle Zask & translated by Oliver Waine — 2021-02-12T06:00:00Z

The participation of a city's inhabitants in democratic life begins with forms of everyday sociability and commitment to the common good. The alleyways of Montreal—where communities of neighbors and citizens have developed—are an eloquent example of this.
There is a very specific, even emblematic, urban feature in Montreal: the alleyway. Hidden behind the row houses whose backyards they run along, they have been cleared, rebuilt, embellished, and greened by the residents of the neighborhoods

- From the Field / communauté, démocratie, voisinage, espace public, sociabilité, rue, quartier, politique, citoyenneté, proximité, débat, participation, Montréal, Canada

Organizing Against Projet Gentrification: Housing Activism in a White-Supremacist Landscape in Montreal

Pierce Nettling — 2018-11-27T06:00:00Z

Housing activists in Montreal and Quebec have successfully sought to secure tenant rights and social housing for over 50 years at neighborhood, city and provincial level. Here, Pierce Nettling discusses how the continued reliance of left-wing parties on a white francophone political base mirrors the long-standing and systemic problems of racism in the province.
---- Series: Progressive Mayors and Urban Social Movements Montreal's left-based housing movements are rather unique in North

- Essays / gentrification, housing, racism, social housing, Montreal, public housing, Canada, affordable housing, progressive urban politics, race, mayors, progressive mayors, Quebec

Cracks Where the Light Gets in: Recent Legal Breakthroughs in Detention and Crimmigration in Canada

Petra Molnar & Stephanie J. Silverman — 2016-12-07T06:00:00Z

While the criminalization of immigrants has been pervasive—leading many to adopt the word “crimmigration”—that does not mean that the process is inevitable. As Petra Molnar and Stephanie Silverman report, recent court cases have begun to change the dynamic and offer potential glimmers of hope to immigrants and advocates.
Across the world, the borders between migration management and criminal law are being blurred in an ongoing, historical process referred to by migration experts as the

- Essays / immigration, Canada, immigration detention, immigration policy, immigration law, criminalization of migration, crimmigration

The “Dozois Plan”: lessons learned from urban-renewal policies and the history of urban planning in Montreal

Frédéric Mercure-Jolette & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-10-23T05:00:00Z

Urban-renewal policies justify their actions by decrying neighbourhoods earmarked for demolition. Frédéric Mercure-Jolette seeks to demonstrate this via the little-studied example of the massive operations affecting downtown Montreal in the 1960s. His article also highlights the inextricable links between urban renewal and the paradoxical institutionalization of professional urban planning.
The Projet de rénovation d'une zone d'habitat défectueux et de construction d'habitation à loyer

- Essays / housing, urban planning, housing projects, urban policy, urban renewal, Montreal, slum, profession, development, Canada, salubrity, public action

Vancouverism: hybridisation and spread of an urban model

Nicolas Douay & translated by Oliver Waine — 2015-06-12T04:50:00Z

The transformation that downtown Vancouver has undergone – which has since become a reference, known as “Vancouverism” – has involved building residential towers and creating public spaces that pay visual attention to their surroundings. Nicolas Douay looks into the origins of these transformations and the ways in which this new urban model has been disseminated.
---- Series: The Renewed Relevance of Urban-Planning Models? In a context of metropolisation, cities create images, values and

- From the Field / architecture, urban planning, real estate, Canada, downtown, city centre, dissemination of urban references, model, Vancouver, Hong Kong

The mixed success of Toronto's metropolitan merger

Guillaume Poiret & translated by Oliver Waine — 2013-11-20T05:50:00Z

While the debate on local-government reform rages on in France, Guillaume Poiret looks back at the municipal mergers that took place in Toronto in 1997. Although amalgamation has not resulted in the kind of demergers seen in Montreal, it has not had the anticipated economic benefits either, and leaves the metropolitan question – and the attendant democratic challenges – unanswered.
Since the City of Toronto Act, or Bill 103, of 17 December 1997, the City of Toronto has comprised the former

- From the Field / governance, local governance, intercommunality, metropolis, territorial reform, Canada, Toronto