NEWS

LGP faculty launches new Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance

On November 23, 2018, Western's Centre for Urban Policy and Local Governance hosted its first official event: a public roundtable on The intentional City: Shaping London’s Urban Future.This was an important moment for the new Centre, signalling its goal of productively engaging scholars across disciplinary boundaries and building new relationhips between Western researchers and practitioners working in local government, nongovernmental organizations, and the community.

London is at a crossroad. Neither a core global city nor a place left behind, it occupies the open middle ground of Ontario's and Canada's urban future. What kind of future do we want for London, and how do we get there? Who should lead and who needs to be at the table? What can London learn from other mid-size cities? Fundamentally, can London be an intentional city— one that knows what it is, knows what it wants to become, has assembled the resources, including community and integovernmental support, to get there? 

Moderated by the Centre's associate director, Prof. Martin Horak, the roundtable brought together civic leaders and academics for an open public discussion of these questions. FIve panellists participated: Pierre Filion, Profressor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo and an expert in mid-sized cities; Arielle Kayabaga, Councillor-Elect for City of London's downtown Ward 13; Michelle Baldwin, Executive Director of London's Pillar Nonprofit Network and Cofounder of innovation Works; John Fleming, Managing Director of Planning and City Planner for the City of London; and Neil Bradford, Professor and Chair of the Department of political Science at Huron University College.

The director of the centre is LGP instructor and Political Science faculty member Zack Taylor. For more information, visit http://nest.uwo.ca/urbancentre/.