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Social and policy change

We partner with local communities and city actors to support place-based economic transformation:

  • The Community Leader in Residence program connects grassroots knowledge with academic research and policy work.
  • Current projects include the Scarborough RT repurposing initiative, exploring just, sustainable futures for decommissioned transit infrastructure. 
  • As members of the Working Table organized by the City of Toronto, we are contributing to Toronto’s Inclusive Economic Development Strategy, ensuring that local voices shape the city’s economic future. 
Group shot of people at an Inclusive Economies series event
City of Toronto Inclusive Economic Development Framework

IIESL is working with the City of Toronto to build their inclusive economic development framework and to strengthen local assets, promote economic justice and community well-being, and expand opportunities for equity-deserving groups with the local leaders and community organizations whose vision, advocacy, and practices played a key role in its development. 

Learn more about our work with the City of Toronto's IED Framework
Workshop attendees draw a map of ideas on large paper
Reimagining the Scarborough RT

What if, instead of spending hundreds of millions to tear down the Scarborough Rapid Transit (SRT) infrastructure, we transformed it into a vibrant and iconic community space that fosters local arts and culture, promotes sustainable mobility, provides healthy recreational options and supports inclusive local economies?

IIESL is working with Scarborough community leaders, representatives from labour organizations, urban planners and students to think boldly and brainstorm repurposing ideas, as part of a broad discussion that brings together community perspectives and technical expertise in response to Councillor Jamaal Myers’s motion at City Hall to evaluate the feasibility of repurposing the Scarborough RT instead of demolishing it.

Learn more about our work on reimagining the Scarborough RT
Aerial photo of Rio and the water, mountains
“Collaboratories” in Rio de Janeiro

IIESL is developing a community partnership proposal to create a series of “collaboratories” in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, to work with local organizations focused on digital literacy, community technology, and solidarity economies. These collaboratories—collective and experimental by design—will aim to build on Brazil’s rich traditions of community pedagogy, tech, and labour organizing, while addressing the fragmentation among these traditions and their limited connection to public policy and institutional innovation.

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I (we) wish to acknowledge this land on which the University of Toronto operates. For thousands of years it has been the traditional land of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit. Today, this meeting place is still the home to many Indigenous people from across Turtle Island and we are grateful to have the opportunity to work on this land. Statement of Acknowledgement of Traditional Land