XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology (July 15-21, 2018)

389

Sh!t Is Hot up in the 6 Right Now (Drake) – the Toronto School of Urban Thinking

RC21 Regional and Urban Development (host committee)

Language: English

Panel session. Urban and Regional Sociology often frames what we are doing in “schools of thought”: from Chicago to LA to NYC. Accordingly we present Toronto as an interesting laboratory that generates specific modes of theorizing the city, of developing methodologies of urban inquiry and, paraphrasing Jennifer Robinson, of “thinking the city through elsewhere”. We have assembled a panel of Toronto based urban scholars from the city’s three major universities who have been doing research either in the context of Toronto proper, or by looking at other places, informed by their lived experiences in Toronto with its various intellectual trajectories. The panel discussion will present questions such as: How has Toronto influenced their work? What is specific about “the 6”, as the city has more recently been referred to by hiphop artist Drake, that is generative of urban thought? Can we learn from its “hyper-diversity”? Does Toronto reveal its urban constellations one neighbourhood at a time, or is the “real-existing region” the binding frame for how to understand the place? Is there a universal urbanism in Toronto that breaks the city-ist mold of the particular? What does Toronto do with/to urban policy? What does it have to offer to better understand our urban r/age? Is Toronto a place of theory and/or action? What does the city “cold as Alaska” (Drake again) hold in store in an era of climate change? Concludes Drake: “The city gets stronger when everybody is speakin’, not when everybody out here beefin'".