Sustaining a Living, Inclusive and Creative City

Project summary: 9 pp.; ill., digital file.This project linked the Institute of Urban Studies with the broader community in Winnipeg and Saskatoon for the purpose of participating in the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai, the theme of which is "Better City, Better Life." Using a community learning framework, the University of Winnipeg’s Institute of Urban Studies, Art City and the Saskatoon Community Youth Arts Programming Inc. (SCYAP) collaborated to visualize and document a prairie perspective on the themes of Expo 2010. Using multiple mediums and forms of interaction, the project team engaged with children and youth in both cities to create different forms of artistic expression on the theme of city life on the Canadian prairies. These efforts were documented on an evolving website titled “Living Prairie City” (http://ius.typepad.com/living_prairie_city/), and culminated with the production of public art slated for eventual installation.Department of Canadian Heritag

Local Structure Analysis in AbAb InitioInitio Liquid Water

Within the framework of density functional theory, the inclusion of exact exchange and non-local van der Waals/dispersion (vdW) interactions is crucial for predicting a microscopic structure of ambient liquid water that quantitatively agrees with experiment. In this work, we have used the local structure index (LSI) order parameter to analyze the local structure in such highly accurate $ab$ $initio$ liquid water. At ambient conditions, the LSI probability distribution, P($I$), was unimodal with most water molecules characterized by more disordered high-density-like local environments. With thermal excitations removed, the resultant bimodal P($I$) in the inherent potential energy surface (IPES) exhibited a 3:1 ratio between high- and low-density-like molecules, with the latter forming small connected clusters amid the predominant population. By considering the spatial correlations and hydrogen bond network topologies $among$ water molecules with the same LSI identities, we demonstrate that the signatures of the experimentally observed low- (LDA) and high-density (HDA) amorphous phases of ice are present in the IPES of ambient liquid water. Analysis of the LSI autocorrelation function uncovered a persistence time of $\sim$ 4 ps---a finding consistent with the fact that natural thermal fluctuations are responsible for transitions between these distinct yet transient local aqueous environments in ambient liquid water.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Housing Distress in Winnipeg: Implications for Policy Programs and Services

report: 59 pp.; ill., digital file.This is the Final Report of the research project “Structural Causes of Housing Distress in Winnipeg: Implications for Policy Programs and Services” undertaken by the Institute of Urban Studies on behalf of the National Secretariat on Homelessness (NS H). This research approaches the issue of homelessness from two interrelated world views: the first is that a person’s problematic relationship with access to shelter should be viewed along a continuum of “housing distress” from being safely housed to being absolutely homeless; and second, that the pathways through this journey be viewed in terms of their structural determinants, rather than personal risk factors. T he focus of this research is, as a result, oriented towards discovering themes that emerge from shared “lived experience” within social and political structures, naming those structures and confirming those themes embedded in the structures. The complexity of this approach is reflected in our review of literature, as well as our revised methodology.National Secretariat on Homelessness (NSH

Downtown Winnipeg: Developments and Investments, 2005-2013

Over the last eight years, Winnipeg’s downtown has been on a rapid upswing with investment eclipsing an estimated $2 billion dollars. What has changed? Where is investment heading? This IUS In-Brief explores these questions by collecting and mapping the changes that have taken place during this frenzied period of development. The mapping of this activity is striking and gives strong representation to the diversity of development with the ensuing spatial pattern reinventing the look and feel of downtown

Inverse design of disordered stealthy hyperuniform spin chains

Positioned between crystalline solids and liquids, disordered many-particle systems which are stealthy and hyperuniform represent new states of matter that are endowed with novel physical and thermodynamic properties. Such stealthy and hyperuniform states are unique in that they are transparent to radiation for a range of wavenumbers around the origin. In this work, we employ recently developed inverse statistical-mechanical methods, which seek to obtain the optimal set of interactions that will spontaneously produce a targeted structure or configuration as a unique ground state, to investigate the spin-spin interaction potentials required to stabilize disordered stealthy hyperuniform one-dimensional (1D) Ising-like spin chains. By performing an exhaustive search over the spin configurations that can be enumerated on periodic 1D integer lattices containing $N=2,3,\ldots,36$ sites, we were able to identify and structurally characterize \textit{all} stealthy hyperuniform spin chains in this range of system sizes. Within this pool of stealthy hyperuniform spin configurations, we then utilized such inverse optimization techniques to demonstrate that stealthy hyperuniform spin chains can be realized as either unique or degenerate disordered ground states of radial long-ranged (relative to the spin chain length) spin-spin interactions. Such exotic ground states are distinctly different from spin glasses in both their inherent structural properties and the nature of the spin-spin interactions required to stabilize them. As such, the implications and significance of the existence of such disordered stealthy hyperuniform ground state spin systems warrants further study, including whether their bulk physical properties and excited states, like their many-particle system counterparts, are singularly remarkable, and can be experimentally realized.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

Interatomic Methods for the Dispersion Energy Derived from the Adiabatic Connection Fluctuation-Dissipation Theorem

Interatomic pairwise methods are currently among the most popular and accurate ways to include dispersion energy in density functional theory (DFT) calculations. However, when applied to more than two atoms, these methods are still frequently perceived to be based on \textit{ad hoc} assumptions, rather than a rigorous derivation from quantum mechanics. Starting from the adiabatic connection fluctuation-dissipation (ACFD) theorem, an exact expression for the electronic exchange-correlation energy, we demonstrate that the pairwise interatomic dispersion energy for an arbitrary collection of isotropic polarizable dipoles emerges from the second-order expansion of the ACFD formula. Moreover, for a system of quantum harmonic oscillators coupled through a dipole--dipole potential, we prove the equivalence between the full interaction energy obtained from the Hamiltonian diagonalization and the ACFD correlation energy in the random-phase approximation. This property makes the Hamiltonian diagonalization an efficient method for the calculation of the many-body dispersion energy. In addition, we show that the switching function used to damp the dispersion interaction at short distances arises from a short-range screened Coulomb potential, whose role is to account for the spatial spread of the individual atomic dipole moments. By using the ACFD formula we gain a deeper understanding of the approximations made in the interatomic pairwise approaches, providing a powerful formalism for further development of accurate and efficient methods for the calculation of the dispersion energy

Eviction Prevention: Toolkit of Promising Practices

38 p. : ill.This ‘toolkit and resource guide’ is intended to be a short, accessible guide for organizations wanting to help their tenants build long-term, stable tenancies. The toolkit provides an scan of tools used by organizations undertaking eviction prevention work — also known as housing retention or housing stabilization. This toolkit is based on the larger work, Holding On! Supporting Successful Tenancies for the Hard to House, which reviews twenty-seven organizations in nine Canadian cities involved with housing the homeless or those at heightened risk of homelessness. The report reviews homelessness in Canada and intervention models, provides case studies of five programs, and reviews programming and best practices in eviction prevention. The twenty-seven organizations varied in size and model of service delivery, from small housing organizations to the largest provincial housing authorities, and from those offering small-scale in-house supports to those providing intensive Housing First interventions.Government of Canada: Homelessness Partnering Strateg

Winnipeg's Vanishing Rooming Houses: Change in the West Broadway and Spence Neighbourhoods

This In-Brief documents the disappearance of rooming houses from two inner-city neighbourhoods. A community forum held on May 27th, 2014 will bring together more than 80 rooming house tenants, landlords, community members, government representatives, researchers, service agencies and students to discuss the state of rooming houses in Winnipeg.Online resource: 17 pp.; ill., Digital file.Neighbourhood Change Research Partnershi

Electronic Properties of Molecules and Surfaces with a Self\uad-Consistent Interatomic van der Waals Density Functional.

How strong is the effect of van der Waals (vdW) interactions on the electronic properties of molecules and extended systems? To answer this question, we derived a fully self-consistent implementation of the density-dependent interatomic vdW functional of Tkatchenko and Scheffler [Phys. Rev. Lett. 102, 073005 (2009)]. Not surprisingly, vdW self-consistency leads to tiny modifications of the structure, stability, and electronic properties of molecular dimers and crystals. However, unexpectedly large effects were found in the binding energies, distances, and electrostatic moments of highly polarizable alkali-metal dimers. Most importantly, vdW interactions induced complex and sizable electronic charge redistribution in the vicinity of metallic surfaces and at organic-metal interfaces. As a result, a substantial influence on the computed work functions was found, revealing a nontrivial connection between electrostatics and long-range electron correlation effects

Beyond a Front Desk: The Residential Hotel as Home

This report is based on a comprehensive analysis of Winnipeg’s single room occupancy hotels. In developing and writing the report, an emphasis was placed on ensuring that the voices of SRO residents were heard and that they would identify and characterize their own realties. This was accomplished in a number of ways. First, a case study of Winnipeg hotels was undertaken, with field research including not only surveys, but also building trust among local residents. During the course of this fieldwork, researchers were able to become comfortable with the area and its people, while also developing a sense of the issues affecting hotel residents, owners and the surrounding community. Observations were drawn from a diverse set of downtown hotels that encompassed a region stretching from Broadway Boulevard on the south to Selkirk Avenue on the north. In total, eighty-one surveys were completed in nearly fifteen hotels, offering broad and contrasting perspectives on life in an SRO. The research was approached from three perspectives - the people who live in their rooms, the physical characteristics of the hotels (the bars, restaurants and common spaces), and the surrounding community. The goal was to determine whether SROs are an important form of affordable shelter. It was also our intent to determine whether practical solutions exist that could contribute to creating the best possible accommodation in an affordable and healthful manner.Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation, Social Science and Humanities Research Counci