On February 1, 2022, a panel of academics and practitioners looked at the future of the relationship between municipalities and the platform economy. Looking at examples from across the country the panel examined questions including: What trends around the platform economy are lasting, which are short term? What new regulation is needed? Are new taxation models or user fee frameworks needed?

For the tenth annual IMFG City Manager's Address, Chris Murray spoke to the urgency of a whole-of-community and whole-of-government approach to tackle the precursors of homelessness before the downstream consequences and costs multiply for all orders of government.

On November 10, Adam Found reviewed the findings from his new paper for IMFG, which examines the connection between municipal development charges and housing affordability.

Working from their recently released paper for IMFG, Doug Anderson and Alexandra Flynn looked at how Indigenous-municipal relations could move forward in a reciprocal and respectful manner.

IMFG Post-Doctoral Fellow Andrew Wang provided a number of examples of self-help cases from an informal settlement in Accra, Ghana, to highlight how they have built up the settlers’ daily public spaces. Wang argued that this kind of urban design represents a social movement that strengthens community norms and helps lead to political and social change.

On July 13, IMFG Post-Doctoral Fellow Julie Mah presented preliminary findings from her research on Section 37 agreements from 1988 to 2018 that contain affordable housing benefits to understand the housing outcomes achieved through Toronto’s negotiated and incentive-based approach.

Graduate Fellow Devin Bissky Dziadyk reviewed the decades of research on the property tax, and provided new estimates of the incidence of the tax in Canada. Most estimates suggest that the property tax is regressive. If so, what does the regressivity of the property tax imply for cities, and do we need to reform the property tax to make it fairer?

Graduate Fellow James Ankers examined the implications for Toronto of recent national re-engagement in housing policy. He analyzed major elements of the National Housing Strategy, assessed how it differs from previous housing policy efforts, and explored the new policy tools and approaches the federal government is using to engage local partners in the development and management of new housing stock.

This webinar looked at the following questions: What role do airports play in ensuring thriving and prosperous city regions? How will that change following the COVID-19 crisis? How can governments at all levels work together to make sure airports are fully integrated within their regions and continue to succeed as economic hubs?

Toronto’s Inclusionary Zoning (IZ) policy will go before City Council this year. The IZ tool has produced new affordable housing by compelling developers to set aside a portion of their new housing units as affordable housing in the US and the UK. What lessons can help inform the implementation of IZ in Toronto?