Anti-colonial Urban Sustainability at a Settler-led Community Land Trust

This community-based research project, undertaken through the U of T Climate Hub Catalyst Internship, partners with the Toronto Chinatown Land Trust (TCLT)-a community-controlled effort to build an inclusive, culturally competent, and ever-evolving Chinatown in Toronto. TCLT acquires, develops, and stewards land in perpetuity for community needs and benefit. Operating with the understanding that Chinatown exists on stolen Indigenous land, through its Hak Hei program, TCLT prioritizes relationship-building and accountability with Indigenous communities and seeks to align its work and governance with the Land Back movement while actively avoiding imperialist and colonial cultural dynamics.
The project will strengthen TCLT’s capacity to integrate anti-colonial and sustainability action principles into its organizational practices through the creation of a land-based education and membership program. This initiative positions urban sustainability as inseparable from social justice and decolonization, demonstrating how community land trusts can model equitable, low-carbon, and relational forms of urban sustainability.

Faculty Supervisor:

Heather Dorries

Student:

Partner:

Toronto Chinatown Land Trust

Discipline:

Sociology

Sector:

Other services (except public administration)

University:

University of Toronto

Program: