David Gordon FCIP RPP AICP is Professor in the School of Urban and Regional Planning of the Department of Geography and Planning at Queen’s University. He received a Doctor of Design degree from the Harvard GSD. David was SURP Director for over a decade and has also taught at McGill, Toronto, TMU, Riga, Western Australia, Harvard and Pennsylvania, where he was a Fulbright Senior Scholar. Prior to becoming a full-time professor, David was a principal in an urban design firm and manager in a Toronto waterfront agency. He is a member of the National Capital Commission’s design review committee, Research Chair of the Council for Canadian Urbanism and a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners, sharing their National Awards four times. Recent books include Town and Crown and Planning Canadian Communities (with Pam Shaw). His research examines planning histories, capital cities, waterfronts and suburbs in Canada, Australia and the USA.
Research Interests
David Gordon’s current major research field, planning history, uses longitudinal studies of planning practice to answer questions about implementation. The main site is Canada’s national capital region, which is the focus of the country’s longest sustained urban planning effort. The capital city research program was supported by three SSHRC grants and a Fulbright fellowship. The results are reported in a book, many refereed articles and a research website. This research stream culminated in another book, Town and Crown: An illustrated history of Canada’s capital.
A second research focus is planning Canadian suburbs. This area has been addressed in several book chapters, articles in the Journal of the American Planning Association, Urban History Review, Journal of Architectural and Planning Research and Journal of Urban Design. The project is supported by two SSHRC grants to examine the histories proportions and policy implications of Canadian suburbs. The research was extended for comparison with Australian suburbs at UWA’s Institute for Advanced Studies and American suburbs at MIT’s Center for Advanced Urbanism.