Dr. Jino Distasio, Professor of Geography and Vice President of Research and Innovation at the University of Winnipeg has been part of a group of academics from across Canada working to understand how increased income inequality has affected neighbourhoods. This multi-city study has revealed that over the past forty years income distribution has shifted altering the social-spatial structure of cities and dividing neighbourhoods along economic lines.  The fallout from the current health crisis with Covid-19 has further revealed how economic and social barriers are affecting neighbourhoods and the need for more investment towards community development and social infrastructure.  

On this episode we take a walk with Dr. Distasio around his home neighbourhood in Winnipeg asking the research question, “How do we build more resilient cities post-coronavirus?”

JINO DISTASIO: It’s kind of interesting, at the intersection of Morley and Osborne here in Winnipeg. This is a neighbourhood that could probably be any other place in Canada and if you do a 360° turn here you can see restaurants that have shuttered apartments that are closed, hairdressing salons that aren’t open yet and a range of other services that have to greatly restrict what they’re doing.

KENT DAVIES: Meet Dr. Jino Distasio, Professor of Geography, Former Director of the Institute of Urban Studies, and Vice President of Research and Innovation at the University of Winnipeg.

JINO DISTASIO: So as we think about our cities and neighbourhoods both over the last fifteen, twenty years and as we come out of a pandemic the need for us to restructure our cities and our communities is going to be vitally important.

KENT DAVIES: Distasio has been part of a group of academics from across Canada working to understand how increased income inequality has affected neighbourhoods. This multi-city study has revealed that income distribution has shifted over the past three decades, altering the social-spatial structure of cities and dividing neighbourhoods along economic lines.  The current health crisis with Covid-19 has further revealed how economic and social barriers are affecting our cities and our neighbourhoods.  On this episode the research question is how do we build more resilient cities post-coronavirus? From the University of Winnipeg Oral History Centre, you’re listening to Research Question.  Amplifying the impact of discovery from the researchers of the University of Winnipeg.

Riverview is one of the older residential communities in Winnipeg. Bordering along the banks of the Red River and the southern half of Osborne Street, Riverview is home to a busy stretch of businesses, venues, community centres, parks and more. The Winnipeg neighbourhood is also home to long-time resident Dr. Jino Distasio.

KENT DAVIES: How long have you lived in this neighbourhood?

JINO DISTASIO: Oh, for well over forty years. This been my home and actually I wrote my… both my masters and PHD thesis were both on neighbourhoods and communities and this neighbourhood Riverview has been a big part of that. I mean I find there’s not too many neighbourhoods like Riverview in this country that I think for some of the more interesting contributions that it’s had over the years.

KENT DAVIES: Today, we’re taking a walk around Riverview — properly socially distanced of course — to talk about the changes and challenges different neighborhoods face coming out of a global pandemic.

JINO DISTASIO: I think one of the challenges right now in a place like Riverview as great as it is, it has certainly become an example of how neighbourhoods are changing and some will see the good or maybe the bad but places like Riverview have polarized to the wealthier side. And we are starting to see neighbourhoods becoming more similar than dissimilar. And I’ve been thinking about that more in that when we have a neighbourhood that is very similar with respect to income, type of housing like lots of homeowners, very few renters and concentrations of very high income. There’s something that is missing. And one of the challenges of that is to say okay well maybe that’s just a natural outcome but places like Riverview have changed over time to become more concentrated with respect to a growing gap between the wealthier residents of Riverview and some of the less wealthy neighbourhoods that even surround this area here. And that’s a pattern that we are seeing across Canada where neighbourhoods are increasingly separated along economic lines.

KENT DAVIES: This is not a new trend over the past half century income inequality in Canada has widened.[i] Distasio’s research explores how this income gap has literally changed our maps affecting the make-up of cities and neighbourhoods across the country; altering everything from development, housing, and access to community amenities and public spaces.[ii]

JINO DISTASIO: And some of the things we talk about in the work that we’re doing on income inequality in Canadian cities is to measure those differences again, neighbourhood to neighbourhood but also in the responsiveness. So we have to think about the outcome of this. How do we get to more resilient cities? How do we build better communities and neighbourhoods? Part of the challenge is going to be getting us back to some old school social and community planning where we really begin to think about the social infrastructure of communities.

KENT DAVIES: But what happens when a neighbourhood faces the added stress of a pandemic? We are all experiencing the fallout from the public health crisis caused by Covid-19.  Health concerns coupled with financial uncertainty is taking an undue toll on our collective wellbeing. As governments are busy trying to navigate their way through the crisis, the tendency is to overlook neighbourhoods in need putting more pressure on community support networks. On top of that, governments will often chose infrastructure spending on roads and other citywide development projects during an economic crisis. While this may assist with job creation and the overall economic recovery effort, it does not necessarily benefit the social development of neighbourhoods in the long term. Distasio emphasizes that governments should not only invest in the physical infrastructure but social infrastructure as well.

JINO DISTASIO: Whenever we come out of a major economic crisis governments tend to prime the pump with new roads and physical infrastructure to create jobs and that’s great but what this pandemic has exposed in our neighbourhoods is the lack of social infrastructure for communities to be able to respond in these kinds of times. How do we get out there? How do we enjoy the community? How do we engage on the streets? How do we get our coffee or our hair cut or order food? And how do children interact with the landscape? And I think that interaction has been challenged greatly especially in neighbourhoods where there is high density, not a lot of urban open spaces or parks or parks that have actually been restricted or closed down in the short term. But once we sort of emerge from easing some of these restrictions we need to have tools and resources to empower local communities to address some of those things whether it’s through community centres, community based organizations they’re going to have to work hand in hand to take this next number of months and make the best of it. If our kids don’t have outlets, if our adults don’t have outlets it’s going to contribute to more and increasing social challenges and potentially social dysfunction. Especially with youth with nothing more to do. So my fear is in some of our denser, older urban neighbourhoods those challenges are going to be amplified because there isn’t the social capacity or a number of individuals in that community whether it’s formal or informal to respond to the need. To support the social, mental health and well-being of community members. 

KENT DAVIES: As bleak as that forecast may sound, sometimes a crisis can bring us together. As we walk around the neighbourhood, we see kids riding bikes, people walking their dogs, people are building fences, there’s a person dropping off groceries to an elderly neighbour.  In a time of great uncertainty it appears this neighbourhood is thriving.

JINO DISTASIO: In great communities there are those wonderful spaces that allow people to get out, social isolate and find ways to engage but it’s in communities where there’s a lack of open space, a lack of walkability, a lack of sense of safety. Right, so in neighbourhoods like here in Riverview it’s been amazing. People are out. They’re walking their dogs. They’re talking to neighbours at distance. We can create better neighbourhoods that are more walkable but in some of our older neighbourhoods where there is still a richness of diversity, walkability, amenities, we are pretty close to some community gardens. We are close to the river. We are close to a lot of walking trails and at the same time you can walk a few blocks and get some groceries. That’s what we want to be able to do and we also want to be able to walk socially, feel less isolated and engaged in our communities. In neighbourhoods where you might be in a far flung suburb that’s going to pose some more challenges. 

KENT DAVIES: This lack of community connection during a time of crisis isn’t the only a problem with older neighbourhoods in flux but new developments as well. In Winnipeg, residential developments tend to move outwards to the edges of the city. These new neighbourhoods tend to have a lack of community and social amenities. Public community spaces like community centres, parks and walking paths are often competing with privately owned spaces like plazas and strip malls.[iii] This lack of publically accessible social infrastructure may limit a neighbourhood’s potential but as Distasio states so does another key factor.

JINO DISTASIO: It takes time. Great neighbourhoods like a Riverview or any community in this country aren’t planned on an architect’s table. They’re nurtured over decades of history, of storytelling, of experience but that doesn’t help us when we build a new subdivision in the middle of nowhere that’s concentrated with wealth or it doesn’t matter where again the amenities of community building are absent. And they too will be amplified in these areas where kids don’t have something to do. But again, I think we’ve come to the point now where this is exposed some of the challenges that we have in our cities. And over time we’ve just pulled back a little bit on supporting social and community environments in favour of investing in new subdivisions and bigger homes and more isolated homes. And we’ve forgotten the importance of just rolling up the sleeves, working with communities and community members to find ways to improve wellbeing, give kids opportunities, while also empowering residents.

KENT DAVIES: To do this well, Distasio states we will need to harness the right set of tools for what he describes as, “a generational undertaking in social and community development.”[iv] That said, community building takes a lot of time, and work, and organizing and it’s tough to know where to begin. As we reach Churchill Drive, the main road that wraps around Riverview we’re reminded how the simplest of changes can enrich the lives of neighbourhoods.

JINO DISTASIO: How do you take almost a neighbourhood thoroughfare and turn it into one of the greatest assets in the midst of an international pandemic. And I think Churchill Drive represents one of those small little gestures that communities and cities can do to improve wellbeing. Closing a street in a neighbourhood like Riverview and other communities that have done this, have done that little small change that has empowered kids to cycle down on their bikes feeling a little less afraid. It’s empowered residents to walk and it’s not a big deal, doesn’t cost much money. Cities crews come and they put the signs up and they take them down. They manage it really wonderfully. You can have a little bit of access but they said the street now belongs to the people. And I know that there’s lots of shots of empty plazas in Milan and Rome and all over Spain, wherever pick a country in the world and streets are empty but at the community level to do something like this doesn’t take much but it does a heck of a lot to improve people’s outlook on the day. And I’ve been on here almost every day for the last week with the dog and family just enjoying catching up with people. And it’s really, it’s done a lot and it didn’t take much.

KENT DAVIES: Churchill Drive is not only important to Distasio because of it is a pleasant place to walk but it also runs along an area of the neighbourhood that holds great personal significance to him.    It’s hard to imagine a public health crisis of this magnitude happening here before but as we stand on the grounds of the Riverview health center Distasio reminds us that this is something the neighbourhood, the city and the world faced many times before.

JINO DISTASIO: This is one of the earliest isolationist hospitals built in this country. Now it’s a field. Underneath us, right there is a tunnel that went right into the kitchen where I spent a lot of time.

KENT DAVIES: Founded in 1911 by the City of Winnipeg as the Winnipeg Municipal Hospital, the original facilities the King Edward Memorial Hospital and the King George Hospital were considered at the time to be the most modern hospitals in the world for the care of people with communicable diseases.[v]

JINO DISTASIO: They’re really built to contain outbreaks of influenza, even dealing with cholera, other infectious diseases at the time. It’s become a part of the neighbourhood but we’ve kind of forgot that. That we’ve been through these before and our cities have responded and whether it was building a facility like this back in the very early 1900’s to some of our very high tech isolation units and ventilators and isolators. Well here in the 1950’s for example the polio outbreak was significant and this place here became home for polio patients recovering.

KENT DAVIES: The Riverview hospitals gained international distinction for the services it provided to victims of polio during the epidemic of 1953. Doctors and nurses worked tirelessly to care for patients, many of whom were confined to iron lungs two years before the discovery of the Salk vaccine would be made.[vi]

JINO DISTASIO: And in fact there had been people living here on these grounds from the 1950’s all the way up into the 2000’s. And for myself I spent almost fifteen years working here and my father spent well over thirty. And so I actually got to know a lot of the polio patients that spent the vast majority of their life here. And think back to the fifties when polio was equally devastating, and even before then from the Spanish Flu this place was here even in the 1950 flood you can see around us a here a dyke was built. We fought off a flood, we fought off infections, we fought off major catastrophes. So here we find ourselves again in the 2020’s with a new global pandemic and while for some it’s new and we’ve never seen this but it’s not and we’ve certainly responded before and I think we’ll come through this one. It will be hard. There have been casualties, catastrophic death, and restructuring. I guess for the perspective that I’m trying to think about it really is how this eventually hits home at the neighbourhood level. Of the individual who is struggling, who’s neighbourhood is changing, jobs have been lost, people’s mental health have been challenged, wellbeing has been eroded. We need to get back into our communities. And again this has been this long standing trend in Canada where this polarizing impact has changed the way our cities are forming. And not to use the pandemic to recast how we structure out cities but I do think it’s an opportunity for us to think about planning in a different way.

KENT DAVIES: The last stop on our walk is to the Riverview Community Gardens. Nestled on the banks of the red river these are some of the oldest community gardens in city founded following the Winnipeg flood in 1950. The garden area is set on a combination of public and private land leased to the Riverview Garden Society by the City of Winnipeg.[vii] It’s also a working example of the importance of having social infrastructure during a crisis. This community garden offers the residents of Riverview opportunities to socialize and a distance with neighbours, access to a walkable accessible recreation activity, and the opportunity to grow healthy food, and participate in neighbourhood clean ups and food share programs. Gardening also provides an overall sense of well-being, which is important in times of great anxiety.[viii] There is great potential when you start talking about using public spaces more efficiently towards growing food. This is especially important in Winnipeg’s core area neighbourhoods, which have experienced a shortage of food options, leaving people with limited access to affordable and nutritious food.[ix] However, creating and maintaining a community garden requires a significant amount of time, energy and resources. Additional challenges include the quality of the soil, the costs of obtaining necessary equipment, tools and seeds, not to mention the physical labour needed to tend a garden throughout a growing season. On top of that, securing public space especially in the inner city where vacant lots that can become contested spaces of development can be difficult.[x] In that regard, Riverview is fortunate to have community gardens plots that were founded early and have continued to grow, allowing for better organization and ingenuity while keeping plots affordable for first time gardeners. 

JINO DISTASIO: I love this place because it really for a long time brought people together in this community and for me growing up as a young immigrant kid. There were a ton of Italian gardeners down here when I grew up including by father and lots of different friends and families and tremendous number of different people but from my experience as a young immigrant kid just laughing and watching my dad grow peppers and tomatoes and turning that into tomato sauce and seeing other family members here. This place has really come a long now with a bit more technology than it was back in the day but I think the same principal remains come down here grow your vegetables be a part of a community and I think it’s really great. These are the kinds of amenities that become so important but as well they’re not necessarily available across the board. And this goes back to the point where if we’re creating inequal spaces and inequal neighbourhoods and we are polarizing our communities based on wealth, these amenities are shut out for a lot of people. But it doesn’t always have to be that way. So our work in West Broadway, they have an amazing food share program where for a while people were growing, they had community gardens and they were sharing the benefits of each harvest and each collection of produce. So there’s ways around it and I know that some students that I worked with years ago created some community based gardens out at the University of Manitoba trying to grow crops that were applicable to folks from African communities, experimenting with different vegetables and root crops to really get into the cultural nuances that are reshaping Winnipeg. The cultural landscape really gets influenced by ethnicity in communities and I love that vibrancy in cities. In a place like Winnipeg now that has seen 150000 newcomers over the last fifteen years has greatly changed our cultural dynamic, our cultural landscape. My whole growing up was being distinct in the food that I ate. When I look back I always thought we were kind of the crazy family. But when I see newcomers now doing the same kinds of things with different sorts of foods and approaches I love the fact that my mom who’s eighty five and our neighbour who’s probably close, Filipino, Italian. They trade pancit for bread and I love it. It brings me back to part of my childhood growing up in this neighbourhood where again, that is the beauty of it. The diversity that we want to see in our communities.

KENT DAVIES: It’s these kinds of early experiences in Riverview that has led Distasio towards a career in academic research focusing on cities and how neighbourhoods and communities interact with each other. 

JINO DISTASIO: I always knew I was interested in cities from a very early age. Worked with my parents who had some cleaning contracts. I spent a lot of time in the inner city in old buildings cleaning offices. And there’s something about it. I never really wanted to be an architect but I knew there was something about cities that intrigued me. And it wasn’t how about they were built but it was about how people use cities and spaces. So for the last twenty something years as a student of urban geography and urban thinking I spent a lot of time thinking about housing and neighbourhoods and worked actually for a number of years with Canada mortgage and housing and market analysis before I decided to actually be an academic. And when I went down that path I knew that there was again, something about communities that stuck with me and do think it’s about growing up in the neighbourhood that at the time was very very diverse; socially, economically, culturally. So even working on both a masters and PHD, it was all about how neighbourhoods and cities connect and how people use or get shut out from them. And that’s what I teach too. And in the work that I’ve been doing on income inequality and neighbourhood change we’ve moved across the country and realizing that patterns exist, where our cities are being redefined along economic lines, along social and cultural lines and where those divisions are growing between rich and the poor and the haves and have nots. Because I also spent a lot of time at the Institute of Urban studies trying to influence policy and programs to undo some of those. Working with rooming house owners, single occupancy hotels, difficult housing situations to try to find a way in which we can make meaningful change through the influencing of federal and provincial and municipal policies. And I do think there’s lots we can do to make our cities better. I think it starts with good policies but ultimately it’s about good people in good places that have the supports of community members that social capacity, that social capital. And I think that’s always influenced me that we need to try and figure out how we can level the playing field for as many people as we can because we know that on any given day whether individuals experience homelessness, housing insecurity, food insecurity, there’s a heck of a lot more for us to do to improve our communities so we’re just trying to bring light to the inequality that exists and the fact that we need to have more tools to try and find ways out of some of this.

KENT DAVIES: For close to a decade, Distasio has been part of a group of academics from across Canada examining economic and social trends for the past forty years and how they have affected neighbourhoods.

JINO DISTASIO: So the neighbourhood change project is really about shining a light on how neighbourhoods have changed and trying to amplify the tools and resources to undo some of the bad but to also put a light and shine a light on the good. 

KENT DAVIES: As part of the project, The University of Winnipeg’s Institute of Urban Studies released the 2015 publication, “Divided Prairie City: Neighbourhood Inequality, Winnipeg 1970–2010. This work brought together twelve different experts in Distasio to explore how people, places, and spaces were impacted by the growing gap between rich and poor neighbourhoods in Winnipeg.[xi] Unlike some Canadian cities, Winnipeg is unique in that it’s slow-growth and municipal amalgamation have shaped the makeup of neighbourhoods. From 1950’s to 1970’s Winnipeg’s inner-city fell into decline while the suburbs grew exponentially. This rapid expansion of suburbanization was followed by slower rates of growth entrenching existing neighbourhood inequalities and separating the affluent suburban areas of the city from the inner-city neighbourhoods. This trend has worsened over time, as middle-income households got progressively smaller in older suburban neighbourhoods while wealth moved to the edges of the city. This has visibly altered the social-spatial structure of the city with rich and poor areas becoming more physically distinct. It’s this disappearing middle-income household that has Distasio particularly worried.  

JINO DISTASIO: Between 1980 and now for every neighbourhood in Winnipeg who’s income went up two neighbourhoods went down in their income. And in those neighbourhoods that went down it was both the collapse of the middle class and entrenchment of poverty. In the neighbourhoods where incomes went up it tended to be in suburban areas where wealth is migrating out of this city. And again that’s a pattern that we are seeing and that’s the piece that we need to address and change. And I’m afraid that this pandemic is going to amplify those divisions and entrench the impoverished neighbourhoods that are going to have less resources to respond to some of these emerging crisis.

KENT DAVIES: As we depart from the garden heading down Oakwood avenue, the research question remains, “how do we build more resilient cities post-coronavirus?” As we already heard part of that answer lies with rethinking ways in which a city uses the urban space. For instance during the pandemic countries in Europe converted shipping containers into care units and repurposed old buildings into more functional spaces for the public. These examples provide a glimpse how we may prioritize the urban landscape for our collective benefit.[xii] We heard about the conversion of Churchill Drive into a pedestrian friendly street. This is something that’s happening all over the world to facilitate more active living while engaging in social distancing. The reduction of traffic and extension of foot and bike paths within urban areas promotes opportunities in thinking about sustainable mobility.[xiii] The coronavirus pandemic has also highlighted the importance of having public spaces like community gardens. However, as we also heard many neighbourhoods are having trouble finding the space and support needed to develop a community gardening program. And while, cities can gift vacant lots to neighbourhoods, and private owners of buildings can grant space for tenant rooftop gardens, it’s community organizations that ultimately make long term projects like community gardens succeed. When it comes to solutions regarding how we may foster neighbourhood resiliency in Winnipeg, Distasio says we need to look to established community organizations. Many of which have already provide community-based solutions to address things like housing, poverty, while providing social and economic opportunities. For decades, these organizations have utilized the principles of community-economic development, and have been vital when it comes neighbourhood resilience. Inner city organizations like West Broadway Community Organization (WBCO) have spent more than twenty five years working on social and community initiatives that bring residents together to work on mutual projects like gardening and food share programs while offering small grants for local beautification projects.[xiv]

JINO DISTASIO: West Broadway is this tremendously resilient neighbourhood that for fifty years has been home to a significant number of community minded individuals and organizations that have really been geared towards supporting positive change over time and addressing very complicated social and economic issues in that neighbourhood whether it’s high crime, high poverty, gang activity and drug use.

KENT DAVIES: Non-profit community groups are often tasked with tackling complex societal challenges such as poverty and social exclusion that are sometimes inadequately addressed by governments and market forces. Despite this many organizations that rely on government support are often struggling to figure out how to generate the budget needed in order to keep providing their essential services and achieving their social missions. [xv] Distasio maintains that the social and economic recovery of neighbourhoods will require strong communities empowered by local community-based organizations. This will require more government investment in these groups. Governments also need to invest in a range of other post-pandemic supports including research.

JINO DISTASIO: Well I think it’s going to be important that we engage with the social side of research to really again understand the impacts to mental health and wellbeing, the economic impacts, the potential loss of housing. There’s going to be a lot of work to be understood in the coming years as we come out of this. People are ill, systems are overwhelmed, and communities are struggling. So as much as there’s been some really cool community mindedness. I think that we’re going to have to work to better understand the short and the long term impacts and I think that’s what research can really play an important roll in contributing to policy development as we try to rebuild post covid.  

KENT DAVIES: While much of our attention must remain on the continuing to support measures aimed at slowing the spread of COVID-19, treating those hardest hit and developing a vaccine; addressing widening income inequality, social and structural barriers in neighbourhoods is key to not only the post-pandemic recovery process but our ability to mitigate future crisis.

JINO DISTASIO: Great neighbourhoods are really about diversity, about walkability, about quality of life, and about making sure that as many Canadians have access to quality of life not interrupted by poverty, not interrupted by exclusion or racism, and that’s where we need to draw the line for changing the inequality that we see right now in our cities. So we’re taking a bit of an holistic approach to understanding where we are now and where we need to go to sort of focus in on recovery. But I do again bring it back to the level of the community and I think as communities rebuild, we can rebuild cities and as cities rebuild we can rebuild countries and the economies.  

KENT DAVIES: For Distasio what remains paramount is to find ways to on how to support each other globally and locally while leveraging community resiliency in order to build cities and neighbourhoods in a more fair and equitable way.

You’ve been listening to Research Question. Research Question is recorded at the University of Winnipeg Oral History Centre.

The University of Winnipeg is located on treaty 1 territory. The heartland of the Métis people.

Written and Produced by Kent Davies

Interview with Dr. Jino Distasio

Our Theme music is by Lee Rosevere

For more information on the Neighbourhood Change research partnership go to neighbourhoodchange.ca.

For more research by the Institute of Urban Studies go to uwinnipeg.ca/IUS

For more on University of Winnipeg research go to uwinnipeg.ca/research

For more info on the University of Winnipeg Oral History Centre and the work that we do go to oralhistorycentre.ca

Thanks for listening. 

 

 

[i] Jino Distasio, “How to build more resilient cities post-coronavirus.” The Conversation, April 29, 2020. Accessed May 20, 2020. ”Canadian Income Inequality Is Canada becoming more unequal?” The Conference Board of Canada, accessed May 20, 2020.

[ii] Robert Murdie, Richard Maaranen, and Jennifer Logan. “Eight Canadian Metropolitan Areas: Spatial Patterns of Neighbourhood Change.” (Research Paper, Cities Centre, University of Toronto, October 2014), 7-11.

[iii] Cara Chellew, “Defending Suburbia.” Canadian Journal of Urban Research Vol. 28, no. 1 (Summer 2019), 25.

Theresa Enright, Ute Lehrer and Roza Tchoukaleyska, “Editor’s Introduction: Public Space Beyond The City Centre: Suburban and Periurban Dynamics.” Canadian Journal of Urban Research Vol. 28, no. 1 (Summer 2019), i-iv.

[iv] Distasio, “How to build.”

[v] “Our History,” Riverview Health Centre, accessed May 20, 2020.

[vi] “Our History”

[vii] Riverview Garden Society, Accessed May 20, 2020.

[viii] Donna Armstrong, “A survey of community gardens in upstate New York: Implications for health promotion and community development.” Health & place 6, no. 4 (2000): 319-327 Anne C. Bellows, Katherine Brown, and Jac Smit. “Health benefits of urban agriculture.” Community Food Security Coalition (2003): 6-7.

[ix] Jino Distasio, Ryan Shirtliffe and Kyle Wiebe. “Confronting the Illusion: Developing a method to identify food mirages and food deserts in Winnipeg.”(Research Paper, Institute of Urban Studies, University of Winnipeg, June 2016)

[x] Alan P. Diduck, Beverly Froese, Philip Mikulec, Heather Unger, and Kathryn MacKenzie. “Legal and policy barriers to community gardening in Winnipeg, Canada.” Canadian Journal of Urban Research 22, no. 2 (2013): 69-89.

[xi] Jino Distasio, Andrew Kaufman, Tom Carter, et al. The Divided Prairie City: Income Inequality Among Winnipeg’s Neighbourhoods, 1970-2010. 2015.

[xii] Iain Deas, Stephen Hincks and Michael Martin. “Temporary urban solutions help us deal with crisis – and can lead to radical shifts in city space.” The Conversation, April 15, 2020. Accessed May 20, 2020.

[xiii] Steve Vance, “Database documents cities that are repurposing car space during the pandemic.” Streets Blog Chicago, March, 29, 2020.  Accessed May 20, 2020.

[xiv] West Broadway Community Organization, Accessed May 20, 2020.

[xv] Brendan Reimer and Sarah Leeson-Klym. “Community Economic Development: A Force for Neighbourhood Resilience.” In The Divided Prairie City: Income Inequality Among Winnipeg’s Neighbourhoods, ed. Edited by Jino Distasio and Andrew Kaufman (Winnipeg, Institute of Urban Studies, University of Winnipeg, 2015): 88-93.