StudentDwellTO responds to the call by the presidents of the four Toronto universities for a collaborative initiative aimed to address the unique housing affordability challenges faced by students attending Toronto universities.

 

We bring together a multi-university and multidisciplinary partnership between students and faculty, and a broad team of partners and experts in the housing field- across the public, private and non-for profit sectors- to prioritize student partnership, to produce and mobilize knowledge, to promote broader student and general public engagement, and to stimulate creative synergies as a means to ultimately model new solutions.

 

Our cross-disciplinary engagements will enable us to explore nascent models of student community, and affordable housing types that might support these dynamic spaces, whose geography and configuration may differ from the residential assumptions associated with the model of the University and College campus. While the traditional campus remains attractive to many, we need to explore its status, extensions and relationships to the cosmopolitan condition of cities such as Toronto. StudentDwellTO will explore equations between emerging technologies and networks of mobility, affordability of land and housing types, the changing affinities, expectations and sensibilities of students, and their combined potential to support new forms of student community, including alternative notions of the campus, both emerging, and not yet considered.