The Winter 2024 edition of the Daniels Faculty's Community for Belonging Reading Group will convene on February 27.

“Considerations of Ethics, Equity and City-Building in Toronto,” will serve as a guiding theme and participants will discuss two texts: Subdivided: City Building in an Age of Hyper-Diversity edited by Jay Pitter and John Lorinc, and Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy by Josh O’Kane. 

Through storytelling and analysis, Subdivided’s contributors—a group of placemakers, academics, activists and journalists—ask how we can expand city-building processes to tackle issues ranging from transit equity and trust-based policing to holistic mental health, dignified affordable housing and inclusive municipal governance.  

Sideways, from the Globe and Mail tech reporter who revealed countless controversies while following the Sidewalk Labs fiasco in Toronto, is an uncompromising investigation into the bigger story and what the Google sister company's failure there reveals about Big Tech, data privacy and the monetization of everything. 

The exploration of technology, artificial intelligence and community activism will serve as a jumping-off point for robust discussion.  

Limited copies of the books are available for free on a first-come, first-served basis in the Eberhard Zeidler Library starting Monday, January 29. To receive a copy of the book, you must be registered for the event.

Note: Recipients of the free copies are expected to attend and participate in the discussions. If you received a free copy and are no longer able to attend the discussion, kindly return the book to the Library. 

Digital versions of the texts are also available to U of T community members: 

Subdivided: City-Building in an Age of Hyper-Diversity  

Sideways: The City Google Couldn’t Buy 

Community for Belonging Reading Group 

The initiative, led by Jewel Amoah, Assistant Dean, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, and Cathryn Copper, Head Librarian at the Eberhard Zeidler Library, raises awareness of the broad spectrum of identities within the Daniels Faculty community and provides a platform for engagement, interaction and discussion. 

This initiative is supported by a Pillar Sponsorship grant and presented in partnership with Manulife and TD Insurance.