Author Archives: ewenfinnie

Coronavirus, or COVID-19, is an infectious disease caused by a severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The disease has become a global pandemic, with over 1 million cases being confirmed and over 75,000 deaths across 200 countries and territories, after the first case was reported in December 2019 in the Chinese city of Wuhan.Continue reading “COVID-19: Chinese community in Toronto”

Economic growth, urbanisation and structures of consumption that are characteristic of modern day developed cities, such as Toronto, correlates with an increase in the amount of solid waste being produced. Increased purchasing power and the corresponding changes to consumption patterns favouring goods such as single-use plastic bottles and cups, clothing and expensive goods like electronics.Continue reading “Toronto and Waste: Environmental justice and the importance of garbage”

Cities are made by nature, but equally, they shape the ways in which nature flows through the built environment of towns and cities. This is understood through the idea of ‘metabolism’, both as a metaphor and as a practice. ‘These assemblages…are simultaneously real, like nature; narrated, like discourse; and collective, like society’ (Sywngedouw, 2003). ThisContinue reading “Urban Nature: Rooftop gardens”

The acceleration of climate change and the increasing prevalence are arguably the most serious of risks to development of urban areas, providing an ever increasing concern for city authorities and planners (Wamsler, 2014). The increase in prevalence means that there is a greater risk of greater social and economic losses as a result of aContinue reading “Urban Risk: How Toronto deals with a natural hazard”

December 2019 saw the 15th anniversary of a landmark Act being passed, the Ontario Liberal Government’s Greenbelt Act, passed in December 2004. In December 2004, the Ontario Government passed legislation that designated 730,000 hectares of land, the Greater Golden Horseshoe (GGH) Greenbelt around the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) to combat the growing metropolitan area andContinue reading “Toronto’s Greenbelt Under Threat: Civil society and (who is) defining ‘nature’”

This blog post aims to understand how air pollution impacts upon Toronto, who is involved in the assessment of air quality and use this as a lens for understanding air pollution more generally. Graham (2015) has previously stated that understanding air pollutants has been understudied and underdeveloped. This is surprising despite constant lobbying in academiaContinue reading “Toronto’s Air Pollution: Proximity to roads, monitoring, and… Trump?”

Hello, and welcome to my blog. Over the next series of posts I will be providing some critical insight into the way in which a city and its people, its government, and resources try and deal with the environmental issues that they face on a day to day basis. The blog will focus on contemporaryContinue reading “Toronto – Setting the scene”