UPE and Toronto: Final thoughts

Throughout the preceding seven posts, this blog series has adopted an Urban Political Ecology lens to critically assess environmental and societal issues in and around Toronto.

The series of posts has looked at air pollution, the GTA’s greenbelt, urban risk, urban nature such as green roofs, waste and the outbreak of COVID-19. By using concepts within Urban Political Ecology, the posts have discussed how urban environmental issues are dealt with by the authorities and the city’s inhabitants, revealing how nature is framed and the power relations between certain communities. Toronto’s diverse inhabitants make it an interesting case study for unequal power relations, with the current COVID-19 outbreak highlighting those in the case of the Chinese community.

Other concepts have been explored too, including the ways in which communities respond to environmental issues. The posts on air pollution, urban risk, greenbelt and waste imply that individual’s and communities can create change without direction from central governance. The ongoing debate over what is, where do we find, and how do we connect with ‘nature’, can be seen throughout the whole series of posts. What people see as ‘natural’ or what is ‘nature’ often shapes the ways in which it is treated by society.

It has been interesting finding out more about Toronto, and to combine this with an evolving literature has made this series of blog posts an enjoyable experience. UPE provides several important perspectives for how urban lives are intertwined with the natural world, emphasising the need to consider the relationship between the two, which often become one.

I hope you have enjoyed reading.

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