"The City Will be Ours: We Have So Decided": Circulating knowledges in a feminist register

This article juxtaposes insights from recent urban policy mobilities scholarship on circulating knowledges with an

The health and housing in transition study: A longitudinal study of the health of homeless and vulnerably housed adults in three Canadian cities

Objectives: While substantial research has demonstrated the poor health status of homeless populations, the health status of vulnerably housed individuals is largely unknown. Furthermore, few longitudinal studies have assessed the impact of housing transitions on health. The health and housing in transition (HHiT) study is a prospective cohort study that aims to track the health and housing status of a representative sample of homeless and vulnerably housed single adults in three Canadian cities (Toronto, Ottawa, and Vancouver). This paper discusses the HHiT study methodological recruitment strategies and follow-up procedures, including a discussion of the limitations and challenges experienced to date. Methods: Participants (n = 1,192) were randomly selected at shelters, meal programmes, community health centres, drop-in centres, rooming houses, and single-room occupancy hotels from January to December 2009 and are being re-interviewed every 12 months for a 2-year period. Results: At baseline, over 85% of participants reported having at least one chronic health condition, and over 50% reported being diagnosed with a mental health problem. Conclusions: Our findings suggest that, regardless of housing status, participants had extremely poor overall health

‘Choosing’ participatory research: partnerships in space – time

Participatory action research has received increasing attention in geography in recent years, with numerous discussions about how best to proceed and lessons learned from past efforts. There has been less interest, though, in critically probing the circumstances under which participatory research takes place: in other words, the sociospatial contexts within which such research approaches are chosen . One explanation may be that participatory action researchers sometimes infer that the reasons for their choices are primarily ethical and political. In this paper, I consider this and other assumptions about participatory action research, drawing upon my own involvement in two action research projects in Ottawa, Canada. I argue that reflecting on this question is a particularly timely undertaking, given the ‘actually existing neoliberalisms’ in which professionalization and partnerships are becoming more prominent. I begin by reviewing what has been said about participatory action research and the circumstances under which this approach is likely to be selected, and reflect on how these discussions might be enhanced by linking their circumstances specifically to emerging analyses about spaces of neoliberalism. Using these insights, I then examine the sociospatial context for the two studies and how their characteristics had specific effects on their methodological choices. All of these elements provide the scaffolding for consideration of the rationalities that supported the usage of participatory research in one study and the lack of engagement with this approach in the other.

Home and homelessness

Home and homelessness are not necessarily opposites, but their meanings are not disconnected from one another. Their interrelations are complex and multidimensional, and they are impacted by economic, social, and political contexts; cultural ideals and experiences; and identities. Assumptions about what constitutes home and homelessness can have wide-ranging impacts on the material circumstances of a citizenry. Explorations of the interactions between home and homelessness in relation to gender and mental health are available in the scholarly literature, but there has been insufficient attention to such characteristics as race/ethnicity, disability, sexualities, and age

'Choosing' participatory research: Partnerships in space-time

Participatory action research has received increasing attention in geography in recent years, with numerous discussions about how best to proceed and lessons learned from past efforts. There has been less interest, though, in critically probing the circumstances under which participatory research takes place: in other words, the sociospatial contexts within which such research approaches are chosen. One explanation may be that participatory action researchers sometimes infer that the reasons for their choices are primarily ethical and political. In this paper, I consider this and other assumptions about participatory action research, drawing upon my own involvement in two action research projects in Ottawa, Canada. I argue that reflecting on this question is a particularly timely undertaking, given the 'actually existing neoliberalisms' in which professionalization and partnerships are becoming more prominent. I begin by reviewing what has been said about participatory action research and the circumstances under which this approach is likely to be selected, and reflect on how these discussions might be enhanced by linking their circumstances specifically to emerging analyses about spaces of neoliberalism. Using these insights, I then examine the sociospatial context for the two studies and how their characteristics had specific effects on their methodological choices. All of these elements provide the scaffolding for consideration of the rationalities that supported the usage of participatory research in one study and the lack of engagement with this approach in the other

Landscapes on the margins: Gender and homelessness in Canada

This introductory article examines the issue of gendered homelessness and asks why so little academic feminist writing addresses this theme. The article begins with reference to a feminist novel - The Longings of Women by Marge Piercy - that does tackle this matter. The invisibility of the novel's homeless character is used as a way of introducing some distinctions between women's and men's homelessness. More generally, the article has two objectives. The first is to examine what feminist and other critical geographers have said, conceptually and empirically, about gendered homelessness, especially in Canada but also in other Western contexts. The second involves highlighting the problematic nature of too great a focus on visibility in relation to gendered homelessness, and offers an alternative reading drawn from examining the relations of bodies and urban space in conjunction with a discussion about the politics of scale and difference. All told, this collection of essays is an effort to highlight the often hidden and variable nature of gendered homelessness in Ontario, Canada and to argue that the theme is worthy of greater attention by feminist geographers