SDG 11: Sustainable Cities and Communities

TMU’s research initiatives play a crucial role in advancing sustainable communities. Our City Building TMU initiative fosters interdisciplinary collaborations to tackle urban challenges, from sustainability to technological innovation. Research initiatives across the university focus on policies that promote sustainable urban growth, shape urban landscapes and advance cultural heritage preservation.

• City Building TMU is a university-wide initiative to facilitate research collaborations, mobilize knowledge and showcase the scholarly, research and creative activity happening in city building and urban innovation across the institution. Its research is devoted to shaping healthy communities, in areas ranging from sustainability to democracy to technology. At TMU, city building is about bold thinking that will shape the future of our city and urban centres around the globe.
• The Centre for Urban Research and Land Development is an expert-led research centre dedicated to formulating policies and solutions to address the concerns stemming from urban growth and change within the Greater Golden Horseshoe, and to educating students to take leadership roles in these pursuits. It is founded on uniting economics and market analysis within the context of social and environmental considerations.
• TMU Urban and Regional Planning professor Raktim Mitra is one of the lead researchers on the National Active School Streets Initiative. The goal of the project is to help participating communities successfully plan, implement and evaluate car-free zones around schools, which encourage students to walk and bike to school while finding moments of play and independence with their peers along the way. The project recently received $3 million from the Public Health Agency of Canada to accelerate the implementation of School Streets across Canada.
• TMU Urban and Regional Planning professor Shelagh McCartney works in partnership with First Nations communities in Northern Ontario and the Northwest Territories to identify community housing and wellness priorities and co-develop housing solutions appropriate for the local context. These collaborations have resulted in Canada’s first regional First Nations-led housing strategy. McCartney is the founding director of the Together Design Lab (external link) , which takes a collaborative approach to investigating and creating innovative solutions to housing issues with marginalized communities in Canada. She was recently named to Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists.
• The Modern Literature and Culture Research Centre’s mandate is to research literary and cultural production in the modernist era (from 1880 to 1945), to preserve and advance modernist women’s heritage and to promote modern Canadian heritage within an international context, with a current focus on World War 1.