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In an era of escalating and intersectional crises, the toxic drug poisoning crisis stands out as a devastating and persistent phenomenon. Where we write from in British Columbia (BC), Canada, over 13,000 deaths have occurred in the eight years since the toxic drug poisoning crisis was declared a provincial health emergency. While many of these deaths have occurred in large urban centres, smaller rural communities in British Columbia are also grappling with the profound impacts of the toxic drug poisoning crisis and are struggling to provide adequate support for their vulnerable populations. In response to these challenges, the Walk With Me research project has emerged in the Comox Valley of Vancouver Island, BC, employing community-engaged methodologies grounded in pluralist knowledge production. Walk With Me seeks to understand the unique manifestations of the toxic drug poisoning crisis in small communities, identifying local harm reduction interventions that can foster community resilience, and aiming to catalyze sustainable change by amplifying the voices of those directly affected by the crisis to advocate for policy changes. This paper outlines the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the Walk With Me project as a harm reduction initiative, which holds community partnerships and diverse ways of knowing at its heart. It presents the community-engaged research framework used by the project to address overlapping health and social crises, offering practical examples of its application in various research projects across sites and organizations. The paper concludes with a reflection on the impacts of Walk With Me to date, highlighting the lessons learned, challenges encountered, and opportunities for future research and action. Overall, this article captures the urgent need for community-engaged approaches to address the toxic drug poisoning crisis and other multidimensional crises facing society, particularly in smaller and rural communities, underscoring the potential for meaningful change through collaborative, grassroots efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban centres in the US, Britain and Canada have responded to identified visible 'social problems' such addiction, mental health and homelessness by providing some supportive housing for the urban poor and marginalized. While some critics have questioned what supportive housing specifically entails in terms of the built environment, what remains under explored, though a growing area of concern, is the relationship between surveillance and supportive housing for urban residents identified as having addiction and mental health problems - a gap addressed in this paper. Drawing upon qualitative ethnographic observational data we examine some of the measures of control and coercion that are encroaching into social housing primarily established for poor and marginalized people with addiction and mental health problems in the urban centre of Vancouver, Canada. We witnessed three modes of regulation and control, that vary widely, among the residencies observed: physical surveillance technologies; site-specific modes of coercion; police presence and staff surveillance, which all together impact the everyday lives of residents living in low-income and supportive housing. We argue that supportive housing has the potential to provide its intended commitment - safe and secure affordable housing. However, owing to an (over)emphasis on 'security', the supportive housing we observed were also sites of social control. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Crime mapping has established central tendencies, e.g., that crime trips tend to be certain lengths. But this is only one-half of the convergence that leads to a crime. Crime mobility research, however, considers the simultaneous movements of both offenders and victims. In this paper, we consider the geodiversity of crime mobility: there are variations in the amount of area covered by various crimes depending on the variations of criminal opportunity. Extending the crime mobility research to consider co-offending, co-victimization, and area covered rather than typologies, we find strong evidence for geodiversity in crime. This geodiversity varies across crime types within a single municipality as well as across municipalities within a single crime type. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In recent decades, under the mutually constitutive processes of neoliberal urbanization and globalization, Vancouver has radically transformed and become a serious contender for the title of 'world-class city'. Against the background of this socio-spatial force reconfiguring the city, I explore how the city's unique development of mini schools - small and selective public schools within larger urban public secondary schools - has been transforming the meanings, practices, projects and imaginaries of the city's communities. I conducted a multi-sited ethnography using an interdisciplinary methodological framework to critically examine how such transformation is carried out. My ethnography focused on the dismantling of long-standing connections between the school and the neighbourhood within the context of the emerging local education market, and how this process unfolds in young people's lives and self formation. This paper draws from Raymond Williams' socio-cultural theories, and Nikolas Rose's theory of the new styles of 'government through community'. I use these theories together in order to bring forward a nuanced understanding of the new projects of global city communities. I focus on how these new projects are manifested in young people's complex experiences of Vancouver's mini schools. The outcomes of this study will illuminate the ramifications of the education market on the new dynamics of intra-urban social disparity and polarization in global cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Vancouver exemplifies the richness of the many processes that set the civic culture of large contemporary cities. This paper focuses on what drives the social and economic construction of Vancouver, pointing to the complex linkages that tie agents to their environment. It shows that, in Vancouver, power arises from strong popular control and local democratic and participatory values, where group interactions produce and co-produce community development. The Vancouver regime is open yet stable, socially progressive yet fiscally conservative and pro-development. It is a regime that upholds an activist, tolerant and entrepreneurial civic culture. It emerges from an on-going process where the openness of the regime is re-negotiated in each neighbourhood and around each policy arena leading to the emergence of a culture of ongoing participation where civic, neighbourhood, ethnic and business groups constantly re-invent the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]