MA Global Affairs, University of Toronto / Research Officer at Ugandan National Academy of Sciences

Graeme’s Question: How can we build better cities?

Keystone Title: The Urban Palimpsest: Woodwards and Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside

Abstract: A play on words, Stewart-Wilson captures the tension of gentrification, improvement, and displacement in the Downtown Eastside in the metaphor of a palimpsest; a manuscript that has been washed with a solvent to be reused back in a time when the material was more valuable than the words. This Keystone asks questions like ‘who decides who and what is more valuable in the urban space?’ and gives a journalistic account of Vancouver’s oldest neighbourhood as it stood in 2014.

What Concentration Courses did you take?

Photography (Arts & Humanities)
Developmental Economics (Social Sciences)
Fundamental Energy Sustainability (Physical Sciences)
Environmental Engineering (Physical Sciences)
Urban Infrastructure (Interdisciplinary)
Building Material and Design (Interdisciplinary)
African Self-Perceptions (Arts & Humanities)
Calculus I & II (Mathematics)