AT ISSUE: A pioneering relationship in Kingston-Galloway.
Kingston Road and Galloway Road.
Staff photo/NICK PERRY
Near one corner of Kingston and Galloway roads there's an apartment tower and, just out of reach behind a fence, is the running track of its neighbour, Sir Robert Borden Business and Technical Institute.
Students from University of Toronto Scarborough studied the tower and how it fits into its surroundings.
Their conclusion: tear down the fence, because a connected neighbourhood is stronger than a divided one.
The university has been sending teams of students around Kingston-Galloway for three years, quietly building up knowledge about one of the city's "priority" areas for a City Studies course.
A second course in "service learning" has students volunteering with agencies in the community.
Thanks to a single United Way donation, the East Scarborough Storefront - a non-profit community hub near the intersection - will soon have a new staff member to take this pioneering relationship further, adding a steering committee and an annual symposium to build on student projects and identify new ones.
"Learning by doing" in Kingston-Galloway is completely different from learning about poverty or social justice issues in a lecture hall, professor Susannah Bunce, said last month. "It exposes students to the realities of urban life."
Asked to design the university's first Scarborough-specific course in 2008, Bunce was uniquely qualified. She grew up around Kingston and Morningside Avenue, and as a teenager saw the car-oriented neighbourhood offered little for her except walking around the now-vanished Morningside Mall or hanging around houses of friends.
"The whole landscape is built towards resident isolation, not fostering community engagement," she said, adding Kingston-Galloway has more residents now, many of them without a car.
"It's not the 1960s village it used to be."
But Bunce said there has been a marked change in the area - more things to do, and more organizations working to engage residents and enliven the neighbourhood.
The idea, she said, is not to make Kingston-Galloway "pretty" and raise the land values so lower-income residents must leave, but to make a neighbourhood which they want to live in.
For Anne Gloger, Storefront's director, the growing partnership with the university means more young people, bringing skills and enthusiasm, will join in ground-breaking community work.
All parties involved, Gloger said this week, "want to see evidence of success. I'm pretty sure we can deliver that."
Some students in the courses are from Scarborough and aware of the neighbourhood's past problems. Others knew nothing about Kingston-Galloway before signing on.
Reporting on their work at The Point, a Lawrence Avenue office for Storefront and Action for Neighbourhood Change that doubles as a classroom, some said their case study course on Kingston-Galloway is a rare opportunity to find answers on their own. Students can be "stuck in the theory" and yearn to see how things are on the ground, said Andre Vashist.
Often, results of the research seemed incomplete. Students proposing a Business Resource Centre at Storefront, for example, told instructor Ahmed Allawala they needed more time to contact possible donors.
Research projects are chosen to reflect the community's needs and the knowledge produced is meant to be shared with the community in what should be a "reciprocal" relationship, Allawala said.
The university hopes its Kingston-Galloway outreach can be the first of many "service learning" programs linked to Toronto neighbourhoods, said Andrew Arifuzzaman, chief strategy officer. The Scarborough campus has student leaders who are "energized and want to give back to their communities," he added this week.
"Frequently the students stay active with these projects even though their academic work is done."
Over time, Gloger said, the plan also calls for busing Kingston-Galloway residents to the campus so they can take advantage of facilities there.