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- 2023 Archives
- Scientists dig deep and find a way to accurately predict snowmelt after droughts
- Cracking the Case of Missing Snowmelt After Drought
- 2023 Esri Canada GIS Scholarship for SFU
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Daniel Murphy
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Kyle Kusack
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Matthew Taylor
- Anke Baker Wins Staff Achievement Award
- Spring 2023 Virtual Geospeaker Event with Ginger Gosnell-Myers
- CAG Paper Presentation Award - Congratulations to Alysha van Duynhoven!
- Informing & Engaging Urban Youth on Public Hearings: GEOG 363 Final Showcase
- Research Talk: Modeling Urban Wetland Complexities
- Highlight Paper: Quantifying land carbon cycle feedbacks under negative CO2 emissions
- Bright Addae winner of the 2023 SFU ECCE GIS Scholarship Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Jonny Cripps
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Diandra Oliver
- 2023 Geospeaker Presentation with Dr. Pauline McGuirk
- Congratulations to Our Graduates - October 2023
- Evaluating the impact of educational goals at SFU
- The Belongings of Precariously Housed People - A Report
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Takuma Mihara
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Adrienne Arbor
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Claire Shapton
- 2023 Distinguished Speaker Presentation with Dr. Deb Cowen
- Cheers to Paul Degrace and his well-earned retirement!
- 2024 Archives
- Professor Nicholas Blomley Honored with the Community-Engaged Research Achievement Award
- Graduate Students Claire Shapton and Marina Chavez Honored with the Community-Engaged Graduate Scholar Award
- Applications now open: 2024 ESRI Canada GIS Scholarship for SFU
- Associate Professor Rosemary Collard achieves 13th place on SFU Altmetric List
- The PEAK feature: GSU hosts inaugural RANGE conference
- Gabrielle Wong wins First Prize in 2023 Student Learning Commons Writing Contest
- Gabrielle Wong receives Warren Gill Memorial Award
- Professor Nick Blomley receives Warren Gill Memorial Award for Community Impact
- Geography Student Union recipient of the FENV 2024 Changemaker Awards
- Senior Lecturer Tara Holland reveals the secret sauce of great teaching
- Senior Lecturer Tara Holland Receives SFU 2023 Excellence in Teaching Award
- Thesis Defence - Congratulations to Bright Addae
- GIS undergraduate students participate in the Canada-wide 2024 AppChallenge competition
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2023 Geospeaker Presentation with Dr. Pauline McGuirk
Geospeaker series
- Title: Navigating urban governance innovation: beyond pathways to incremental ‘muddling through’.
- Presenter: Dr. Pauline McGuirk, University of Wollongong, Australia
- Date: September 21, 2023
ABSTRACT
In recent year, cities and city governance have been comprehensively urged to innovate to address complex societal challenges. Instrumental here has been the articulation by an influential epistemic community—including the UN, OECD, global philanthropies, consultancies and think-tanks—of globally-circulating pathways to urban governance innovation (UGI) alongside a codified suite of best-practice techniques. In this paper we address how these pathways and best practice codifications of UGI gel with actual practices of institutional change. We present a grounded theorisation of UGI to frame enhanced empirical understandings of its practice, building on recent relational theorisations of governance innovation from studies of urban sustainability transitions and complementary urban political geography theorisations, associated chiefly with new municipalism. Drawing on analysis of a suite of urban-based innovation units internationally, we propose three key dimensions to a more nuanced understanding of UGI; namely that UGI is a process enacted relationally, and through navigations that are inevitably situated. We conclude by suggesting, first, that UGI proceeds through more uncertain, piecemeal and incremental routes than is suggested by globally-circulating pathways. Second, we argue that understanding the relational, navigational and situated dynamics of UGI is critical to evaluating its agendas, ambitions and (ambiguous) politics.