Presented in the context of Comfort Zones, a research-creation project curated by Yan Wu in collaboration with the Blackwood Gallery.

Can the University of Toronto Mississauga (UTM) campus be studied like a city? What might be revealed from a spatial, social and cultural analysis? What tools can be used to detect places of comfort and conflict, necessity and aspiration, on a commuter campus shared by diverse users including students, researchers, professors, administrative staff, campus police, facilities and management planning staff, and temporary visitors? Such questions will be addressed in Radicalizing the Campus, a participatory workshop designed as an exercise on the use of space.

The workshop will be led by Lucia Babina and Miguel Robles-Durán, co-founders of Cohabitation Strategies, a non-profit cooperative for socio-spatial research, design, and development based in New York City, Rotterdam, and Ibiza. Cohabitation Strategies situates its actions and research inside the conditions of urban decline, inequality, and segregation within the contemporary city. It functions as a collaborative international platform which seeks an understanding of urban dynamics at macro and micro scales through scientific and action research towards the improvement of urban life. The aim is to foresee latent potentials that can stimulate alternative cohabitation models, social relations, and collective uses.

Cohabitation Strategies’ research methodologies will be applied to the UTM campus, a flexible community in constant class contradiction. The workshop aims to study and re-define shared sites on the UTM campus and to challenge their various uses as potential collective spaces for public engagement and knowledge production.

The workshop will introduce participants to applied radical urban theory from Lefebvre to Harvey, as well as Cohabitation Strategies’ unitary urban theory, methodology, and transdisciplinary practice. The workshop will include guided tours of the campus, participatory action research, roundtable discussions, and mapping exercises. Participants will:

In advance of the workshop, participants will be asked to read a brief list of materials prepared by Cohabitation Strategies which will be discussed in the workshop. Workshop details and materials will be circulated upon confirmation of registration.

Curatorial research notes are shared at: http://utmcomfortzone.tumblr.com/.