My research into the linkages among advocacy, urban planning, and racial exclusion is ongoing. Working as co-editor of the Journal of Critical Race Inquiry expands this research project. This research builds on my earlier studies of dominant and alternative approaches to social planning. I have investigated how people form collectives in order to address both their social and economic marginalization at the same time that they contest their experiences of racialization in the city. This research has been published in GeoJournal, the Canadian Journal of Urban Research and most recently by Routledge in Race Space and Exclusion: Segregation and Beyond in Metropolitan America, edited by Robert M. Adelman and Christopher Mele. I am now focusing on discourses of recognition and reconciliation in relation to urban planning practice, in light of the calls to action put forward by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. This research will further my interests in examining the role of immigrant and racialized communities in both institutional and everyday practices of reconciliation.
Viswanathan, Leela. 2015. “Chapter 8: Engaging Contradictions: Contesting Racial Exclusion.” In Robert M. Adelman and Christopher Mele. (2015) Race, Space, and Exclusion: Segregation and Beyond in Metropolitan America, 135-152. London: Routledge.
Gilbert, Liette; Viswanathan, Leela; and Parastou Saberi. 2013. “Marginalized Expertise of Community Organizations in Quebec’s Search for Interculturalism.” Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 22, 1, Summer, 21-43.
Viswanathan, Leela. 2010. “Integrated, Equitable and Transformative: A Hopeful Future for Planning.” Plan Canada, 5, 3, 33-35.
Viswanathan, Leela. 2010. “Contesting Racialization in a Neoliberal City: Cross-cultural Collective Identity as a Strategy Among Alternative Planning Organizations in Toronto.” GeoJournal, 75, 3, 261-272.
Viswanathan, Leela. 2009. “Postcolonial Planning and Ethno-Racial Diversity in Toronto: Locating Equity in a Contemporary Planning Context.” Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 18, 1, Supplement, 82-102.
Viswanathan, Leela. 2007. On Tim Hortons and Transnationalism: Negotiating Canadian-ness and the role of activist/researcher. In Luin Goldring and Sailaja Krishnamurthi (Eds), Organizing the Transnational Labour, Politics, and Social Change. Vancouver, BC: UBC Press, 83-93.