URD1202H F
Instructors: Keisha St.Louis-McBurnie & Chiyi Tam
Meeting Section: LEC0101
Thursday, 6:00 PM - 9:00 PM

This course examines how planning and urban design can help create alternative futures that centre community control and power. We begin with an introduction to how settler colonialism and colonial knowledge systems have established our present-day understandings of land, private property and ownership. And in turn, how this has tangibly affected planning and design outcomes and processes. Students will be invited to deconstruct this history to understand what anti-capitalist planning and design could be in relation to land and property.

The task is to use your skills and motivations for planning and design towards eroding intersecting systems of oppression through practice. This class will introduce students to case studies, core tools and alternative techniques in community-based facilitation, narrative storytelling, co-creation and design engagement. Assignments will emphasize practicing these skills while speculating what liberatory planning and design practices could look like by developing an understanding of intersecting systems of oppression. Students will also learn from guest speakers, including designers and architects, planners, community organizers and community engagement specialists.

The seminar is open to graduate students from all programs at the Daniels Faculty of Architecture Landscape and Design. The course is open to students in other faculties and programs at the University of Toronto subject to the availability of space and the instructors’ permission.