Image‐making is bound up in our experience of urban space. In artistic and academic practice, contemporary urban photography has critically reworked street photography traditions, embracing its energy and spontaneity, while inviting a more dialogic and reflexive approach. Although the use of urban photography has been somewhat limited in cultural geography research, the practice has enormous potential to complement and enhance contemporary enquiries in the field – particularly those that highlight feelings, experience, and textures of place and draw from more‐than‐representational approaches. A return to making urban photos also chimes with the current approaches that incorporate creative practice and performative methodologies to introduce uncertainty into research. Here, I consider what cultural geographers might gain by exploring city spaces, objects, and events through the lens. I focus not on the images themselves, but on the practice of doing urban photography and on what these images may do for research. In particular, photography may help evoke the feeling of place and its material richness. By focusing on urban microgeographies and by opening work to ambiguity and chance, geographers may create new space for interpretation. Attending to material with the camera also enables us to play with value and hierarchy and provokes the animation and agency of matter. Finally, as well as highlighting the matter of things, images can capture the matter of our own bodies caught up in events with the cities we inhabit. Urban photography offers a way of doing research that opens up city spaces, objects, and events, so we can better reflect on the complex textures, feelings, and experiences of urban space.

The fashion industry has undergone a profound transformation in business practices and production systems over the past several decades. These shifts include the globalisation of production chains and the emergence of a new model of "fast fashion." This paper investigates the response of independent fashion designers in Toronto, Canada to the growing competition posed by fast fashion. It identifies a number of strategies utilised by designers to compete, arguing that they are increasingly adopting a new model of "slow fashion," which opens up possibilities for forging locally and ethically based relationships in the fashion sector.T he fashion industry has undergone a well-documented shift in business practices and production systems over the past several decades (Evans and Smith 2006;Reinach 2005;Tokatli 2008). Set against the sea change taking place in the location of fashion production and the speed of fashion cycles, the paper explores the ways in which designers in Toronto, Canada attempt to reorient themselves at the local scale. In highlighting the realignment of the industry, it suggests that locally focused strategies are enabling small independent fashion designers to remain competitive. These strategies serve as an antidote to fast fashion and globalisation as suggested by Reinach (2005), and indicate that there may be some hope for retaining fashion design and production in second-tier centres such as Toronto. 1 The paper focuses on the transition that designers are making in an effort to distinguish themselves in the marketplace and on the potential of this model to rework-not only the supply chain-but the ethics of fashion. The paper highlights four strategies that independent designers in Toronto are pursuing, including an increased emphasis on quality, exclusivity and "timeless" design, and a focus on niche markets, localised supply chains, and own-brand boutiques.The paper suggests that a new model of slow fashion is emerging as an alternative to globalised and fast commodity chains (Clark 2008;Wood 2008). This model is premised upon the slow food movement, which emphasises short production runs, local Deborah Leslie is Professor,

This paper examines the convergence between the discourse of the creative city and the discourse on priority neighborhoods within urban policy imaginaries in Toronto, Canada. In particular, it examines the development of a number of arts programs targeted at low-income neighborhoods in the city. The twin objectives of these programs are to (a) foster creative and entrepreneurial subjectivities among "at-risk" youth, and (b) reduce the risk of violence that is presumed to be associated with youths living in poor neighborhoods. The paper analyzes how these two discourses are intertwined in a neoliberal politics devoted to enhancing regional quality-of-life competitiveness and to branding Toronto as an attractive creative-class destination.

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