Indigenous-led responses to the neoliberal restructuring of cities and urban centres

Principal Investigator: Rick Colbourne, Management
Project Title: Two-eyed Seeing, Grand Challenges and Wicked Problems: Indigenous-led Responses to the Neoliberal Restructuring of Cities and Urban Centres
Funder: New Frontiers in Research Fund – Exploration

Leading Indigenous and non-Indigenous thinkers have gathered together committed to using Two Eyed Seeing and regulation theory to conceptually frame understandings of the ways that neoliberal restructuring acts on cities and urban centres. Two Eyed Seeing is a decolonizing practice that stresses a weaving back and forth between separate but parallel ways of knowing. Regulation theory emphasizes the importance of considering local, social spaces of economic development, and supports the view that successful participation in the global economy is a highly localized process in which economic structures, values, cultures, institutions and histories contribute to success or failure.

The research team’s objective is to work closely with and for communities. Using an interpretive qualitative methodology, they will (i) identify and explore localized power structures, marginalized voices and communities, (ii) design interventions and (iii) implement effective mechanisms for action to respond to and act on localized grand challenges and wicked problems in three Canadian cities: Ottawa, Saskatoon and Vancouver. This research is novel and it will facilitate community-based learning and competency building that links research outcomes directly to local action focused on empowerment.