Managed by a committee from the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP)

Faculty: Leonora Angeles, Peter Boothroyd (Prof. Emeritus), Stephanie Chang, Lawrence Frank, Margo Fryer, Penelope Gurstein (Director, SCARP), Thomas A. Hutton (Associate Director, SCARP for CHS), Michael Leaf, Tim McDaniels, William Rees

Fields of research:
• feminist perspectives on international development, gender and globalization, agrarian issues, human development and security linkages, states and elites in Southeast Asia;
• metropolitan governance, democratization of planning and poverty reduction, strengthening community, community and regional economic development, university engagement in community development;
• computer models and decision support systems, sustainability planning for disaster reduction, systems analysis of economy and infrastructure
• impact of land use decisions on travel choices (with emphasis on walking, biking & transit utilization); public health impacts of built environment; urban form relationships with air quality, climate change, transportation-related greenhouse gas production; effectiveness of urban form and travel demand management strategies to offset auto dependence;
• economy of the inner city; planning for the metropolitan core; service industries, industrial restructuring; urban transformation within the Asia-Pacific core;
• Community service-learning to connect academic courses with students’ engagement in the work of non-profit organizations in B.C.; the use of social learning processes in planning practice;
• planning for equitable and healthy communities; technology and society; planning for urban sustainability (design issues);
• multi-level governance in Canada (how state actors and social forces interact to create public policy in Canadian municipalities, and how to improve these policies); innovation and creativity in city-regions; new economy of the inner city; cities and economic change;
• rapid urbanization in Southeast Asia: informality and governance in peri-urban areas of Jakarta and Hanoi, political, environmental and social implications of urban change, urban informalization and informality;
• implementing the UN Habitat Agenda and the Millennium Development Goals; creating a curated, web-based archive of a range of audio-visual, electronic and archival materials related to the 1976 UN Conference on Human Settlements (Habitat I), the 3rd Session of the World Urban Forum and other human settlements-related materials for research, training and educational purposes.