“People who live in their neighbourhoods know it better”: On community engaged and participatory urban planning research with Dr. Aditi Mehta

This episode features Dr. Aditi Mehta, Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Toronto, and podcast host Dr. Rubén Gaztambide-Fernández, Professor and Director of the Youth Research Lab here at OISE. Drawing on her diverse experiences conducting PAR neighbourhoods in the USA and Canada, Dr. Mehta reflects on the politics of knowledge production and dissemination within contexts of urban community development and public health. Together, they discuss the dynamics of community collaboration and partnerships, and the important distinction between participatory research and education.

Dr. Aditi Mehta is an Assistant Professor of Urban Studies at the University of Toronto and was a community-engaged learning faculty fellow at the Centre for Community Partnerships. She completed her PhD at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, and was awarded the department’s most outstanding dissertation prize for her investigation of the politics of community media in post-disaster cities. Her research and pedagogy consider environmental justice, community development, technology, and how knowledge infrastructures influence policy. She was recently awarded the Social Science and Humanities Research Council Partnership Engagement Grant for her participatory action research course in which UofT students and youth living in Toronto's Regent Park neighbourhood collaborated to research local experiences of redevelopment and the COVID-19 pandemic.

This episode was hosted and directed by Ruben Gaztambide-Fernandez, produced by Qichun Zhang, and supported by Youth Research Lab assistant Madeleine Ross.