MUCP & IMUCP 2024-25

Regenesis is a Canadian environmental organization focused on working with students at post-secondary institutions to support their ideas and turn them into long-lasting sustainability solutions. Examples include community bike centres, community gardens, farmers’ markets, free store, item libraries and food centres.

This MUCP project will work to develop effective stakeholder relationships at the University of Toronto as part of a larger strategic vision to bring a food grocery co-operative, a new farmers’ market and an item library to the St George campus.

The Canadian Network of Community Land Trusts (CNCLT) is a non-profit, member-based organization. The CNCLT supports the growth of community land trusts with the primary purpose of acquiring, developing, and/or stewarding permanently affordable housing, land, and other assets that contribute to a thriving community.

Indigenous-led land trusts are developing in Vancouver, Calgary, Northern Ontario, Toronto, and Nova Scotia.The students working on this project will review existing municipal land return policies across Turtle Island and cases of municipal land return to indigenous CLTs and make recommendations to municipal governments regarding land return to Indigenous CLTs.

Toronto Seniors Housing Corporation (TSHC) provides subsidized rental housing in a state of good repair for approximately 15,000 low- and moderate-income seniors in 83 buildings across the city. They provide and connect tenants with services and support through an integrated service model to enable seniors to age in place, have successful tenancies and enjoy a better quality of life.

TCHC would like the MUCP students to help develop a volunteer management program comprised of tenant-led volunteers to organize events and activities in their buildings. The students are asked to design a volunteer management/training/recognition program that is low-cost and delivers training, recognition, and development for tenants who want to volunteer in their buildings. The students will also create a system for tracking and reporting on volunteer hours and determine what tenants value by way of very low-cost recognition items.

Starting in 2013 as a progressive grassroots social venture, Building Roots was initially founded in response to a lack of access to fresh food and agricultural growing space across Toronto. Their mission is to utilize the power of food as a catalyst for nurturing well-being, strengthening the roots of the Moss Park and Downtown East communities.

MUCP students will map and assess the community needs of Moss Park while identifying themes that align with Building Roots’ work, such as food, housing, healthcare, social cohesion, green spaces, safer public spaces, etc. Components of the design intervention will be to design a community needs assessment/preliminary report on findings that help strengthen projects and programs by Building Roots and its partners.

CUI is the national platform that houses the best in Canadian city building — where policymakers, urban professionals, civic and business leaders, community activists and academics can learn, share and collaborate with one another from coast to coast to coast.

This MUCP project asks that students examine the barriers and opportunities for infill housing on main streets and highlight the benefits (i.e. fiscal, economic, environmental, social) of infill housing in relation to large scale redevelopment and/or greenfield development. The students’ work will help inform and spark ideas that will directly improve the delivery of current and upcoming CUI projects.

Urban Minds is a Canadian non-profit organization with a mission to create meaningful ways for youth to shape equitable and sustainable cities. Urban Minds builds relationships with municipalities and civic organizations to help them deliver their strategic and design objectives through youth engagement.

This MUCP project requires that students conduct an environmental scan of existing tools and resources that support municipalities in evaluating how friendly or accommodating a public engagement process or event is for youth. This will require the team to conduct a case study review of public sector organizations that have used an auditing process to understand the youth-friendliness of their processes. After creating a report explaining the research findings, the impact of improving consultation, and engagement processes for youth participation, the students will recommend a set of evaluation criteria or metrics to measure or identify key indicators of a municipality’s youth-friendliness.

AMO is a non-profit organization representing almost all of Ontario’s 444 municipal governments. While they do not represent the City of Toronto, they frequently collaborate on mutually beneficial policy positions. AMO activities include developing policy positions and reports; liaising with elected and non-elected representatives; informing and educating; and providing services to the municipal sector.

This MUCP project looks at underlying problems in the relationship between municipalities and the province. Ontario has outgrown its service delivery and funding relationships with municipalities. The students will develop tools for municipalities to demonstrate why Ontario needs to rethink how public services are funded and delivered, and how infrastructure at the local level is built and financed. To do so, they will conduct an analysis of municipal budgets since 2019 and investigate the existing use of debt and investment tools by municipalities.

The Credit Valley Conservation Authority (CVC) is one of 36 Conservation Authorities in Ontario. CVC is dedicated to protecting, restoring and managing the natural resources of the Credit River Watershed.  One framework through which CVC plans for and implements work in urban areas is through the multi-disciplinary Sustainable Neighbourhoods program. Sustainable Neighbourhood Action Plans (SNAPs) are comprehensive and tailored strategies to revitalize mature neighbourhoods facing environmental challenges.

CVC’s Sustainable Neighbourhoods team is looking to determine how they can increase capacity building for local climate action in their project neighbourhoods and they’re hoping to determine how they can remove barriers and build capacity to increase community-led initiatives related to local climate action in the SNAP neighbourhoods and provide social and well-being co-benefits for a diversity of community members.

HousingNowTO is a pro-bono professional services collective that uses data, planning and architectural best practices to ensure that the City of Toronto maximizes the opportunities for creating new affordable-housing on surplus City-owned lands. They were founded in December 2018 to track-progress and advocate for improve-outcomes on the surplus lands identified by City Council.

The HousingNowTO MUCP student group is asked to reimagine a surplus land site in the City of Toronto by designing multiple options for affordable housing, that integrate social equity and climate and social justice. The goal of the MUCP students in this research team is to provide HousingNowTO with insights and actionable analysis to help them influence the future direction of the site with the City of Toronto.

The Neighbourhood Group Community Services works with people at every stage of their lives, providing access to innovative and effective programs, and collaboratively building and advocating for an equitable, just, and vibrant community. As part of their strategic plan they have committed to an anti-poverty framework. They acknowledge that the realities of poverty and injustice underlie all the services they provide as well as the lived experience of their participants and staff.

The MUCP student group working on this project will consult with staff and/or program participants about what they see as the best use of indoor and outdoor space, create different designs for how space could be used, develop a budget for spaces and suggest ideas/resources for funding.

KMCLT in Toronto is a grassroots initiative dedicated to preserving the cultural vibrancy, affordability, and community ownership of the iconic Kensington Market neighborhood. KMCLT seeks to acquire and steward land and property assets within Kensington Market through community-led ownership models, ensuring that these resources remain accessible and affordable for current and future generations. This will safeguard the unique character and heritage of Kensington Market while fostering inclusive and equitable growth.

The student team will focus on the Kensington Community School, which has a convergence of needs, unsuccessfully fulfilled. Planters hold dirt but no plants; trees are awkwardly growing out of cement containers. The entrance for the school, is used mainly by office workers and the general public who eat their lunch and smoke, and it is littered with cigarette butts. The challenge for the students is to look at how to better use this space for the neighbourhood. With community input and working with the KMCLT, the principal and parent council, the students will design an outdoor space and space activation plan that better protects the trees and connects the needs of the school children and parents with the surrounding community and general public.

The Community and Cultural Spaces Trust (CCST) is a new trust dedicated to the long-term preservation of affordable space and land for arts, culture and community activities in Ward 9 (Davenport), Toronto. Building on the successes of the community land trust movement and other community ownership models, their goal is to mitigate the current displacement of arts and community organizations from Davenport, and from Toronto more broadly. They plan to achieve this by sustaining affordable multi-use spaces where community, cultural and arts organizations can thrive.

The 2024-25 project team will continue the work that the 2023-24 MUCP team began, which was the design and development of a needs assessment pilot survey. CCCT wants to engage with the groups and organizations who have managed to remain in the area but are at risk of displacement in the coming years and those who have already been pushed out of the community. The students will consult with groups and organizations who are tenants in their spaces as well as those who currently own their spaces and face challenges in maintaining ownership. The objective is an iterative process of building on the pilot dashboard as they collect more data; creating an ever-evolving online resource that can inform CCST’s decision-making and can be used to present community needs to funders, elected representatives and other stakeholders.

The International Landscape Collaborative (ILC) is a group of emerging scholars and practitioners who promote integrated landscape approaches and nature-based solutions to address environmental and social challenges in a changing climate. They study the relationship of urban, industrial, and economic activities with land-water systems and connect them to larger processes of global change. ILC pursues an interdisciplinary landscape approach to inform the design of resilient infrastructure, sustainable built environments, and socially just places and share case studies, project proposals, and built work across disciplinary boundaries from different geographic and cultural contexts.

Toronto’s network of ravines and great lake waterfront landscapes is its most important defining resource, yet as the city continues to grow at unprecedented rates, the natural landscape system is fragmented and inequitably accessible to different neighborhoods. This project requires the MUCP team create a public facing mapping tool as a resource to better understand Toronto’s ravines and lakefront parks as part of a larger regional system and as an advocacy tool to work toward improved landscape connectivity and neighborhood access. The project proposes multidisciplinary students collaborate with, local communities and city staff, to create a toolkit of connectivity and accessibility design solutions that can help the city work toward implementation of its ravine strategy.

TCBN’s primary objectives are to provide equitable economic opportunities for all Toronto residents; contribute to the development of a system of training and workforce development programs that can enable economic inclusion; support social enterprises and other related vehicles to economic inclusion through commitments to social procurement; contribute to sustainable communities with neighbourhood and environmental improvements built through new transit infrastructure; ensuring clear commitments and accountability from all parties to deliver on community benefits.

Moss Park is experiencing extraordinary pressures of urban change and redevelopment. These pressures include land speculation and gentrification that have become accelerated due to the neighbourhood being a site of a future station for the Ontario Line. Moss Park Coalition is creating a community development plan linking economic development to social investment. This will provide a platform for residents and community members to create a future vision for the neighbourhood that is centred around their current needs and increased civic engagement. The MUCP student team will help design the community development plan centering the voices and needs of the current residents of the neighbourhood.

In India, members of the transgender community are known as the ‘third gender’. Historically, trans communities have been an important component of the social fabric of India and are entitled to fundamental rights under the Constitution of India. Yet, due to the social stigma attached with their identities and widespread discrimination, trans communities lack access to meaningful livelihoods.

U of T and Ashoka University students will work on developing a Skill Development/Self Employment Toolkit for this community, which would include an overview of self-employment opportunities; entrepreneurship guidance; case studies and success stories; training and capacity building programs; access to resources and support as well as market access and networking strategies. In addition, the team will design a human rights resource guide for trans communities and to educate the broader public.

India will have the highest urban population in the world by 2050 and need for safe and welcoming public spaces in dense Indian cities is critical. Areas under metro lines and elevated roads are common public spaces in urban areas that are left neglected and unused. They are often used as makeshift parking lots, garbage dumps, or a breeding ground for unauthorized activities.

How can these underpass spaces be re-activated to serve their surrounding communities? U of T and Ashoka University students will work to identify innovative urban interventions that have the potential to add value to these spaces, while simultaneously managing deterioration and bringing local communities together.

SWaCH is the story of transforming the systems of waste management in Pune, India. Waste-pickers created a just and sustainable waste management system that is recognized nationally and globally, in partnership with the City of Pune. 3,700 SWaCH waste pickers serve over 4 million citizens of Pune daily through a robust, sustainable and decentralized doorstep waste collection service.

U of T and Ashoka University students will work to develop a comprehensive guidebook and ethnography of waste picker geographies, along with an interactive digital map. SWaCH would like the student team to document different components of the decentralized, in situ solid waste management of waste pickers and to conduct interviews to profile waste picker representatives and various stakeholders connected to them, including citizens, PMC officials, and fellow waste pickers.

The Association of International Private Committees for the Safeguarding of Venice is a federation of 26 non-profit organisations from 11 countries whose primary objective has been to promote and finance the restoration of Venice’s artistic heritage. They seek to sustain Venice’s urban and natural heritage, intervening both directly and through the international media against potentially damaging initiatives.

This MUCP project will focus on an adaptive reuse initiative, most likely on libraries, although the Association is open to other possibilities if this does not prove feasible. The project is geared toward one of the core needs that many civic leaders identified, specifically the lack of community space and services to support creative activities, especially for young people. The Association will work with the MUCP student team and local Venetian leaders to identify key gaps felt by the locals, such as nightlife, music venues, meeting places, co-working spaces, etc.

Downtown Basseterre in St. Kitts, is rich in history and culture, however, it faces challenges of urban blight due to abandoned, degraded, and unsafe properties. These spaces hold immense potential for revitalization, offering opportunities to enhance the aesthetics of the area and provide safe, clean, and environmentally friendly locations for the community. This project aims to reclaim these neglected spaces, transforming them into vibrant community assets that contribute to the overall well-being and prosperity of the city.

The MUCP team will identify and assess abandoned, degraded, and unsafe properties in downtown Basseterre and help develop a comprehensive plan for repurposing these properties to enhance the aesthetics of the area. Safety, cleanliness and environmental sustainability of the revitalization of spaces fosters community engagement and participation in the revitalization process. The students will identify potential partnership opportunities between local stakeholders, government agencies and private investors to support the redevelopment plans.