Notice Board

The Privatization of Neighbourhoods and Emerging Social Ecology of Cities.

Using Calgary as an example, this talk will present a conceptual overview of new forms of neighbourhood privatization and design since the 1970s, and ways in which these represent multiple levels of nesting of privatization schemes through Common Interest Developments (CIDs).  A graphic model is developed to summarize the effects on the social ecology of the city and the potential for the partitioning of the city into new public and private urban realms. 

Professor Townshend has an educational background in Urban Studies, Environment and Resources, and Urban Geography. He is a Human Geographer with wide-ranging interests. These include the social differentiation of neighbourhoods and communities within cities, and the social processes that underlie well-being and resilience.  He has studied changing social structures in Canadian metropolitan areas, and new patterns of inequality that are emerging in the social ecology of cities, including how development trends such as gated and age-exclusive communities and privatization of space are re-shaping the conceptual models of urban social ecology.  Research interests also include connections between community and health. His recent work has focused on natural disaster communities, investigating how aspects of community experience are linked to patterns of cohesion, resilience, and issues such as Post Traumatic Stress Disorder in children. He is a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Lethbridge, is a Research Affiliate of the Prentice Institute for Global Population and Demography, and is the Calgary team leader on a national Neighbourhood Change Research Project. When he’s not working, Ivan is cleverly disguised as an adult and enjoys riding motorcycles. 

 Image courtesy of the speaker.