Brian Doucet

Dr Brian Doucet is a researcher, author, filmmaker, photographer, award-winning teacher and Associate Professor in Planning at the University of Waterloo. He is the writer and director of Thinking Beyond the Market: a film about genuinely affordable housing, a SSHRC-funded feature-length documentary film which explores solutions to the housing crisis. His work critically examines housing, gentrification, displacement, transportation and neighbourhood change. Born and raised in Toronto, he lived in the Netherlands from 2004 – 2017, where he received his PhD in geography from Utrecht University. Since returning to Canada in 2017, he has held a Canada Research Chair, been awarded six major SSHRC research grants and was a 2025 winner of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Teaching Excellence Award. He is the co-author of the award-nominated book, Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto: a visual analysis of change, and a co-editor of the four volume book series Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities.

• Gentrification, displacement and neighbourhood change

• Housing

• Polarisation and inequality

• Waterfront regeneration and deindustrialisation

• Visual methodologies, including repeat photography

• Transportation, mobility and equity

• Lived experience research and collaboration with non-profits

• Long-term changes in cities

• Qualitative methods

• Detroit, Toronto, Rotterdam/Dutch cities, Scottish cities, Hamilton, Waterloo Region

• Qualitative research methods

• Transit-induced gentrification and displacement: centring tenant experiences in policy solutions to build and maintain affordable housing along new rapid transit lines

SSHRC Insight Grant (2025–2029)

Principal Investigator

$175,407

• Visual insights in changing cities: streetcar and tramway photography

UW SSHRC Grant (2024)

Principal Investigator

$6,965

• Mapping tenant displacement through lived experiences

Mitacs Accelerate Grant (2023)

Principal Investigator

$10,000

• Centring lived experiences in solutions to the homeless crisis

University of Waterloo/Region of Waterloo Homelessness Initiative (2022–2023)

Principal Investigator – partnership with Social Development Centre Waterloo Region

$24,869

• Thinking beyond the market: a film about genuinely affordable housing

SSHRC Connection Grant (2023–2024)

Principal Investigator

$25,119

• ‘Many Faces of Urban and Rural Displacement – Ontario Tenants Organize and Speak Up

CMHC, Community Housing Transformation Centre, Community Based Tenant Initiative (2022–2023)

Academic advisor (lead organization Social Planning Network of Ontario)

$149,600

• 'Everybody bikes!' a comparative analysis of cycling experiences in the Netherlands and Canada

SSHRC Insight Development Grant (2022–2023)

Principal Investigator

$74,539

• Overspill gentrification: neighbourhood change in Hamilton, and the impact from Toronto

SSHRC Insight Grant (2020–2024)

Principal Investigator

$98,858

• Gentrification and displacement outside of Kitchener’s core: an examination of the lived experiences

City of Kitchener (2020–2021)

Principal Investigator (research partner Social Development Centre Waterloo Region)

$10,000

• Documenting and Experiencing Gentrification: transit, displacement and the lived experiences of gentrification in Kitchener-Waterloo

SSHRC Partnership Development Grant (2020–2022)

Principal Investigator (main partner Social Development Centre Waterloo Region)

$176,363

• Boggs Urban Reader: bringing the ‘urban’ into visionary activist research

SSHRC Partnership Engage Grant (2020–2022)

Principal Investigator

$24,811

• Residential Property Values and Active Transportation Infrastructure

City of Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge and the Region of Waterloo (2020)

Co-PI with Dawn Parker

$17,250

• Experiencing gentrification: day-to-day geographies of change along Waterloo Region’s LRT corridor

UW SSHRC Seed Grant (2018)

Principal Investigator

$7,000

• PhD, Geography, Utrecht University, 2010

• MSc, Geography, Utrecht University, 2006

• BA (Hons) Geography, University of Toronto, 2003

• Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance 2025 Teaching Excellence Award (winner)

• SSHRC Insight Award 2024 (University of Waterloo nominee) Heritage Toronto Book Award 2023 (nominee)

• INDEV 262 - Introduction to Global Emerging Cities
  • Taught in 2021, 2023
• PLAN 100 - The Evolution of Planning
  • Taught in 2023, 2024, 2025
• PLAN 261 - Urban and Metropolitan Planning and Development
  • Taught in 2025
• PLAN 262 - Introduction to Global Emerging Cities
  • Taught in 2021, 2023
• PLAN 474 - Special Topics in Planning
  • Taught in 2025

* Only courses taught in the past 5 years are displayed.

• Books

• Doucet, B and Doucet, M. (2022) Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto: a visual analysis of change Toronto: University of Toronto Press

• Doucet, B, van Melik, R and Filion, P (EDs) (2021) Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities. Volume 1: Community and Society Bristol: Bristol University Press.

• Doucet, B, Filion, F and van Melik, R (EDs) (2021) Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities. Volume 2: Housing and Home Bristol: Bristol University Press.

• Van Melik, R, Filion, P and Doucet, B (EDs) (2021) Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities. Volume 3: Public Space and Mobility Bristol: Bristol University Press.

• Filion, P, Doucet, B and van Melik, R (EDs) (2021) Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities. Volume 4: Planning and Policy Bristol: Bristol University Press.

• Doucet, B (Ed.) (2017) Why Detroit Matters: Decline, renewal and hope in a divided city (Bristol: Policy Press)

• Peer reviewed articles

• Van der Merwe, J and Doucet, B (2025) In search of urbanity: Metropolitan geographies of gentrification and middle-class migration from Toronto to Hamilton Urban Geography.

• Ellis-Young, M and Doucet, B (2024) A new urbanity in a suburban region: the perceived (im)possibilities of light rail among residents and stakeholders in Canada’s Waterloo Region City.

• Deverteuil, G and Doucet, B (2024) Critical visual approaches to understand the complexities and contradictions of the city: introduction to the special issue for Visual Studies Visual Studies. 39(1–2) 114–117

• Babin, C and Doucet, B (2024) Gentrification and changing visual landscapes: a Google Street View analysis of residential upgrading and class aesthetics in Hamilton’s Lower City Visual Studies. 39(1–2) 127–143

• Mayers, R and Doucet, B (2023) ‘Beyond Policy Tourism’: The international lived experience of cycling in the Netherlands and Canada Journal of Urban, Planning and Transport Research.

• Babin, C and Doucet, B (2023) Gentrification and changing visual landscapes: a Google Street View analysis of residential upgrading and class aesthetics in Hamilton’s Lower City, Visual Studies.

• Mayers, R., Rallis, N., Doucet, B and Babin, C (2023) In Light of Transit: Documenting the scales of urban change along the LRT line in Hamilton, Ontario Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

• Doucet, B; Diwan, F; Turman, W; Mehta, N; and Petrovic, A. (2022) Mapping displacement through lived experiences: countermapping transit-induced gentrification in Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario Radical Housing Journal. 4(2) 67–87

• Tolfo G and Doucet B (2022) Liveability for whom?: the gentrification of memory in Vancouver’s Northeast False Creek Cities. Volume 123, pp. 1–10

• McDougall, E and Doucet, B (2022) Polarized Paths: ‘Selling’ cycling in city and suburb Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie.

• Doucet, B (2021) The ‘hidden’ side of transit-induced gentrification and displacement along Waterloo Region’s LRT corridor, Geoforum.

• Van der Merwe, J and Doucet, B (2021) Housing challenges, mid-sized cities and the COVID-19 pandemic: Critical reflections from Waterloo Region Canadian Planning and Policy. 2021(01) 780–90

• Ellis-Young, M and Doucet, B (2021) From “Big Small Town” to “Small Big City”: Resident Experiences of Gentrification along Waterloo Region’s LRT Corridor Journal of Planning Education and Research.

• Tolfo G and Doucet B (2020) Gentrification in the media: the eviction of critical class perspectives, Urban Geography.

• Doucet, B (2020) Deconstructing dominant narratives of urban failure and gentrification in a racially-unjust city: the case of Detroit Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. 111(4) 634–651

• Doucet B (2019) Repeat photography and urban change: streetcar photography of Toronto since the 1960s City. 23(4–5) 411–438

• Zebracki, M; Doucet, B and de Brant, T. (2019) Beyond Picturesque Decay: Detroit and the Photographic Sites of Confrontation Between Media and Residents Space and Culture. 22(4) 489–508

• Doucet B and Koenders D (2018) “At least it’s not a ghetto anymore:” experiencing the ‘false choice’ between gentrification and decay in Rotterdam’s Afrikaanderwijk Urban Studies. 55(13) 3631–3649

• Doucet B and Smit E (2016) ‘Building an urban 'renaissance:' fragmented services and the production of inequality in Greater Downtown Detroit’, Journal of Housing and the Built Environment. 31(4), 635–657

• Doucet, B (2014) A process of change and a changing process: introduction to the special issue on contemporary gentrification Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. 105(2) 125–139

• Ernst, O and Doucet, B (2014) A window on the (changing) neighbourhood: the role of pubs and cafés in the contested spaces of gentrification Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. 105(2) 189–205

• Doucet, B (2013) Variations of the entrepreneurial city: goals, roles visions in Rotterdam’s Kop van Zuid and the Glasgow Harbour megaprojects International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 37(6) 2035–2051

• Doucet, B (2013) Four days in Detroit: a Dutch urban geography fieldtrip to the Motor City Belgeo. 2013, 2

• Doucet, B and Duignan, E* (2012) Experiencing Dublin’s Docklands: perceptions of employment and amenity changes in the Sheriff Street community Irish Geography. 45(1) 45–65

• Doucet, B; van Kempen, R and van Weesep, J (2011) ‘We’re a rich city with poor people’: municipal strategies of new-build gentrification in Rotterdam and Glasgow Environment and Planning A. 43, 1458–1454

• Doucet, B; van Kempen, R and van Weesep, J (2011) Resident perceptions of flagship waterfront regeneration: the case of the Kop van Zuid in Rotterdam Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie. 102(2), 125–145

• Doucet, B (2009) Living through gentrification: subjective experiences of local, non-gentrifying residents in Leith, Edinburgh Journal of Housing and the Built Environment. 24, 299–315

• Doucet, B (2009) Global flagships, local impacts Urban Design and Planning. 162(DP3) 101–107

• Professional publications and policy reports

• McDougall, E., Vandermeer, R., Kelly Y., Reid-Davis, D., Vandervyvere, K., Lafrance and Doucet, B (2023) The Many Faces of Urban and Rural Displacement. [Collaboration between the Social Planning Network of Ontario and the University of Waterloo.]

• Doucet, B, McDougall, E and Jay, M (2023) Thinking Beyond the Market: Innovative Housing Examples Based on People, Not Profit. [Collaboration between the University of Waterloo and the Hamilton Community Foundation]

• Mayers, R, Doucet, B, Rallis, N and Babin, C (2023) Experiencing urban change along Hamilton’s LRT corridor: Resident experiences prior to construction. Collaboration between the University of Waterloo and the Hamilton Community Foundation

• McDougall, E, Diwan, F, Petrovic, A, Doucet, B, and August, M (2022) Displacement in Kitchener’s Inner Suburbs: Experiences and perspectives from low-income tenants. Collaboration between the University of Waterloo and Social Development Centre Waterloo Region.

• Doucet, B, and Wilson, B (2022) Moving to Hamilton Atlas: the numbers behind the anecdotes. University of Waterloo.

• Diwan, F, Turman, W, Baird, D, Mehta, N, Petrovic, A and Doucet, B (2021) Mapping Displacement in Kitchener-Waterloo. Social Development Centre Waterloo Region.

• Diwan, F, Mehta, N, Turman, W, Doucet, B and Petrovic, A (2020) Mapping Displacement: Mapping displacement and the loss of affordable housing in Kitchener and Waterloo: Interactive map. Social Development Centre Waterloo Region.

• Life Stories of Displacement (2020) A series of podcasts and interviews that examine lived experiences of poverty along Waterloo Region’s LRT corridor. Produced by the Social Development Centre Waterloo Region

• Doucet, B; Parker, D; McDougall, E; Huang, Y and Feng, D (2020) Cycling Infrastructure and its Relationship to Residential Property Prices. Report commissioned by the City of Kitchener, City of Waterloo, City of Cambridge and Region of Waterloo.

• Doucet, B and Van der Merwe, J (2020) COVID-19 and housing implications in the Region of Waterloo: amplified challenges and proactive planning. Report commissioned by the Region of Waterloo. September 2020

• Doucet, B and Mazumder, R (2020) COVID-19 cyclists: Expanding bike lane network can lead to more inclusive cities, The Conversation. 22 November. My contribution was 75%

• Doucet, B (2020) Cities and their streetcars: my top ten favourite spots, Spacing Toronto. 7 May.

• Doucet, B (2020) Change and continuity in the COVID-19 city, Spacing Toronto. 30 April.

• Doucet, B (2020) Observing change through the window of a GO Train, Spacing Toronto. 8 April.

• Doucet, B (2019) A comparative look at Toronto’s CLRVs, Spacing Toronto. December

• Doucet, B (2018) Airbnb and the struggle for the city: From Amsterdam to Toronto and beyond. Plan Canada. 58(2) 21–27.

• Media articles (selected)

• A full list of articles in The Conversation is available here

• Doucet, B (2025) I’ve studied housing for over 15 years. These Canadian towns are showing us how to fix the crisis, Toronto Star, 25 November

• Godly, A, Babin, C and Doucet, B (2025) Publicly owned parking lots: the affordable housing solution hiding in plain sight? Y Magazine. Issue 17, 37–40.

• Doucet, B (2024) Rendering visible tenant displacement throughout Ontario, Y Magazine. Issue 15, 40–42.

• Doucet, B (2024) Hamilton council passes a bylaw to end renovictions, helping to address housing affordability. The Conversation. 18 January.

• Doucet, B (2023) Service changes may put brakes on Ion’s gold standard of transit, Waterloo Region Record. 16 November.

• Doucet, B (2023) 4 affordable housing strategies that are working in Canada, The Conversation. 16 October

• Doucet, B (2023) Doug Ford reverses Greenbelt plans: Construction would never have provided affordable housing, The Conversation. 21 September.

• Doucet, B and Pin, L (2023) Cities must take immediate action against ‘renovictions’ to address housing crisis, The Conversation. 20 April.

• Doucet, B (2023) New weekend GO transit schedule is a game changer for out-of-towners, Toronto Star. 14 April.

• Doucet, B (2023) Publicly owned land should be used for affordable housing, not sold to private developers, The Conversation. 30 January.

• Doucet, B (2022) How activists saved Toronto’s streetcars 50 years ago this month, Spacing Toronto. 22 November.

• Van Melik, R; Doucet, B & Filion P (2022) Stedelijke ongelijkheid door corona vergroot, Geografie. 31(5) 28–30

• Doucet, B (2022) Weekends would be better with direct GO Trains from Kitchener to Toronto, Waterloo Region Record. 10 June.

• Doucet, B (2022) Streetcar photography as a window to Toronto’s changing landscapes, Spacing Toronto. 11 May.

• Doucet, B (2022) Ontario’s ‘affordable housing’ task force report does not address the real problems, The Conversation. 10 February.

• Doucet, B and Marshall, S (2021) End of the line: Why Ontario will regret ripping up this rail corridor, TVO. 20 December

• Doucet, B (2021) Housing is both a human right and a profitable asset, and that’s the problem, The Conversation. 14 December

• Doucet, B (2021) Council’s urban boundary decision poses new challenges, Hamilton Spectator. 2 December.

• Doucet, B (2021) Building a denser, inclusive Hamilton, Hamilton Spectator. 1 December.

• Doucet, B (2021) Housing will be a dominant issue in the 2022 provincial election, Waterloo Region Record. 2 December.

• Doucet, B (2021) Trains before lanes: New Highway 7 and other road projects won’t address climate change, Waterloo Region Record. 17 November.

• Doucet, B (2020) When cycling becomes boring it’s working, Waterloo Region Record. 11 December.

• Doucet, B (2020) Westmount Road bike lanes a path to a more equitable community, Waterloo Region Record. 12 August.

• Doucet, B (2019) The road to better urban spaces is full of pedestrians. Waterloo Region Record. 3 October

• Doucet, B (2019) LRT development boom is squeezing out affordable housing. Waterloo Region Record. 18 June.

• Doucet, B (2019) Ion LRT will reshape development in Waterloo Region for decades to come. Waterloo Region Record. 16 June.

• Doucet, B (2019) I clog Toronto’s highways because there is no train service. The Toronto Star. 22 February

• Doucet, B; Dean, J; Mitchell, C and Toman, S (2018) Winter in spring reinforces need for municipal sidewalk clearing. Waterloo Region Record. 19 April. My contribution was 80%

• Doucet, B (2018) Pedestrian deaths won’t end as long as Toronto panders to cars and drivers. The Globe and Mail. 11 March.

• Doucet, B (2017) We can build better, more people-centred cities. Waterloo Region Record. 9 December

• Doucet, B (2017) National housing strategy fails to go deep enough on root of ills, The Toronto Star. 3 December

• Doucet, B (2017) Once-in-a-lifetime chance to build density with diversity, Waterloo Region Record. 10 October.