Cities

From environmental justice to housing challenges, social entrepreneurship and food security, our researchers are looking at improving our cities. 

Get to know their areas of expertise.

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Advanceing six Sustainable Development Goals

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INdustry SGD 9
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sdg 11
sdg 13

Our researchers

Martine August

Department of Geography and Environmental Management (GEM)

  • Planning and social justice
  • Political economy of housing
  • Gentrification, displacement, and neighbourhood change
  • Urban redevelopment and the politics of social mix
  • Inequality, poverty, urban marginality
  • Community organizing, resistance, and the right to the city
  • Financialization of housing and neighbourhoods
  • Can also supervise graduate students in Geography and Environmental Management

Janice Barry

School of Planning

  • Settler colonialism and contemporary planning practice
  • Recognition of Indigenous rights in environmental, protected area and urban planning
  • Treaty settlement lands, urban reserves and Indigenous-municipal planning relations
  • Decolonization of planning practice and planning education

Marta Berbes

School of Planning​

  • Environmental justice 
  • Sustainable urban futures
  • Resilience thinking and complexity 
  • Participatory action research and community-led research
  • Human dimensions of environmental change

Brian Doucet

School of Planning

  • Gentrification and neighbourhood change
  • Urban inequalities
  • Flagship developments and urban entrepreneurialism
  • Grassroots movements and urban resistance

Daniel Cockayne

Geography and Environmental Management

  • Cultural geography
  • Economic geography
  • Entrepreneurialism and startup economies
  • Feminist geography, queer geography and sexuality

Mathieu Feagan

Department of Knowledge Integration

  • Capacity-building for social transformation in the Anthropocene
  • Urban resilience and sustainability transitions across North-South relations
  • Emancipatory pedagogies
  • Knowledge integration across different ways of knowing

Sean Geobey

School of Environment, Enterprise and Development

  • Social entrepreneurship and social innovation

  • Sustainable and innovative financing tools
  • Alternative enterprise legal structures such as cooperatives and social enterprises
  • Long-term participatory decision-making and design tools

Heather Hall

School of Environment, Enterprise and Development

  • Innovation and entrepreneurship in rural and northern contexts

  • Regional economic development planning, policy and practice
  • Community readiness & community impacts related to natural resource development
  • Planning in slow-growth and declining communities
  • Can also supervise graduate students in Geography and Environmental Management

Markus Moos

School of Planning​

  • Generationed City

  • Generational change and youthification in cities

  • Urban housing markets and affordability

  • Suburban sustainability innovations

  • Social justice and the economies of cities
Leia Minaker
Associate professor and Director of Future Cities Institute, Leia Minaker


Connect with Leia Minaker

Leia Minaker

School of Planning

  • Food environment assessment

  • Population and public health
  • Population health intervention research
  • Food access in cities and planning for healthy food access
  • Social determinants of health

James Nugent

School of Environment, Resources and Sustainability 

  • Urban political ecology
  • Social movements
  • Labour geography & unions
  • Economic restructuring
  • Community benefits agreements
  • Participatory, community-based research
  • Community-engaged learning

Zhu (Joe) Qian

School of Planning

  • Comparative urban planning and policy

  • Land use planning and urban form
  • Land use reform and policy in China
  • Heritage conservation and planning in China

Mark Seasons

School of Planning

  • Planning for slow growth, no growth or decline
  • Policy and program evaluation
  • Local economic development
  • Planning for climate change

Nancy Worth

Geography and Environmental Management

  • Gen Y At Home

  • (Un)paid work and social reproduction (housing)
  • Age and generations (millennials)
  • Identities and inequality
  • Social/spatial theory
  • Feminist economic geography and social geography

Peter Crank

Geography and Environmental Management

  • Urban climate
  • Urban environmental health 
  • Extreme heat 
  • Biometeorology
  • Can also supervise graduate students in the Faculty of Environment
Katherine Perrott

Katherine Perrott

School of Planning

  • Political economy of the built environment 
  • Planning policy and development processes 
  • Urban and suburban design