Laura Tozer

Assistant Professor

laura.tozer@utoronto.ca

Telephone number

416-287-5641

Building EV 343

Website My Website Google Scholar

Teaching Interests

ESTB04H3 – Addressing the Climate Crisis
EES1134H - Climate Change Policy

Research Interests

Laura Tozer’s research tries to understand how we can accelerate action to address the climate crisis. She studies the policies and politics that can help us stop using fossil fuels and transition to renewable energy. She’s especially interested in understanding how governments and communities can rapidly change cities so that they are fairer, resilient to the impacts of climate change, and powered by renewable energy. She has conducted research on the planning and implementation of just, zero carbon and resilient transitions in cities; the politics of transnational urban climate governance; and pathways to mainstream sustainability solutions so that they become standard practice for urban development.

Awards and Grants

“Urban Just Transitions: From Scarborough to the Globe”, UTSC Clusters of Scholarly Prominence, co-lead with Matt Hoffman, 2021-2025.

“Strengthening Diverse Research Capacity for an Inclusive Green Recovery in Canada”, SSHRC Connection Grant led by Julie MacArthur, 2022-2023

“Pathways to Living Cities”, SSHRC Connection Grant with Christine Mettler, 2021-2023

“The 100 Resilient Cities Initiative: A Natural Experiment in the Politics of Creating a Sustainable World”, SSHRC Insight Grant led by Matthew Hoffmann, 2020-2025

Publications

Latulippe, N., Livesey, B., Whaanga-Schollum, D., Jamieson, C., Clark, J., and R. Kiddle. (2023). Maanjiwe Nendamowinan (The Gathering of Minds): Connecting Indigenous Placemakers and Caring for Place through Co-Creative Research with the Toronto Islands. Environment & Planning F: Philosophy, Theory, Models, Methods and Practice, Special Issue: Indigenous Research Sovereignty. Available here.
McGregor, D., Latulippe, N., Whitlow, R., Gansworth, K.L., McGregor, L., and S. Allen. (2023). Towards Meaningful Research and Engagement: Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Great Lakes Governance, Journal of Great Lakes Research, Special Issue: Bridging Knowledge Systems between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. Available here.
Tozer , L., Bulkeley, H., Kiss, B., Luque-Ayala, A., Voytenko Palgan, Y., McCormick, K., Wamsler, C. (forthcoming) Nature for Resilience? The Politics of Governing Urban Nature. Annals of the American Association of Geographers
Tozer, L., Bulkeley, H., van der Jagt, A., Toxopeus, H., Xie, L., & Runhaar, H. (2022). Catalyzing sustainability pathways: Navigating urban nature based solutions in Europe. Global Environmental Change: Human and Policy Dimensions, 74, 102521.
Tozer, L., Bulkeley, H., and Xie, L. (2022). Transnational Governance and the Urban Politics of Nature-Based Solutions for Climate Change. Global Environmental Politics.
Xie, L., Bulkeley, H., & Tozer, L. (2022). Mainstreaming sustainable innovation: unlocking the potential of nature-based solutions for climate change and biodiversity. Environmental Science & Policy, 132, 119–130.
Dorst, H., van der Jagt, A., Toxopeus, H., Tozer, L., Raven, R., & Runhaar, H. (2022). What’s behind the barriers? Uncovering structural conditions working against urban nature-based solutions. Landscape and Urban Planning, 220, 104335.
Linton, S., Clarke, A., & Tozer, L. (2022). Technical pathways to deep decarbonization in cities: Eight best practice case studies of transformational climate mitigation. Energy Research & Social Science, 86, 102422.
Linton, S., Clarke, A., & Tozer, L. (2020). Strategies and Governance for Implementing Deep Decarbonization Plans at the Local Level. Sustainability: Science Practice and Policy, 13(1), 154.
Tozer, L. (2020) Catalyzing political momentum for the effective implementation of decarbonization for urban buildings. Energy Policy. 136, 11042.

Hughes, S., Giest, S. and Tozer, L. (2020) Accountability and data-driven urban climate governance. Nature Climate Change. 10, 1085–1090.
Tozer, L., Hörschelmann, K., Anguelovski, I., Bulkeley, H., and Lazova, K. (2020) Whose nature? Whose city? Towards inclusive nature-based solution governance. Cities, 107: 102892.
Tozer, L. (2019) Deep decarbonization in practice: Solutions and challenges for low-carbon building retrofits. Canadian Journal of Urban Research, 28(2), 32-45.
Tozer, L. (2019) The urban material politics of decarbonization in Stockholm, London and San Francisco. Geoforum. 102, 106-115.
Tozer, L. and Klenk, N. (2019) Urban configurations of carbon neutrality: insights from the Carbon Neutral Cities Alliance. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 37(3), 539-557.
Romero Lankao, P., Bulkeley, H., Pelling, M., Burch, S., Gordon, G., Gupta, J., Johnson, C., Lecavalier, E., Simon, D., Kurian, P., Tozer, L., Ziervogel, G., and Munshi, D. (2018) Urban transformative potential in a changing climate Nature Climate Change, 8, 754–756.