Julie-Anne Boudreau

Both theoretically informed and empirically rich, Youth Urban Worlds explores how urban cultures affect political action amongst youth. Argues that urban cultures challenge the very meaning and contours of the political processIncludes ethnographies, delving into the perspectives and knowledges of racialized youth, urban farmers, and “voluntary risk takers,” like dumpster divers, building climbers, and student protestorsTheorizes that aesthetics are an increasingly crucial form of political action in the contemporary urban setting and explains the impact of aesthetics on the politicalExamines the centrality of fun, warmth, aesthetics, and embodiment to these youth’s experience of being in the worldExplains how youth are able to practically and concretely impact the political process through the performance of risky and disruptive behavior

Both theoretically informed and empirically rich, Youth Urban Worlds explores how urban cultures affect political action amongst youth. Argues that urban cultures challenge the very meaning and contours of the political processIncludes ethnographies, delving into the perspectives and knowledges of racialized youth, urban farmers, and “voluntary risk takers,” like dumpster divers, building climbers, and student protestorsTheorizes that aesthetics are an increasingly crucial form of political action in the contemporary urban setting and explains the impact of aesthetics on the politicalExamines the centrality of fun, warmth, aesthetics, and embodiment to these youth’s experience of being in the worldExplains how youth are able to practically and concretely impact the political process through the performance of risky and disruptive behavior

Global Urban Politics: Informalization of the State In what ways has global urbanization affected the political process? This book offers a reflection on the transformations of urban politics worldwide in the past four decades, from interpersonal street-level politics to transnational governing institutions. Organized thematically, the book examines urban social movements, diversity politics, environmental politics and security politics at a global level and argues that living in an urban world calls for a profound rethinking of how we act politically. Through ethnographic incursions into the worlds of youth activists, domestic workers, rioters, barrio bandits and peripheral villagers, among others, from Mexico City and Hanoi to Montreal and New York, the book makes a number of theoretical propositions to redefine the field of urban political studies. Extending the view of urban politics beyond municipal and metropolitan institutions to the broader political process in cities, this book will be invaluable to advanced students and scholars interested in our urban future. For, as Boudreau convincingly suggests, global urban life is political life.

Global Urban Politics: Informalization of the State In what ways has global urbanization affected the political process? This book offers a reflection on the transformations of urban politics worldwide in the past four decades, from interpersonal street-level politics to transnational governing institutions. Organized thematically, the book examines urban social movements, diversity politics, environmental politics and security politics at a global level and argues that living in an urban world calls for a profound rethinking of how we act politically. Through ethnographic incursions into the worlds of youth activists, domestic workers, rioters, barrio bandits and peripheral villagers, among others, from Mexico City and Hanoi to Montreal and New York, the book makes a number of theoretical propositions to redefine the field of urban political studies. Extending the view of urban politics beyond municipal and metropolitan institutions to the broader political process in cities, this book will be invaluable to advanced students and scholars interested in our urban future. For, as Boudreau convincingly suggests, global urban life is political life.

By exploring the formative years of the New City of Toronto (between 1995 and 2005, the period just before, during, and after metropolitan amalgamation), Changing Toronto analyzes the political, social, and environmental challenges of living in, and governing, a major metropolitan city region that bills itself as a multicultural, world-class city.

Table of ContentsPrologueChapter 1: Citizens Facing a Megacity Giant: Story of the Amalgamation of TorontoChapter 2: Citizens for Local Democracy Speaks OutChapter 3: Within the Belly of a Global Monster: Discourses on Globalization and the StateChapter 4: The Living Sponge of the City: The Politics of Everyday LifeChapter 5: From Constitutionalism to the Rights to the CityChapter 6: Performative Citizenship and Citizens for Local DemocracyIndexAppendix A: Checklist for Local DemocracyAppendix B: Civic PrioritiesAppendix C: Citizens for Local Democracy Values StatementAppendix D: Principles Governing Municipal/Provincial Financial RelationshipsList of Tables, Maps, Cartoons: Table 1: Voter Turnouts 1991-1997Table 2: November 10, 1997 Electoral Results MayorTable 3: Provincial Elections, June 3, 1999 Results in the new city and in the GTA, in percentTable 4: Changes in Social ManagementTable 5: Downtown Toronto Provincial Electoral Results 1987-99Map 1: The Greater Toronto AreaMap 2: Median Household Income by Census TractImage 1: Voter Stress SyndromeImage 2: Name Changes PROLOGUEToronto the Good. Toronto the Strong. Toronto the Thriving. Toronto the Polite. Toronto the Safe, the Clean, the Green... I was turning these words over in my mind as we stopped at Tim Hortons near Oshawa, for a last stop before entering the city. I wanted to embrace the city, learn its language, hop on its streetcars, "ride the rocket," as they say over there. And I did it all right, commuting one hour back and forth to suburban York University everyday from my downtown apartment. I was entering the city as a stranger...and a few months later I was marching down Yonge street with thousands of other residents, in the midst of big "No Megacity " signs. Toronto the Good, Toronto the Strong, Toronto the Thriving... Toronto was shouting I was used to student demonstrations and street protests in Montreal the Political, Montreal the Sensual, Montreal the Creative. But I did not expect this in Toronto. They say timing is everything. I arrived in the Toronto of the 1990s, the Toronto of massive mobilization, in the aftermath of the sweeping vi