Associate Professor Carolyn Whitzman

Dr. Carolyn Whitzman is an Associate Professor in Urban Planning.  She is the lead editor of Building Inclusive Cities: Women’s Safety and the Right to the City (Earthscan, 2012), author of Suburb, Slum, Urban Village: Transformations in Toronto’s Parkdale Neighbourhood (University of British Columbia Press, 2009) and The Handbook of Community Safety, Gender, and Violence Prevention: practical planning tools (Earthscan, 2008), and the co-author of Safe Cities: guidelines for planning, design, and management (Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1995). Previously, she worked for the City of Toronto on healthy city initiatives.  Dr. Whitzman has an international reputation for her work on the prevention of violence and on gender-inclusive cities.

Current research interests include

• the policy implications of planning for healthy and equitable cities in a national and international context
• planning interventions to increase independent mobility for children
• the development of participatory planning tools with women, children, and people with disabilities

Teaching

• ABPL90009    Participation and Negotiation
• ABPL90022    Healthy Communities
• ABPL20035    Cities: from Local to Global

 

Selected Research Grants:

(2010-2015) Place, Health and Liveability: with the McCaughey Centre and in partnership with the Victorian State Government, I am co-leading (with Professor Billie Giles-Corti) a research program that seeks to understand how social determinants of health (affordable housing with access to open space, education, employment, social and health services, public transport, walking and cycling) link to health-promoting behaviours and outcomes in both inner city and outer suburban growth areas.  Funded by the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network and the University of Melbourne.

(2010-2013) Travelling Together: Disability Inclusive Road Development in Papua New Guinea: With the Nossal Institute for Global Health (University of Melbourne), CBM Australia (disability rights organization), Cardo (road engineering firm), Divine Word University and the National Disability Resource and Advocacy Centre, I am Principal Investigator of a project on access to road  infrastructure for people with disabilities in Papua New Guinea.  Funded by an Australian Development Research Award. Find more information here.

(2010-2013) Children, Independent Mobility, Active Travel and Health: With a national collaborative of researchers in urban planning, public health and geography (Professor Carey Curtis, Dr. Matt Burke, Dr. Mitchell Duncan, Associate Professor Paul Tranter, Dr. Christine Armit), I am exploring built and social environmental influences on children’s independent mobility, active travel and health.  Funded by ARC Linkage and Discovery Grants. Find more information here.

(2009-11) Gender Inclusive Cities:  With a group of academic and practitioners known as Women in Cities International (WICI –see below for other grants), Red Mujer y Habitat (Rosario Argentina), Jagori (Delhi India), Information Centre of the Independent Women’s Forum (Petrovadosk Russia) and Safer Cities Dar es Salaam (Tanzania) we undertook a three year project on “Gender Inclusive Cities: Increasing women's safety by identifying and disseminating effective and promising approaches that promote women's equal access to public spaces” funded by the UN Trust Fund to Eliminate Violence Against Women.  More information and reports are available here.

(2008-09)  Vertical Living Kids: I was Principal Investigator of a project looking at the determinants of independent mobility and physical activity of children living in both low-income and middle-income high rise housing.  Funded by  Victorian Health Promotion Foundation Discovery Grant.

(2006-10) Institutional Enablers to Children’s Independent Mobility: I have been a Partner in the Australian Centre for the Governance and Management of Urban Transport (GAMUT), a research centre based at the University of Melbourne and six other universities in Australia and Asia.  We are researching the means for implementing a new role for collective and active transport. I led a project on Institutional Enablers for Children’s Independent Mobility, whose aim is to identify policies and programs that work to improve children’s physical activity, active transport, and independent mobility. More information on the GAMUT website.

(2006-09) Gender, Violence Prevention and Local Governance: Making the Links: a three year project with four Victorian local governments (Maribyrnong, Bendigo, Casey, Loddon) to help them develop integrated violence prevention strategies and influence the development of a state-wide framework and plan for violence prevention.  Funded by Australian Research Council Linkage  grant with the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.

 

Selected Publications (since 2008)

Research Books

(2012) Whitzman, C., Legacy, C., Andrew, C., Klodawsky, F., Lambrick, M., Shaw, M., Viswanath, K. Building Inclusive Cities: women’s safety and the right to the city (London: Routledge).

(2009) Whitzman, C.  Suburb, Slum, Urban Village: Transformations in  Toronto’s Parkdale neighbourhood 1875-2002 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press).

(2008) Whitzman, C.  The Handbook of Community Safety, Gender, and Violence Prevention: practical planning tools (London: Earthscan)

Book Chapters

(forthcoming) Whitzman, C. “Harnessing the Energy of Free Range Children,” in Low, N (ed.) Urban Transport Futures. Routledge, expected publication date November 2012.

 (2012) Whitzman, C. “Women’s Safety and Everyday Mobility,” in Whitzman, C et al Eds., Building Inclusive Cities: women’s safety and the right to the city, pp. 35-52.

(2011) Whitzman, C. “Secure Cities” in T. Banerjee and A. Loukaitou-Sideris (eds.), Companion to Urban Design (Routledge), pp. 663-673. 

 (2010) Whitzman, C., Romero, V., Duncan, M., Tranter, P., Curtis, C., and Burke, M.  “From Battery-Reared to Free Range Children: the links between children’s independent mobility, active transport, physical activity and obesity”, E. Waters, B. Swinburn, R. Uauy, J. Seidell (eds.), Preventing Childhood Obesity: evidence, policy, and practice (Wiley Blackwell), pp. 105-112.

 (2010) Whitzman, C and Perkovic, J. “Women’s Safety Audits and Walking School Busses: the diffusion/de-fusion of two radical planning ideas,” P. Healey and R. Upton (eds.), Planning Ideas and Planning Practices: a critical look at international exchange in the planning field (Routledge), pp. 219-236.

(2009) Whitzman, C.  “Making the Invisible Visible: Canadian women, homelessness and health outside the ‘big city’,” in D. Hulchanski, P. Campsie, S. Chau, S. Hwang, E. Paradis (eds.), Finding Home: Policy Options for Addressing Homelessness in Canada (Toronto: Cities Centre, University of Toronto), Chapter 4.3.  Published online at www.homelesshub.ca/FindingHome

Journal Articles -Refereed

(2012) Whitzman, C. and Mizrachi, D. “Beyond Wastelands and Glasshouses: creating child-friendly urban environments,” Urban Policy and Research, accepted and in press (March 2012).

(2012) Giles-Corti B and Whitzman C.  “Viewpoint - Active Living Research:  Partnerships that Count”, Health and Place 18, pp. 118-120.

 (2011) Whitzman, C. “Half Full or Half Empty? The Rise and Fall of Planning for Women’s Safety in Victoria, Australia”, Planning Theory and Practice 24(3), pp. 367-385. .

 (2010) Whitzman, C., Worthington, M., Mizrachi, D. “The Journey and the Destination Matter: Child-Friendly Cities and Children’s Right to the City”, Built Environment 36(4), pp. 474-486. A.

(2010) Whitzman, C. and Mizrachi, D. “Can Tall Buildings be Child-Friendly?  The Vertical Living Kids Research Project,” Council for Tall Building and Urban Habitat Journal, issue 4, pp. 18-23.

(2009) Whitzman, C., Andrew, C., Shaw, M., and Travers, K. “The Effectiveness of Women’s Safety Audits,” Security Journal 22(3), 205-218.

(2009) Whitzman, C. “Reinventing Planning Education,” Australian Planner 46(1), 14-21.

(2008) Whitzman, C.  “Policies and Practices that Promote Children’s Independent Mobility”, Urban Planning International 23(5), 56-61.

(2008) Castelino, T., and Whitzman, C. “The Rhetoric and Reality of Family Violence Prevention in Victoria, Australia,” Journal of Family Studies 14(2-3), 310-321.

(2008) Whitzman, C.  “Community Safety Indicators: are we measuring what counts?”, Urban Policy and Research, 26(2), pp. 197-211.