Planning

Tolu Alabi

Research Interests

• Transportation
• Social Housing
• Urban Design and Infrastructure
• International Urban Planning strategies

Christopher Alton

Research Interests

• Planning theory
• Resource extraction

Lauren Haein An

Research Interests

• Urban design
• Sustainable development
• Public space
• Urban health

Jeff Biggar

Research Interests

• Development Control and Public Value Capture
• Urban Governance and the Role of the Planner
• Public Realm Investment and Provision

Bio

Jeff Biggar is a PhD candidate in planning in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto. Jeff’s research interests span a variety of topics: the relationship between planning policy, law, and the built environment, urban design and the public realm, and cultural and community planning.

Jeff’s dissertation research examines how cities capture public value from urban redevelopment, and what level of investment this brings to communities. The big issue driving his research and practice is how to make more equitable and imaginative cities.

Travis K. Bost

Research Interests

• Urban Political Ecology
• Politics of Infrastructure
• Nature-Society Relations
• Urban Theory
• U.S. Gulf South
• Climate Change Politics

Tammy Chou

Research Interests

• Community development
• Urban design and placemaking
• Affordable housing
• Social equity

Stephanie Cirnu

Research Interests

• Real estate development
• Land use planning
• Urban design
• Universal design and accessibility

Adam Didycz

Research Interests

• Critical Urban Studies
• Gentrification
• Uneven Development
• Environment & Health
• Planning Pedagogy
• Urban Economic Development
• Creative City Script
• Role of Art in Planning

Madeleine Hicks

Research Interests

• Feminist and decolonial planning praxes
• Planning as protest
• Commoning and anti-capitalist movements
• Placehood, land, and justice
• Equity in participatory and collaborative processes

Tara KamalAhmadi

Research Interests

• Transportation
  • Public Health

Michelle Kearns

Research Interests

• Equitable suburban regeneration
• Regional transportation planning
• Placemaking and public spaces
• Active transportation

Robert Keel

Research Interests

• Housing Affordability
• Land Use Planning
• Social Housing
• Transportation Planning
• Municipal Finance

Tariq Khan

Research Interests

• Urban Design
• Environmental Planning
• Historic Preservation
• Sustainability

Raili Lakanen

Research Interests

• climate change and social movements
• environmental politics
• youth activism and community organizing
• sustainability planning

Diala Lteif

Research Interests

• Displacement and migration
• Conflict
• Social Justice
• Politics and space

Dani Magsumbol

Research Interests

• Social planning
• Planning in diasporic cities
• Creative cities in the Global South
• Immigrants and urban spaces

Julie Mah

Research Interests

• Social housing provision, housing policy and affordability
• Urban change and uneven development
• Planning for spatial justice

Rui Mao

Research Interests

• Urban Sustainability and Climate Change
• Urban Governance and Finance
• Transportation Policy
• Transportation Policy Implementation

Keir Matthews-Hunter

Research Interests

• Housing markets, policy, and affordability
• Neighbourhood decline and revitalization
• Land use planning

Amina Menkad

Research Interests

• Urban Design Choices
• Social Accessibility

Ewa Modlinska

Research Interests

• Municipal planning processes
• Neighbourhood revitalization
• Community and stakeholder engagement
• Urban renewal
• Community development
• Public-private-community partnerships
• Politics of planning

Kate Nelischer

Research Interests

• Gender and planning
• Designing cities for women
• Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design

Katherine Perrott

Research Interests

• urbanisms | suburbanisms
• Visioning as planning practice
• Canadian planning and development trends
• Transit oriented development, smart growth, and new urbanism
• Residential development and mortgage lending
• Advertising, marketing, and place branding
• Intersection of culture, economy, and policy

Natasha Petzold

Research Interests

• urban design as a tool to promote safer, healthier communities
• environmental planning and sustainable development
• positive and equitable social change

Noha Refaat

Research Interests

• Architecture and Urban Development
• Community-based Planning and Development in Cities
• Urban Informality

Claudio Sarmiento-Casas

Research Interests

• Active transportation planning in Latin America
• Tactical Urbanism
• Pedestrian and vélo-mobilities
• Diversity in mobility
• Street design
• Road safety
• Mexican cities

Clara Shipman

Research Interests

• architecture and urban planning / urban form
• housing and community development / mixed-use and mixed-income projects
• social justice and access to the city / social and spatial polarization

Anna Shortly

Research Interests

• Sustainable and equitable food systems
• Agricultural development
• Community-based planning

Arno van Dijk

Research Interests

• Transportation
• Public Health

Holly Wacker

Research Interests

• climate resilience
• decolonizing planning
• right to the city

Nate Wessel

Research Interests

• Transit
• GIS
• Cartography

Ryan Whitney

Research Interests

• Non-motorized transportation planning
• Social justice
• Latin American urbanization
• Global policy transfer

JieLan Xu

Research Interests

• Built-environment
• Urban design and activity space
• GIS and spatial analysis
• Aging-in-place and age-friendly communities

Mischa Young

Research Interests

• Transportation behaviours
• Parking
• Public transit
• Urban sprawl

Will Zahn

Research Interests

• Public housing history, housing policy, affordability
• Urban segregation and geographies of ethnoracial identity/conflict
• Spatial analysis, cartography, data visualization
• Borders, territory, post-colonialism, nationalism

Austin Zwick

Research Interests

• Urban Decline and Revitalization
• Agglomeration Economies
• Regional Economic Growth
• Municipal Finance
• Statistical Analysis
• Energy Policy

Resource Boom to Revitalization: How does fracking affect patterns of urban decline and revitalization in the American Rust Belt?

Once-great industrial centers in the Rust Belt have been battling an ongoing struggle against urban decline for decades, but now some of them find themselves in a new natural resource boom. The technological innovation of hydraulic fracturing drilling, commonly known as ‘fracking’, has revolutionized global energy markets overnight but has been accompanied by a lack of understanding of its local economic impacts in the process. Some scholars find that agglomeration economies based on the fossil fuel extraction industry may provide a foundation for future economic growth even after the gas dries up, while others have shown that oil and gas extraction occurs in boom-bust cycles dependent upon international markets and therefore existing communities are better off by leaving the fossil fuels in the ground. This dissertation examines fracking’s effects on long-term economic growth through the (1) accumulation of human capital, (2) diversification of industry, and (3) municipal fiscal health of cities in the Rust Belt.