APS 341 Urban Sociology

This book explores how gentrification often reinforces traditional gender roles and spatial constructions during the process of reshaping the labour, housing, commercial and policy landscapes of the city. It focuses in particular on the impact of gentrification on women and racialized men, exploring how gentrification increases the cost of living, serves to narrow housing choices, make social reproduction more expensive, and limits the scope of the democratic process.

This is one of the first books to detail the challenges facing poorer segments of the female population who commonly reside in slums. It explores the variegated disadvantages of urban poverty and slum-dwelling from a gender perspective. This book revolves around conceptualisation of the gender-urban-slum interface which explains key elements to understanding women¿s experiences in slum environments. It has a specific focus on the ways in which gender inequalities are can be entrenched but also alleviated.

Gender, Asset Accumulation and Just Cities explores the contribution that a focus on the gendered nature of asset accumulation brings to the goal of achieving just, more equitable cities. From a gender perspective, a separate discourse exists, closely associated with gender justice, particularly in relation to urban rights and democracy. Neither, however, has addressed the implications for women's accumulation of assets and associated empowerment for transformational pathways to just cities.

In The Feminist City, Leslie Kern exposes what is hidden in plain sight- the social inequalities are built into our cities, homes, and neighbourhoods. And offers an alternative vision of the feminist city. Taking on fear, motherhood, friendship, activism, and the joys and perils of being alone, Kern maps the city from new vantage points, laying out a feminist intersectional approach to urban histories and proposes that the city is perhaps also our best hope for shaping a new urban future. It is time to dismantle what we take for granted about cities and to ask how we can build more just, sustainable, and care-full cities together.

When a recent wave of condominium development overtook Toronto, women emerged as powerful consumers, and reports claimed that home ownership was offering young, single women freedom, financial independence, and personal security. This fresh perspective on urban revitalization reveals that condo ownership is not freeing women from constraints - neoliberal ideologies are remaking women's relationship with the city in the image of fast capital and consumer citizenship. Women's emancipation through condominium ownership is a marketing ploy rather than a major shift in gender relations.