Land Trusts Across Toronto: Resisting Displacement Through Collective Ownership

We are pleased to sponsor the 2026 Jack Quarter Lectureship on the Social Economy, Land Trusts Across Toronto: Resisting Displacement Through Collective Ownership.

This panel will bring together Anyika Mark (Little Jamaica Community Land Trust), Dominique Russell (Kensington Market Community Land Trust) and Joshua Barndt (Parkdale Neighbourhood Land Trust) to explore how grassroots, community-led land trusts are protecting affordability, cultural spaces, and local futures in the face of displacement and speculation.

Panelists will share lessons from their work on the ground, discuss challenges and opportunities for land trusts in Toronto, and imagine what a city rooted in collective care and stewardship can look like.

Co-sponsored by the Centre for Learning Social Economy and Work (CLSEW).

More Policy Change Programs

Workers Governing Digital Technologies: Collective strategies across contexts

This two-day in-person event, taking place on September 25-26, 2025, at the University of Toronto, will bring together 20 invited speakers from Canada, Brazil, Argentina, Spain, and the United States to exchange insights on worker-led governance of digital technologies—including platforms, data, and AI—through collective bargaining, co-op formation, and policy reform.

Workers Governing Digital Technologies: Collective strategies across contexts

Alpujarra RARA: Queer Peripheries, Touristification, and the Politics of Rural Economic Development

Alpujarra RARA is an ongoing initiative of the IIESL that explores how rural territories can develop more community centered, inclusive and place-based approaches to tourism and local economic development. Grounded in queer, decolonial, and place based perspectives, the project centers local memory, storytelling, and community cultural production as foundations for belonging. It asks how difference, particularly sexual and gender difference, can be recognized as a living and constitutive part of the territory rather than erased, folklorized, or commodified in rural economic development strategies.

Alpujarra RARA: Queer Peripheries, Touristification, and the Politics of Rural Economic Development

City of Toronto Inclusive Economic Development Framework

IIESL is working with the City of Toronto to build their inclusive economic development framework and to strengthen local assets, promote economic justice and community well-being, and expand opportunities for equity-deserving groups with the local leaders and community organizations whose vision, advocacy, and practices played a key role in its development.

City of Toronto Inclusive Economic Development Framework