This collaborative project sustains and expands upon the existing ‘critical dialogues’ network between London and Toronto scholars, drawing new insights from market, state and civil society responses to Covid-19 in each city. As per the funding call parameters, the project connects with the universal and contingent challenges embodied in the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals, we will question and evaluate the extent to which our built environments are responding to SDGs concomitant to post-covid urban experiences.

Solutions will focus on: No poverty (SDG1), Reduced Inequalities (SDG10), Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG9) and Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG11).

We will explore the challenges created by Covid-19 in London and Toronto, and the building of more sustainable cities that value holistic urban-focused solutions, exploring environmentally and socially-just transformations in governance, planning and development. The project enhances our partnership; incorporating research workshops oriented to specific SDGs, generating co-written academic and policy-oriented publications, and producing original outputs (podcasts, blogs).

This project is grounded in an initial workshop on housing issues in London and Toronto (June 2017). The collaboration was supported by UCL’s Global Engagement Office and the VP International UofT, involving faculty and postgraduate researchers from both universities. To further develop ideas, UofT hosted another jointly funded workshop (April 2018). Workshop discussions led to the production of a successful co-edited book, Critical Dialogues of Urban Governance, Development and Activism published by UCL Press in 2020. The book was launched online (January 2021), with 22 chapters by UCL and UofT contributors and an international publication range.

This project aims to evaluate post-Covid urban strategies in line with SDGs, building upon the outcomes of ‘Critical Dialogues’, providing a framework supporting:

• Emergent primary research (collaborative and independent).
• Platforms, forums and events for knowledge production and transfer, including a new international doctoral colloquia.
• Interactive outputs (virtual research exchanges, podcast series, social media, website).
• A second edited book, and journal publications.
• Longer term aim of establishing a ‘Critical Dialogues’ publication series with UCL Press, encouraging multidisciplinary publications.
• Ambitions for scaling-up the network, pursuing external grants.
• An annual meeting of the network, potentially extending to creating an international summer school programme between UCL and UofT.

We specifically focus on post-Covid challenges and impacts in London and Toronto. Sustainable transformations and solutions guided by four SDGs will attend to providing solutions to these challenges, exploring ideas such as equity and justice. Covid-19 has produced significant, unexpected ruptures across social, environmental, economic, and built environment contexts in both cities (Brail, 2021; ONS, 2021; Livingstone, Bunce, Fiorentino & Short, forthcoming). The pandemic has also hindered global and localised efforts to implement SDGs by causing new socio-environmental problems (Clemente-Suárez et al. 2022). Pandemic recovery provides an important juncture for the critical reassessment of urban policies and practices. It allows for an envisioning of emergent urban solutions and innovations that emphasise sustainable transformations through multi-sectoral processes, and grounded research collaborations between academic researchers and communities (Frantzeskaki & Rok, 2018).

The project will be led by a core team of interdisciplinary urban research faculty consisting of the Principal Investigators Dr Nicola Livingstone (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL) and Dr Susannah Bunce (Human Geography, UTSC), Co-Investigators Prof Alan Walks and Dr Shauna Brail at UTM, and Dr Susan Moore and Dr Michael Short at UCL. The team will be responsible for directing the project and its activities, recruiting community partners, additional faculty and students from both universities. The project will consist of two 2-day long workshops, in London and Toronto (2022-23) centred on our selected SDGs, which are highly relevant to cities and urban futures: i) Sustainable Cities and Communities (SDG11) and Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure (SDG9) and, ii) No Poverty (SDG1) and Reduced Inequalities (SDG10). The workshops will bring together a multidisciplinary group of faculty and students from each university and public and community-based partners in both cities, conducting research in these specific topic areas. Research outputs in Year 2 will be generated from workshop activities.

The following outputs will be generated from the two workshops:

• Creation of research clusters on specific topics to bring together existing research, conduct new collaborative research, co-author publications and other outputs.
• Recording of keynote panels at workshops (Thursday 20th April).
• Development of a research project website that will host research publications, workshop documentation, blog-posts, podcasts, ‘zines. Creation of communication platform (TBC at workshop #1).

• Publication of several co-authored scholarly journal articles and policy-oriented reports addressing the SDGs discussed at each workshop.
• Six podcasts with invited faculty, student, and community partner participants in conversation with a steering committee member on a specific workshop topic.
• Production of 2 short digital and print ‘zines’ created by students focused on publicly accessible knowledge transfer from workshop discussions.
• Creation of online Doctoral Colloquia series to engage UCL and UofT PhD students.
• Identification of themes for second edited book.