ACCOZZAGLIA

I should have done this a very long time ago.

Perhaps this hesitation stemmed from my years-long reluctance to move into actual blog-blogging beyond LiveJournal and other little things along the way. But I think this is more related to my reluctance to gather all of what I do and have done in a single place. A lot of it doesn’t exactly weave together very well. Also, I tend to compartmentalize what I know — what my unnecessarily erudite prof would call “knowledge silos” — into different groups, wholly divided from one another. This is probably because I don’t want to bore people with stuff which might not be germane to why we’re having a particular conversation.

In short, I do many things — much of it disputably useful. I’ve always taken on living in terms of breadth, followed by depth where it is warranted. The idea of going too deep into one topic or discipline makes me think of digging a hole so deep that it becomes inescapable should you decide you wish to come up for fresh air. It’s kind of a silly way to look at it, but it’s in part a survival mechanism which has gotten me to where I am today and partly motivated by watching people burn themselves out in the one thing they know well. I am no Steamwhistle!

So initially, my blog will slowly be populated with research essays, continuing research, the periodic blogging exercises, and whatever else merits being collected alongside other “I do this” activities. For now, I have four research areas in which I am spending my time and resources these days:

• Torontotology. I’m certainly not the first to think of it (it’s disappointing how many variations of this in a domain name are already taken), but the idea here is that any and all work I do which concerns Toronto is collected here. Amongst a few of my colleagues, we have toyed with the idea of creating a general research cluster based around so-named Torontology — the study and science of a Canadian city. :) My Kodachrome Toronto: 1935–2010 supervised research project at McGill can be accessed within the Torontology area.
• Urban ecosystems. Artificial lighting at night — photopollution or “light pollution” — work and other topical papers will have a home here.
• Canadian studies. Principally speaking, this is where my work on Canadian content music policy will go. This is an area I had to place on hold following a disastrous theft of my messenger bag, which contained some irreplaceable notes related to my 2008–09 undergrad thesis, “Broken Culture Scene.” When time frees up again, I’d like to come back and make up what was lost.
• Critical space. Assorted geography and urban studies topics have a place here. Ostensibly, so will urban design work.

Obviously, little of this is hashed out with permanency, but there has to be a crude start. This is that crude moment. Hi, thanks, and I hope to see you along the way!

-Astrid