A child wears and holds Ukrainian flags during a rally on Parliament Hill to mark the third anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2025. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang

I live and work in Toronto, but as a Lebanese‑Ukrainian immigrant in Canada, my attention has been elsewhere since the United States and Israel launched their war with Iran. I refresh my phone constantly, checking in with family in Lebanon, scanning group chats, watching the news, hoping the next alert is not the one I fear most.

For many in diaspora communities, this has become a daily condition. As conflict in the Middle East intensifies, its effects are not contained by borders. They are lived transnationally, folding distant violence into the routines of everyday life.

What emerges is a condition I — a displacement, migration and identity scholar — call “split belonging”, an experience of being physically located in one place while remaining emotionally, cognitively and relationally anchored in another that is under threat.

Unlike more familiar accounts of diaspora and hybrid identities, — which often emphasize continuity or the preservation of an unbroken cultural lineage and the formation of new identities through cultural mixing — “split belonging” is about being pulled by two places at once.

It captures the demand to function in conditions of stability while remaining persistently oriented toward instability elsewhere, especially where loved ones still reside there

This distinction shifts the focus from identity to capacity, asking how people live, work and participate while managing ongoing exposure to crisis.

Living in between stability and instability

My own experience reflects this.

I’ve lived at a distance from conflict in both my home countries: the October 2019 Lebanese uprising; the Beirut explosion in August 2020; the Russian invasion of Ukraine beginning in February 2022; the Israeli war in Lebanon in 2024; and the current bombardments displacing more than a million people.

Experiencing these events remotely reorganizes daily life. It shows up in the rituals that become instinctive: calling for proof of life, calculating the distance between a bombing site and a relative’s home, then returning, almost automatically, to meetings and deadlines.

This is the emotional architecture of split belonging. It is not a single crisis, but a constant oscillation between urgency and routine.

It is hearing your niece say: “They hit the house next to my school, but we’re OK, we’re used to this,” and realizing she has already learned to normalize fear. And then, because life here keeps moving, it’s also returning to your work inbox as if nothing has happened.

This rhythm is sustained by technological proximity and social expectation. The same tools that enable connection, such as WhatsApp and live news, also ensure that distance no longer protects against exposure.

The hidden strain of transnational stress

Cultural psychology research helps explain why this condition is so consuming. The distress often appears in indirect forms, including fatigue, distraction, irritability or emotional numbing — states that are easily misread in workplaces and classrooms.

This is compounded by what researchers describe as remote conflict stress, the strain experienced by individuals who are physically safe but emotionally embedded in zones of violence. This form of stress disrupts concentration, sleep and decision-making, shaping how people engage with their environments even when those environments are stable.

The concept of split belonging extends this insight by situating remote stress within broader social and relational dynamics.

Migrants are often expected to provide emotional support, financial assistance and real-time co-ordination for family members in crisis. These obligations intensify during periods of conflict, increasing pressure and dependency across borders.

Scholars of migration and diaspora have long argued that belonging is not a fixed state but a negotiation between place, memory and the stories we inherit. Sara Ahmed, a post-colonialism and critical race scholar, writes that emotions “stick” to bodies and histories, shaping how individuals move through the world. This helps explain how attachments to places in conflict are not easily set aside through migration.

Feminist and gender studies academic Judith Butler similarly argues that grief reveals the attachments that constitute who we are. This clarifies why distant violence is experienced as immediate. Under conditions of split belonging, threats to loved ones abroad are not abstract concerns but disruptions to the very relationships that anchor a person’s sense of self.

Together, these frameworks show how global conflict becomes embedded in the everyday lives of diasporic individuals, even though they remaining geographically distant.

Why this isn’t just personal

Digital media plays a central role in this process. It acts as both infrastructure and amplifier.

Continuous immersion in graphic content and live updates extends the reach of violence and makes disengagement difficult. Following it online can trigger anxiety, depression and symptoms resembling PTSD even when people are physically safe. Digital exposures intensify the psychological burden of watching violence unfold from afar.

These dynamics have concrete consequences that remain largely unacknowledged in public discourse. In workplaces, cognitive overload can affect performance, productivity and career progression, contributing to underemployment. In educational settings, disruptions to attention and memory shape participation and outcomes.

Ongoing crises abroad can also deepen social isolation for migrants, which is one of the strongest predictors of poor mental health among newcomers.

Canada’s multiculturalism model recognizes that belonging can extend across local and global contexts, but it often treats these connections as stable rather than crisis-driven. Split belonging highlights this limitation.

Recognizing the feeling of split belonging has important implications for policy and institutional practice. It points to the need for more flexible and responsive systems.

Workplaces need to account for transnational stress. Educational institutions need trauma-informed approaches that recognize ongoing crises. Settlement services need to address not only past trauma but also continuous exposure to instability abroad.

As global conflicts persist, immigrants will continue to meet their obligations to employers, schools and families while navigating forms of strain that remain private. But to meaningfully support diasporic inclusion, Canadian institutions need to understand this reality.

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Crises seem to be everywhere. We live through a moment of generalized crisis — called poly– or perma-crisis by some. In this context, the nation-state often appears as the default institution and ideological framework for addressing challenges. But the nation-state is not always the best placed entity to respond to crises.

Recent events suggest that local, urban and municipal intervention can be effective in the face of crisis. In the United States, various crises have recently been responded to by municipal action.

The election of New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani in November 2025 signalled a switch in attention that foregrounded civic alternatives to national overreach.

Minneapolis has seen unprecedented rallying by civic and grassroots forces who mobilized to protect persecuted neighbours and co-workers. This response to a crisis represents a politics of care and solidarity. It has also recognized an urban form of “non-status citizenship” beyond legal status, grounded in proximity and moral obligation to neighbours and migrants.

Cities are where many crises are lived, governed and collectively handled most directly. Daily social and economic life in cities encourages practical and creative responses to overlapping crises.

In our current project about multi-level crisis management in Canada and the United Kingdom, we want to better understand the potential of local, urban and community-based solutions to the overlapping crises people currently experience.

Crisis urbanism

We start from the assumption that the urban way of life is central to societies both inside and outside city regions. Cities aren’t just places where multiple crises may collide. They’re also places where people develop ways to navigate them. They do so through shared learning and, in some cases, organized forms of resistance and alternative responses to state strategies.

A study conducted by one of our research partners, emeritus professor Roger Keil, and funded by the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, called this phenomenon crisis urbanism. The research, which is also at the basis of this article, argues that crises have to be seen more as ongoing processes that are part of everyday urban life, rather than singular events.

Cities can create opportunities that national governments might overlook or fail to provide. For example, communities can establish processes for democratic dialogue to confront the crises they face. These efforts go beyond reacting to failure, helping to build alternative institutional capacities.

The COVID-19 pandemic offers a strong example of how local entities stepped in when traditional modes of governance failed in their crisis response. In Toronto’s suburban Peel Region, for example, conventional government public health responses were lacking. In this situation, a community-based network of social service organizations was critical to the delivery of an ultimately successful crisis response.

A 2025 study found that the same network under the name Metamorphosis rallied more than 100 member organizations in response to the province of Ontario’s decision in 2023 — later abandoned — to dissolve Peel Region, the network’s territorial base and functional context of action. Metamorphosis’s “social service regionalism” can be viewed as an example of care and repair politics made visible by seeing crises like a city.

Enduring examples of local strength

An example of how crisis is not an event but a process comes from Scotland. Local organizations there — crucial in organizing a pandemic response from the bottom up — continued their activity even in an unfavourable national political landscape.

Local governments can also respond to crises by changing how they operate. A clear example is Bogotá’s neighbourhood-based Care Blocks, created during the COVID-19 pandemic to address a growing care crisis. The program turned long-standing feminist groups’ demands into public policy by recognizing unpaid care work as a shared social responsibility, not just a private burden.

Through Manzanas del Cuidado (Care Blocks), the city provides free domestic, social, educational, legal and psychological services to unpaid caregivers. By placing these services within walking distance of homes, the program reduces time pressures — especially for women, who do most care work. Rather than offering only short-term relief, Bogotá redesigned local institutions to embed care into their functioning.

As hubs of care, repair and resistance, cities play a vital role in crisis response, bringing together communities and civil society who, with local governments and agencies, can mobilize positive change.

Returning to Minneapolis, Rock icon Bruce Springsteen put it into poetic terms:

“A city aflame fought fire and ice …

Citizens stood for justice

Their voices ringin’ through the night …

Our city’s heart and soul persists

Through broken glass and bloody tears

On the streets of Minneapolis.

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The recently launched Build Canada Homes (BCH) initiative marks the federal government’s most ambitious effort to build affordable homes since the Second World War.

The $13 billion initiative promises a building surge to emulate Canada’s post-war national housing program by doubling the national output of housing.

This effort to aggressively stimulate growth in Canadian affordable housing construction includes the creation of the BCH new national agency working as a developer, rapid construction on public land, innovative modular construction methods and partnerships with private capital to push the pace.

For many Canadians, this may seem like a decisive response to the country’s housing crisis while also promoting Canadian sovereignty during tumultuous relations with the United States and other geopolitical developments.

But for the North, the parallels between the role of housing policy now and in the post-war era should give us pause. The building boom following the Second World War established many of the chronic housing, health and economic challenges northerners face today.

Lessons from the post-war era

Amid Cold War tensions and fears of Soviet encroachment following the Second World War, Canada and the United States moved to militarize and secure the Arctic.

Both countries established weather stations, the Distant Early Warning Line, airbases and other strategic infrastructure to assert sovereignty over the region. This geopolitical anxiety also fuelled Canadian efforts to create or expand permanent northern settlements.

These efforts imposed fixed communities on Indigenous peoples who previously moved seasonally through vast territories in patterns shaped by ecological knowledge and deep relationships with the land. This was often pursued through forced or incentivized relocations, reshaping Indigenous mobility and ways of life.

This push to secure the North was accompanied by a rapid expansion of federal housing initiatives in the 1950s and ‘60s to meet national housing strategies. Southern-style houses were imported into the North, detached from northern cultures, landscapes and climates, and administered through colonial governance structures.

Construction of these homes relied on southern labour and materials, leaving communities with buildings but not the authority, tools or training needed to construct or maintain them. Rather than recognize and learn from the approaches to housing construction and sustainability that northern, Indigenous peoples had been practising for generations, the government sought to impose control and authority through northern housing.

This era laid the groundwork for the housing precarity that northerners continue to feel today. Yet BCH uses the same language and approach — framing housing issues as a crisis, advocating rapid deployment, standardized technologies, reliance on southern supply chains and a short-term time frame. This undermines northerners’ abilities to self-determine and direct their own sustainable housing systems.

A different approach required

The North of 2026 is not the North of 1950. Climate change is accelerating permafrost thaw, reshaping ecosystems and exposing structural vulnerabilities in buildings and infrastructure caused by southern construction methods.

Dependence on imported materials and southern labour is even more unsustainable. Simultaneously, Indigenous Peoples across the North have developed community-led housing strategies, design innovations and governance models that offer powerful alternatives.

A Northern Housing Ecosystem (NHE) approach re-imagines northern housing not as a one-off construction campaign but as an interconnected system involving governance, economy, design, training, maintenance and social well-being.

It aligns with Indigenous-led housing innovations already underway — from the work of the K’asho Got’ine Housing Society and Yellowknives Dene First Nation, to regional training and design initiatives across the North.

The NHE asserts that housing is tied to health, education, economic development, energy use and cultural vitality. Housing cannot be governed within silos; it must be part of a living system.

To support northern housing autonomy and sustainability, BCH must adopt principles rooted in this ecosystem approach.

Principles include promotion of a northern housing economy where housing is collective infrastructure that focuses on community well-being and a sense of home for all northerners, prioritized over a market-based logic.

This fosters housing autonomy via northern and Indigenous control over governance, design, construction, repair and maintenance — the opposite of the dependency system of the post-war era.

A sustainable northern housing future

The foundational question should no longer be: How many houses can we deliver quickly? Instead, it must be: How can we build a sustainable northern housing future?

This requires structural change in housing delivery. Short-term federal funding cycles and crisis-framing create pressure to spend and build quickly. That results in prioritizing communities with more administrative capacity, risks reinforcing inequities and rushes decisions that compromise sustainability.

Without concrete efforts to right the wrongs of the past, BCH will reproduce a housing system that never adequately or sustainably served the North. While BCH represents a major federal investment, the North needs more than housing units. It needs autonomy, climate-appropriate design, skilled local labour and local business development.

A sustainable northern housing future is possible, but only if programs like BCH evolve from a fast unit-counting exercise into an ecosystem-based strategy rooted in Indigenous leadership and northern expertise. That way a northern housing system can be built that will sustain communities for generations — by the North, with the North and for the North.

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Despite the benefits migrant grandparents provide, sponsored grandparents are consistently suspected of taking advantage of Canada’s health care and social welfare systems. (Jonathan Castaneda/Unsplash)

Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada’s recent announcement that it’s accepting 10,000 sponsorship applications under the Parent and Grandparents Program (PGP) comes with an important caveat.

Due to persistent backlog, invitations will only be sent to the 17,860 potential sponsors who submitted an interest-to-sponsor application back in 2020.

While good news for some, it means yet another cycle of uncertainty for thousands of families who have waited years for the PGP to finally reopen.

Migrant families seek permanent reunification for reasons other than a desire to live with their parents and grandparents in the same country. Those reasons include a need for child-care support and a desire to care for their older family members as they age.

As international conventions dictate, families have a right to be together.

From permanent to temporary

Grandparents have been part of Canada’s formal “family class” pathway since 1976, but current policy favours spouses and dependent children. This makes reunification for extended family members difficult.

Grandparent admissions through the PGP have comprised around 25 per cent of total family class admissions for the past 10 years.

Unlike other family class categories, there is a predetermined cap on accepted PGP applications. The PGP has also undergone a series of program freezes to deal with an application backlog, the most recent announced in January 2025. The government’s latest update included no commitment to receive new interest-to-sponsor declarations.

As an alternative to the PGP, the government recommends the super visa, a multi-entry visa valid for up to 10 years. However, the super visa requires grandparents to reapply and meet medical inadmissibility rules every five years.

The super visa also places responsibility for financial and health care of grandparents entirely on the sponsoring children, sometimes with devastating consequences.

Most importantly, the super visa does not guarantee permanent residence upon expiration. Permanent grandparent reunification remains a lottery draw, at the mercy of sponsorship intake caps.

Celebrating, denigrating migrant grandparents

Our preliminary research on grandparent sponsorship explores how elected officials consider the place of migrant grandparents in Canadian society. We’ve so far found they regard permanent family class migration as “good for business” as it attracts economic migrants. At the same time, elected officials believe that certain dependants monopolize health and social safety nets.

Grandparents, in particular, are treated by governments as human liabilities who must be admitted “responsibly.”

Admitting grandparents to Canada is tied to their perceived ability to support their sponsors by performing unpaid domestic labour. Our research has found elected officials celebrate sponsored grandparents for the substantial unpaid care work they provide like meal preparation, child care and cleaning.

In a recent survey on grandparent sponsorship, sponsors describe the unpaid work conducted by grandparents as essential to their participation in the Canadian workforce.

Migrant grandparents are also positioned as providers of cultural care for their grandchildren. Our research draws attention to elected officials often invoking memories of their own migrant grandparents passing along languages, practices and values that shaped their unique cultural identities.

Despite the benefits migrant grandparents provide, sponsored grandparents are consistently suspected of taking advantage of Canada’s health care and social welfare systems. This is why the super visa is promoted as an alternative pathway.

Dependent on sponsors

Grandparents who come to Canada through the super visa are financially reliant on their sponsors. Even though the government recognizes that the number of sponsored grandparents applying for old age security is relatively small, treating migrant grandparents as economic burdens allows governments to justify caps and application pauses on PGP sponsorship.

Contrary to governments’ framing of the super visa as aligning with migrants’ families demands for temporary care, our research shows that grandparents often resort to humanitarian and compassionate applications to obtain permanent residence once their super visa has expired. In these cases, their ability to perform care work is further scrutinized.

In terms of grandparent sponsorship, care is largely understood as temporary and one-directional — in other words, migrant grandparents are welcomed when they provide care, but are seen as liabilities when they need care themselves.

Prioritizing the needs of migrant families

How do we reconcile government claims that family reunification is a “fundamental pillar of Canadian society” with the reality that permanent grandparent reunification remains difficult to obtain?

Intake announcements like the most recent one in July allow governments to celebrate permanent grandparent migration. At the same time, the inconsistency of the PGP and solutions like the super visa keep migrant grandparents in a state of legal, political and economic precarity.

With the Liberal government announcing cuts to family class admissions over the next three years, the impact of these changes on grandparent reunification warrants attention.

Rather than temporary reforms and routes, the government needs to consider structural changes to Canada’s family class pathway that focus on the needs and interests of families seeking permanent reunification.

The post Here’s why Canada’s parents and grandparents reunification program is problematic appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

After global anti-Black racism protests in 2020, many universities pledged to make DEI changes but funding and political shifts threaten those commitments. Here, the Simon Fraser University graduating Beedie School of Business students at a ceremony in Burnaby, B.C. in 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

In the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, a global reckoning on anti-Black racism ignited protests, conversations and demand for action. Across North America, universities scrambled to make public commitments to racial justice. They pledged to make changes and address systemic inequalities.

One of the most significant commitments was what’s known as cluster hiring. Recruiting multiple Black scholars at the same time can foster a thriving intellectual community. Research shows cluster hires improve Black faculty representation and retention.

This strategy can also help combat the isolation, hostility and lack of support that Black faculty often face in predominantly white institutions.

Many universities pledged lofty and hopeful equity initiatives at the time. These included similar commitments to hiring Indigenous faculty in clusters, developing or expanding Black Studies programs and implementing campus-wide anti-racism strategies.

But these pledges now face a challenging landscape.

The United States is witnessing a growing backlash against diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) and higher education in general. And Canada is not immune.

In Canada, hiring freezes are now gripping several Canadian post-secondary institutions.

As austerity measures as well as political shifts impact students, faculty and administrators, a big question looms. What programs will institutions cut in these times of fiscal restraint and shifting cultural values?

The true test to racial justice committment

In 2020, McGill made a powerful pledge: to hire 40 Black tenure-track or tenured professors by 2025 and 85 by 2032.

According to McGill University, it has increased the number of Black tenure-track or tenured professors from 14 in 2021 to 50 in 2025. This marks a significant step toward addressing longstanding gaps in representation.

But as public support for DEI initiatives wanes and universities face growing financial pressures, will these efforts to build a more equitable faculty be sustained?

Several Canadian universities also pledged to create or expand Black Studies programs.

New programs were launched at Toronto Metropolitan University, Western University, the University of Guelph and the University of Waterloo. Existing initiatives at Queen’s University, Dalhousie University and York were expanded.

Yet the development and funding of Black Studies in Canada largely remains fragile. Administrative support is often lacking and dependent on broader institutional priorities.

Black studies programs are fragile

Disciplines like Black Studies, Indigenous Studies and Gender Studies are not just academic pursuits. They provide students with essential analytical tools to understand our most pressing issues, including economic precarity, the erosion of civil freedoms and land sovereignty.

These university programs are at the forefront of equity education. They are crucial to foster the ability of students and scholars to critically engage with the key challenges we face today.

The U.S. is a warning

Recent developments in the U.S. serve as a cautionary tale. Canadian politicians and agencies often take cues from American trends.

Republican lawmakers have aggressively targeted DEI initiatives on campuses in several states. And new legislation bans race-conscious hiring and rewrites curricula.

Canadian researchers receiving funding from U.S. federal agencies are being pressured to conform their scholarship to the ideological agendas of the White House.

At the University of Alberta, the move away from DEI discourses to more neutral language like “access, community, and belonging” has marked a fundamental shift.

In Alberta, the Provincial Priorities Act (Bill 18) now requires federal research funds to align with provincial government priorities. And in Nova Scotia, Bill 12 threatens to link university funding decisions to the government’s social and economic priorities.

In this climate, ideas of curtailing DEI in research are no longer speculative.

Within these changes are urgent questions about how research and funding agencies like the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC), Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) will respond.

Research shows that including DEI frameworks in funding applications has had some positive impacts for researchers in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) fields, but its focus on personal responsibility and metrics can obscure the deeper forces behind inequality.

Retaining its political edge

Universities often frame their commitments to Black faculty hiring and Black Studies programs as part of broader DEI agendas.

However, as scholars have long pointed out, DEI policies prioritize representation over structural transformation, reducing the presence of Black faculty to a matter of optics rather than a meaningful shift in institutional power.

When Black Studies is treated as an administrative deliverable rather than a radical intellectual tradition grounded in resistance to oppression, it is stripped of its political edge.

Institutional integrity

As Canadian universities face financial pressures and shifting political tides, the commitments will now be put to the test.

Anti-Black racism and equity cannot be a temporary trend that universities go through during times of public scrutiny. It must remain at the core of academic values, regardless of political or financial pressure.

The fight for Black and Indigenous hiring initiatives continues and the 2020-21 promises made by universities need to be held to the highest standard. This is about sustained commitment to structural change in our institutions. The stakes couldn’t be higher.

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A plow drives along a winter road in March 2024 in St. John’s. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Sarah Smellie

For decades, Canadian cities and towns have combated ice and snow with salt and plows. This approach, however, comes at a steep cost. Traditional techniques damage roads, harm the environment and are not always effective at protecting road users from winter’s hazards. An innovative technology known as Borehole Thermal Energy Storage (BTES) could be an effective solution to Canada’s winter woes.

The technology behind BTES systems is elegantly simple.

Initially designed for building heating and cooling, a BTES system captures solar heat during the summer months and stores it underground. Then, when winter arrives, the stored heat is transferred through pipes beneath the road surface, warming the pavement and preventing ice formation — in essence, a solar powered underfloor heating system.

BTES systems can be applied to a diverse range of uses, from heating to strengthening foundations and even helping keep permafrost cool and stable in the Canadian north as the planet heats up.

This technology has already shown promising results in countries such as Sweden and Belgium, where it has been successfully applied to roads, bicycle paths and other infrastructure to enhance safety during winter. BTES techniques could help transform winter life in Canada and should be taken seriously.

Using the sun to warm Canada’s roads

Driving along a typical Canadian highway on a winter’s morning can be dangerous business. As drivers hustle and jostle for position unseen patches of black ice coat an incline, making it treacherous. A single slip could trigger a chain reaction of accidents, with cars skidding out of control, one after another.

Now imagine if that stretch of road were equipped with BTES systems. Hidden beneath the asphalt, a network of pipes would work to keep the pavement warm and dry, preventing ice from forming. The risk of accidents would drop dramatically, making those steep sections of road safer for everyone.

Bridges, which are especially vulnerable to freezing because they’re exposed to cold air on all sides, stand to benefit greatly from this technology. BTES systems connecting pipes beneath the bridge surface keep them ice-free and safe without salt. For cities, this is a win-win, improving safety and protecting bridges from salt and chemical damage.

BTES systems are not entirely passive; they require active input for efficient operation. Key components such as heat pumps, circulation pumps and control mechanisms need electrical energy to function. These systems facilitate the transfer of stored heat from the boreholes to the road surface.

Maintenance is also crucial, involving regular checks and servicing of the heat pumps and circulation systems, inspection of piping and insulation for leaks, and updates to control systems to ensure they efficiently manage heat distribution and maintain functionality over time.

A long-term solution

Each year, tons of salt are spread across Canada’s roads to melt ice. While mostly effective at minimizing hazards, these salts also cause long-lasting problems. Road salts can seep into groundwater, harming rivers and lakes. At the same time, these salts also corrode bridges, roads and even our cars, leading to costly repairs.

With BTES systems, municipalities could reduce or even eliminate the need for salt. This development would mean lower cleanup costs, less environmental damage, and longer-lasting roads and bridges.

While installing BTES systems has higher upfront costs, and can require more invasive construction work, experts believe that it can pay off over time by cutting back on maintenance and repair expenses. To get a comparison, for a BTES system capable of 50 to 60 tons, the upfront cost is approximately $1.8 million with a payback period of around 10.7 years, owing to significant reductions in maintenance and energy consumption.

In contrast, cities like Vancouver spend around $280,000 annually on road salt (a figure recorded in 1998), with Canada as a whole spending about $350 million annually. Additionally, the broader economic and environmental damages can escalate to approximately $4.8 billion per year, underscoring the financial and ecological impacts of road salt use.

Fewer repairs mean fewer costs down the line, making BTES systems a wise investment for cities looking for sustainable solutions. Plus, with the right support from government subsidies and tax breaks, more municipalities could be encouraged to adopt this technology where it is most needed.

Beyond roads and bridges, BTES systems are also being adapted for various innovative uses. For example, in Sweden, BTES is employed under soccer fields to keep them warm and playable throughout winter while the Greater Binghamton Airport in New York uses a BTES-based system to keep runways free of ice without relying on harmful chemicals or constant plowing. This not only reduces delays but also enhances safety during winter operations.

Universities, too, are embracing geothermal energy: institutions like Ontario Tech University, the University of Calgary and Ball State University in the United States have implemented large-scale geothermal systems to cut emissions, reduce energy costs and promote sustainability.

This technology is mature and ready to be used.

A better option

Canada’s cold winters and heavy snowfall make it ideal for BTES systems. Cities like Montréal, Toronto and Calgary, where icy roads pose serious risks, could see safer commutes, fewer accidents and a more reliable way to navigate winter’s toughest challenges. Canada has the potential to lead the way by adopting BTES systems on its most treacherous roads, steep inclines and vulnerable bridges.

While bringing BTES systems to Canada comes with challenges — such as higher initial costs and a need for favourable ground conditions — these barriers can be managed with the right support. If properly implemented BTES systems could ensure safer roads year-round at a much lower environmental and financial cost.

The post How heat storage technologies could keep Canada’s roads and bridges ice-free all winter long appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

A Georgia mother was recently arrested for reckless endangerment after her 10-year-old son was seen walking outside alone. The warrant for her arrest claimed she “willingly and knowingly” endangered her son’s safety.

The boy had walked less than one mile into town to visit the local dollar store. Despite the boy’s evident ability to navigate public spaces independently, a passerby perceived his presence on the street as alarming and called the police.

This incident illustrates the damaging effects of “safetyism,” a societal anxiety that wrongly assumes children should not be out on their own. Such perceptions not only curtail children’s independence but also perpetuate unnecessary interventions that undermine the ability of parents to make decisions for their own family.

A focus on safetyism ignores the absence of child-friendly infrastructure in many of our towns and cities. For example, many suburban neighbourhoods in North America lack sidewalks and other pedestrian infrastructure. In the Georgia incident, the road the boy walked along did not have a sidewalk, meaning he had to walk on the shoulder. This lack of space exacerbates fears of children being in public spaces alone.

How did we reach a point where parents now risk arrest if their children are seen outside alone?

Rise of safetyism

My research focuses on how public spaces can be better designed for children. As societies change, their understanding of childhood changes. The way children were treated 50 years ago differs from what they are experiencing now. Likewise, perceptions of what is safe to do and what is not have also changed over time.

Spontaneous outdoor play is a vital way for children to explore, grow and understand their environment. Yet, urban and suburban design often stifles this natural inclination. These environments usually confine children’s play to parks and playgrounds while leaving broader public spaces off-limits.

Historically, attitudes toward children in public spaces have been shaped by industrialization, rapid urbanization and the growth of suburbs. Early playgrounds emerged during the child-saving movement of the 1980s, aiming to protect children from street dangers.

However, these heavily supervised, segregated spaces reflected societal biases, dividing children by race, gender and class. Activities prepared boys for leadership, girls for motherhood, and marginalized children for labour.

Architects and planners like Aldo van Eyck have challenged these restrictive notions, advocating for adventure playgrounds and child-friendly urban spaces. Their work emphasizes unstructured play that promotes children’s agency.

Despite these efforts, the rise of safetyism in recent decades has eroded children’s independence. Fears of busy traffic and stranger dangers have led caregivers to limit children’s exposure to the outdoors. This “bubble-wrapped generation,” as education professor Karen Malone describes, experiences childhood within narrowly defined boundaries, chauffeured between organized activities.

This overprotection deprives children of opportunities to develop resilience. Car-dependence also contributes to the very risks it seeks to prevent. For instance, traffic congestion caused by parental drop-offs near schools increases accident risks. Meanwhile, children shielded from navigating public spaces may lack the skills to handle unexpected situations, such as how to seek help when lost.

The Georgia incident starkly illustrates how societal attitudes perpetuate these cycles. The passerby’s decision to involve the police reflects a broader societal discomfort with children’s presence in public spaces. Addressing this issue requires both cultural and infrastructural change.

Child-friendly cities

It is time for a new child-saving movement. Cities like Barcelona and Copenhagen offer inspiring examples of child-friendly design that challenge these anxieties. The walkability of these cities contributes to children’s overall skill development.

Integrating playful elements along walkable pathways further advances opportunities to explore and develop a sense of safety and belonging. These opportunities normalize children being in public spaces, countering the harmful perceptions that fuel safetyism.

Implementing traffic-calming measures is another way to foster safer pedestrian movements around the neighbourhood. Among these measures are lowering speed limits around the residential buildings, adding more intersections with signals and mid-block crosswalks especially along the longer and curved streets.

Walkability can also be improved by implementing soft edges along pathways. As opposed to hard physical boundaries such as fences, incorporating soft edges, such as green buffers ensure the safety of children and pedestrians while still enabling them to freely navigate space and engage in playful activities.

Moreover, the creation of intergenerational public spaces must be prioritized over creating age-specific spaces, such as the common fenced playgrounds. First, being in these spaces encourages a sense of shared responsibility, thus improving children’s agency. Second, they foster a sense of community among all, which eventually improves parental perceptions of safety. Third, intergenerational spaces allow caregivers to socialize while children play. This opportunity is an important time-out for the caregivers, while still being able to supervise their kids.

Children’s well-being is a barometer for the health of our societies and cities. To create inclusive, sustainable communities, we must challenge the restrictive boundaries that confine children’s experiences and see their independence as a threat. By designing child-friendly public spaces we can nurture future generations who are better equipped to navigate our world.

The post How our public spaces can be safer and more welcoming for children appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

Before the 1960s and until 1990, university residences were constructed to support multiple chance encounters with students on the same floor or building through shared space. Dorm life in Washburn Hall, San Jose State College, early 1970s.

As students globally prepare for university, many contemplate where to live or prepare to move into new accommodations. Students are faced with a variety of new options, different from their parents’ dorm rooms.

As universities have become more commercialized, they are entering into partnerships with developers, banks and marketing professionals that favour apartment construction, emulating units of the condo boom.

Enrolments in Toronto universities have been on the rise in the last two decades, at the same time the whole city is navigating a housing affordability crisis including a gruelling rental market.

Our recently published study, involving all 41 of Toronto’s university residences, found that in the past 30 years, newer residence halls that have been built increasingly stress privacy over communal spaces. Previous research has found a lack of student socialization spaces negatively affects students’ academic performance and well-being.

Space affects academic performance and well-being

Living on campus has historically been associated with better grade point averages (GPAs) and well-being. Firstly, students’ proximity to campus matters for developing positive relations with faculty and with the campus community. Secondly, common everyday residence life activities and chance encounters with peers encourages students to meet new people, to socialize and build resilient friendship support networks.

Paradoxically, both universities with private partners and private developers alone are marketing increased privacy in student accommodations, in response to perceived demand. Many privacy-oriented apartments house only one or two students, but privacy is a questionable benefit for students. Recent investigations have concluded living with larger amounts of privacy has negative effects on students’ GPA.

In more private units, everyday common activities are reduced, and so is the probability of chance encounters and friendships that potentially increase GPA and well-being.

Measuring privacy

To study students’ experience of privacy and socialization, we developed a scale of six levels, called the Hierarchy of Isolation and Privacy in Architecture Tool (HIPAT).

These levels express the capacity of the spaces for students in their unit to be on their own (Level 1), to be with one other person (Level 2) and to be in a small group (Level 3).

HIPAT levels also signal students’ ability to have chance encounters with other students and university users in different areas on their floor (Level 4), in their building (Level 5) and in public spaces for all the student community (Level 6).

In a second study we created a taxonomy to classify students’ rooms and living facilities defined by their lived experience, called Housing Unit Classification (HUC).

This HUC classification defines each unit type by the HIPAT levels of each living facility (bedroom, bathroom, lounge and kitchen and dining) and levels of socialization available for each student.

Inhibiting resilient networks

Our research project analyzed all the university residences that were controlled or affiliated with Toronto universities. Over half the residences (23) were selected for more detailed study of privacy and socialization opportunities, and how they changed over time.

Describing the privacy and socialization spaces of each residence permits us to classify how much the built space of residences enable students to socialize with new people and create resilient networks. We delineated four time periods of residence design:

• 11.2 per cent of students today live in HUC Type 1 traditional rooms in residences built before 1960. These residences would be a small community of around 60 students living in a building that is a few storeys high.
• 26.3 per cent of students live in “traditional residences” built between 1960 and 1990, characterized by features like bedrooms (HUC Types 1 & 2) on both sides of a long hallway with common washrooms and lounges shared with the floor and dining space shared with the whole building, with around 200 to 300 students for each residence.
• 33.9 per cent of students live in residences built between 1990 and 2010 that combine traditional rooms and apartment units in the same residence (“heterogenous residences”). Compared with traditional residences, students have different living experiences in the same building.
• 28.6 per cent live in residences that were built between 2010 and 2021 and are privacy-oriented, with mostly suites and apartment units. Students living in these residences no longer share a washroom and are less likely to have a common dining experience with other people outside of their unit.

  

  Reports on student housing construction show that there is a trend towards building more suites and apartments. These are not built with the common spaces of traditional residences that have historically facilitated socialization and been positively associated with higher GPA and well-being.

  Privacy is not a luxury

  Student residences built in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom over the past 20 years prioritize privacy and risk isolation to accommodate perceived student preferences. This trend is to the detriment of students’ social spaces, and should be questioned.

  A student’s living situation is a key component of their university education. Universities should remain in the business of student housing. Universities and developers need to focus on building student housing that fosters community building in order for socialization and new relationships to occur.

  Meeting students’ socialization needs is the first step towards a more egalitarian and successful university experience.

The post Why old, shared dorms are better than new, private student residences appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

It’s no secret that Toronto is falling behind on sustainable transportation compared to other cities around the world, hurting the city’s economy, quality of life and reputation.

Cities like Toronto are struggling with growing populations, public health problems including mental illness and drug addiction, inequality, a climate emergency, biodiversity loss, pollution and decaying infrastructure.

We need to rethink cities and urban change by embracing talent, innovation and collaboration, as suggested by the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 17 and C40 cities priorities.

Since the status quo isn’t working, how can we adopt better urban designs? The answer lies in more effective public-private partnerships (PPPs).

Better public-private collaborations

My recent research on sustainable transportation PPPs shows they don’t work well for the private sector — despite public perceptions that private companies receive lucrative contracts.

A recent example is Toronto’s Eglinton crosstown light rail transit project. It has not only caused construction and traffic delays but has also eroded the city’s relationship with its private partner.

PPP management needs re-examining through cross-sector collaboration. Proven PPP management expertise is valuable as an export because other cities and countries haven’t figured them out either.

Toronto’s housing and transit problems, coupled with unacceptable levels of inequality, are clear, but these problems are not widely understood as part of an urban design problem that needs input from local talent.

To tackle these challenges, cross-sector collaboration is needed. Improving PPP processes will ensure all partners are on the same page and motivated to achieve common goals. We need a common vision while building better and faster.

A better Ontario

During COVID-19, people voluntarily left Toronto for outlying communities. Many would like to live in a smaller city or town and either work locally, remotely, or have fast transportation to a Toronto office.

Helping commuters access a higher quality of life in smaller cities makes a lot of sense for Toronto and its surrounding communities. Smaller towns would benefit from local growth and increased tourism.

These recent developments support a distributed model of interlinked cities connected by electric high-speed rail. Toronto is a centre surrounded by increasing suburban sprawl exacerbated by provincial plans to pave over critical green space in the Greenbelt for more highways and single-family houses.

Instead, why not develop other cities by connecting them to Toronto and to each other?

Toronto would not need to continue its sprawl if people could commute quickly from other, more affordable communities. Ontarians could commute and visit one another easily. Commuting, tourism and improved collaboration across regions are important but neglected social goals.

All levels of government need to be involved in making this solution a reality. A beautiful place like Wasaga Beach could become a thriving town through electric high-speed rail connections. This model of connected, distributed city centres would improve Ontario for all of us.

Is high-speed rail a reality?

The Québec-Windsor corridor, which stretches between Québec City and Windsor, has the population density to support high-speed rail. An electric “High Frequency Rail” for this region could be back on the agenda.

Density and connectivity are a “chicken-and-egg” game when it comes to transportation. Transit access points attract more activity and density because they are connected to other places.

But density is also attracted to existing density where services already exist — for Toronto, this means more sprawl. We have to increase density in smaller towns with well-connected, safe, sustainable, high-speed transportation.

If we build high-speed electric rail across Ontario in environmentally sensitive ways, other cities could grow as well. We could also electrify and expand GO Train service and infrastructure.

But political will is necessary for this vision to become a reality. Billions of tax dollars are currently wasted on projects completely unaligned with international climate commitments, like the Trans Mountain pipeline.

Government priorities need to be redirected to build personal connections, rather than resource connections, across the country. For example, Via Rail has to use the same rails that freight trains use. Since the priority is freight, not moving people, this slows down Via Rail service.

Canada is playing catch-up

There are a number of other countries around the world that have invested or are investing, in high-speed rail. Canada is currently the only G7 country to not have high-speed rail.

China has the longest network of high-speed railways, with trains reaching normal operating speeds of 350 kilometres per hour.

Europe has distributed density by connecting cities with dependable high-speed rail. Japan is another established economic powerhouse leading in high-speed electric rail.

Morocco has high-speed rail between Casablanca and Tangier at 320 km/hr and plans to connect 43 cities with rail. Africa plans to complete a continental high-speed rail system by 2033. Other countries with high-speed rail include Uzbekistan, Thailand, Russia, Israel, Turkey and Saudi Arabia.

Sustainable transportation, such as high-speed rail, would benefit the Toronto region in numerous ways. Ontario has a unique opportunity to develop more effective PPP processes to accelerate the implementation of high-speed rail.

The post Better collaboration between public and private sectors could improve urban public transportation appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

To assess and identify the best retrofit practices for residential buildings regarding carbon emissions, Toronto Metropolitan Univerisity’s (TMU) Department of Architectural Science chair and professor Mark Gorgolewski and TMU graduate student ​​Fatma Osman partnered with Michael Singleton, executive director of Sustainable Buildings Canada (SBC). Their research examines commonly used retrofit strategies in Ontario using building Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) to identify low-carbon material selections and optimal retrofit approaches.

This research benefits the construction industry by providing designers with academic insights into low-carbon strategies to help in project planning and design. It will also allow SBC and other organizations to support the development of appropriate policies and procedures that result in low-carbon built environments.

Funding for this project by Mitacs. To learn more about how Mitacs supports groundbreaking research and innovation, visit the Mitacs website.

The post Lowering carbon emissions by optimizing energy retrofits appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

A building under construction in Toronto. According to Canada’s national housing agency, Ontario needs to build 1.8 million new homes to alleviate the housing crisis.

Few Ontario residents know how land use planning regulation shapes their physical environment, including where new housing is built, the size and type of buildings, and housing density. As a result, most people are only interested in the topic when a new housing project is proposed near their homes.

The Growth Plan

The planning system is often criticized as time-consuming, overly bureaucratic, uncertain and costly. In Ontario, land use planning is carried out by municipalities and shaped by provincial legislation.

But the Greater Golden Horseshoe has had an additional layer of bureaucracy in the form of a provincial planning policy called the Growth Plan. This policy places restrictions on what parts of southern Ontario can be used for development and infrastructure via the Planning Act

The Growth Plan became law in 2006 under Dalton McGuinty’s Liberal government. Since then, it has been adapted by successive Ontario governments, most recently Doug Ford’s Conservative government.

The Growth Plan represents an ambitious effort to shape how residents live, work and interact with one another with land use regulations. Ensuring a sufficient housing supply to improve affordability is just one of many objectives the Growth Plan is intended to address.

Research shows more restrictive planning regimes result in higher housing prices. A 2017 study found that land use regulation in Auckland, New Zealand, could be responsible for up to 56 per cent of an average house’s cost.

Another study from California found that housing prices could decline by about 25 per cent in Los Angeles if its planning regulations were decreased to the levels similar in the least-regulated cities in California. Based on my own estimates, home prices in the Greater Golden Horseshoe could fall by a similar amount under a benign land use regulatory system.

Supply and demand disparity

While affordable housing is a stated goal of the Growth Plan, the interpretation and implementation of its policies will reduce housing affordability, not improve it. According to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Ontario needs to build 1.8 million new homes by 2030 to get housing affordability back to where it was in the early 2000s.

While most Greater Golden Horseshoe homebuyers undoubtedly prefer ground-level homes, the Growth Plan prioritizes higher-density forms of accommodation, instead of single-detached houses.

This disparity between housing demand and supply sets the stage for housing prices to increase even more in the coming years. The four regional municipalities, Durham, York, Peel and Halton, around Toronto all face a marked disparity over the coming three decades between housing planned and the market.

The supply of single-detached and semi-detached houses will only be 25 per cent of the new housing, compared to a demand of 50 per cent.

The reverse holds for apartments: 50 per cent of the new housing will be apartments, while the market demand is just 25 per cent. The demand and supply of townhouses will be similar, at 25 per cent of the new housing.

The sizeable shift from single-detached houses to apartments over the next 30 years is expected to happen under the current provincial government’s version of the Growth Plan passed in 2020. In the earlier version of the Growth Plan passed by the last Liberal government in 2017, even fewer ground-related homes would have been built in the future, resulting in even more stress on affordability.

Countering adverse price impacts

To counter the adverse price impacts of the Growth Plan, I have two proposals for the provincial government. First, municipalities must offset any planned reduction of single-detached and semi-detached houses below market demand with an equivalent number of “missing middle” housing.

Missing middle housing includes townhouses and low-rise apartments with four storeys or fewer, like stacked townhouses, and are the closest substitutes for single-detached houses. These should be added in existing urban areas (mainly single-detached neighbourhoods) and on vacant fringe lands.

Second, the government should conduct an in-depth review of the land use planning regime to improve efficacy and minimize adverse impacts on housing affordability, as was undertaken in New Zealand.

What is needed is a sweeping overhaul to increase not only the numbers of new housing units built, but to accelerate approvals of all housing types, with particular attention paid to single-detached and missing middle housing.

Without these changes, housing costs will continue to rise and many households will face longer commutes as they move farther away from employment centres in search of less expensive single-detached houses and townhouses.

The post Ontario’s Growth Plan is reducing housing affordability appeared first on TMU Research & Innovation Blog.

An office building made with cross-laminated timber in Tokyo, Japan.

In 2020, the extraction, transport and manufacturing of materials for the building sector accounted for 10 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If buildings are to make meaningful contributions to keeping global temperature rise to 1.5 C above pre-industrial levels, limiting emissions from building materials is crucial.

To achieve this objective, engineered versions of age-old building technologies, like wood, straw or bamboo, are critical. These bio-based building materials generally demand less energy in manufacturing and have the ability to capture and store carbon through photosynthesis.

This is why experts in green building policy, climate science and architecture increasingly tout the benefits of transforming buildings from a giant source of carbon into a large carbon sink.

As scholars of business sustainability and bio-products markets, we closely observe the trends in green building and construction industries, and the reactions these provoke in sectors of the economy looking to cut emissions. With corporate announcements on the rise that publicize natural materials like wood as “the new concrete” in company offices and warehouses, we believe it’s time to take a closer look at the opportunities and limitations of making building materials part of a company’s net-zero carbon pledges.

The rise of net-zero carbon offices

The past two decades have seen the use of green buildings as an explicit tool to reduce the carbon footprint of companies. It is now commonplace for business offices to feature the latest in engineering and building operations, from energy efficiency and on-site heating and cooling, to waste reduction and recycling.

Bloomberg’s European headquarters, for instance, has earned the title of the world’s most sustainable office building for combining all these measures. From a company perspective, going beyond operational efficiency, to also focus on building materials, is a logical step.

Bloomberg’s London HQ has the ‘most sustainable office building.’

Walmart offers one prominent example of the use of bio-based building materials. The retail giant is set to finish its new home office in Bentonville, Ark., by 2025. It is the largest corporate campus project in the U.S. that uses mass timber, a group of large engineered structural wooden panels that have gained market acceptance following changes in building codes, for the construction of multi-storey and tall wood buildings.

Structurlam, a Canadian company that delivers mass timber, opened a fully automated facility in Walmart’s home state where it procures lumber from forests in the region to complete the project. Similarly, Google will soon finish its first mass timber office complex.

Microsoft already opened a building on its Silicon Valley campus that uses over 2,100 tonnes of cross-laminated timber (CLT), a wood panel system that is projected to reach a global market size of more than $3 billion within the next five years.

Our @Microsoft Silicon Valley project is on track to become the largest mass timber project built to date in the US! CLT will help significantly reduce carbon emissions. Seeking net zero non-potable water per the @livingbuilding LEED Platinum @WELLcertified @USGBC #wrnsstudio pic.twitter.com/aqxFXod91x

— WRNS Studio (@wrnsstudio) May 14, 2019

Some European firms like the German retail chain Alnatura are using prefabricated loam in their headquarters, and automaker BMW is about to open an electric vehicle showroom in California that has flooring made from hemp wood.

Green construction meets prefab

What unites these technologies is a potential to combine climate benefits with the shift towards off-site construction and prefabrication, where the planning, design, manufacturing and partial assembly of building elements occurs at a location other than the final building site.

Many of the manufacturers that offer buildings made from bio-based materials are, in fact, a new class of technology start-ups that are backed by large investors.

Prefabrication helps optimize material use and model adaptive structures that can be deconstructed, modified and reassembled, thereby reducing the need for virgin resources.

This provides companies with immense flexibility in planning for the long-term use of their office buildings, sales stores, warehouses and factories, without having to think about demolishing a structure.

Limitations of bio-based building material

Bio-based building materials have their limitations. Harnessing their environmental potential requires that they are sourced from sustainable supply chains. From a climate perspective, building wooden office towers with timber can be counterproductive if large amounts of carbon dioxide are emitted in the logging, transport and manufacture of wood products.

A company may also ask whether new buildings are needed in the first place. After all, the lowest carbon footprint is that of a building that is never constructed.

Companies may consider using bio-based building materials in retrofitting and remodelling existing offices or factories instead of building new ones. Serial retrofit initiatives, of the kind spearheaded by governments in Europe and suggested for Canada, already funnel capital into the scale-up of industries for prefabricated building technologies, like facades made from wood and recycled materials.

Ultimately, as with all corporate environmental strategies, simply introducing bio-based products and materials to the company, be it in office buildings or elsewhere, without having resources in place to monitor their environmental efficacy (for example, in procurement, installation and use) can backfire.

The future of bio-based building materials

Building materials can play a key role, when considered as a part of a broader strategy in companies’ efforts to reach net-zero emissions. Over 450 firms around the world have already pledged to finance the transition to net-zero emissions by 2050.

The issue of materials in construction is gaining attention at the global scale as well. With more than 130 events focused on the built environment at the COP26 summit in November, buildings received more attention than ever.

That being said, bio-based products and materials will require even more attention going forward. A likely bottleneck in assessing when and how to use bio-based building materials, will be just how quickly industries normalize the use of life cycle costing tools, such as whole life carbon accounting.

Progress on the adoption of these tools has been slow, but the recent signing of whole life carbon requirements by 44 large companies offers hope that the time for net-zero carbon buildings may indeed be ripe.

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