“Cities are over” — headlines during the early stages of the pandemic sounded variations of this theme as people abandoned offices and public transit and shared tales of moving to rural work-from-home paradises, says Shawn Micallef.

“As it turns out, cities are, in fact, not over and instead became places of resiliency during the pandemic but also where long-simmering inequities became starkly apparent,” he says. “Long-delayed or near-impossible policy changes took place quickly and public space became more important than ever.”

The journalist and educator will explore cites and the pandemic — and thoughts on how Windsor fits into all this — in a public presentation entitled “Long Live the City,” on Microsoft Teams at 12 noon Tuesday, Nov. 30. Register to attend the free event, hosted by the Humanities Research Group.

Micallef is the author of Frontier City: Toronto on the Verge of Greatness; Stroll: Psychogeographic Walking Tours of Toronto; and The Trouble with Brunch: Work, Class and the Pursuit of Leisure. He is a weekly columnist at the Toronto Star, and a senior editor and co-owner of the independent, Jane Jacobs Prize–winning magazine Spacing.

Micallef teaches at the University of Toronto and was a 2011-2012 Canadian Journalism Fellow at its Massey College. In 2002, while resident at the Canadian Film Centre’s Media Lab, he co- founded [murmur], the location-based mobile phone documentary project that has spread globally to more than 25 cities.