Faculty from other universities and research institutes who hold continuing appointments may be appointed as Visiting Professors to the School of Cities. Visiting Professors are engaged in urban focused research and/or teaching with a commitment to community engagement.
Visiting Professors must:
- Hold a continuing professorial appointment at their home institution
- Be engaged in urban focused research and/or teaching
- Demonstrate a commitment to community engagement
- Have a clear project focus aligned with School of Cities mission/vision/values
Questions? Feel free to contact us at outreach.sofc@utoronto.ca
Applications for the Visiting Professor program are currently closed
2022-2023 Visiting Professor
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. Professor Gordon 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, he 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.
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.
Contact David Gordon at david.gordon@queensu.ca
Read David Gordon’s full biography on the Queen’s University website
2021-2022 Visiting Professor
Sergio Montero is Associate Professor of Urban and Regional Planning and Development at the Universidad de Los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia. He holds a Bachelor in Economics from Universidad de Granada (Spain) and a master and PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. He is also associate editor of the journal Regional Studies and director of LabNa (Laboratorio de Narrativas Urbanas).
During his time as visiting professor at the School of Cities (Dec 2021- July 2022), Sergio worked on a book that analyzes the relationship between density, urban renewal and recent social and legal struggles for inclusion in Bogotá’s city centre. Bogotá has the largest housing deficit in Colombia, and is one of the most unequal and segregated cities in Latin America and one of the densest in the world. Recent urban renewal initiatives aimed at revitalizing the city center have been highly controversial. Residents and community organizers have mobilize against some projects and, sometimes, legally prosecuted the city for the lack of participation and involvement of residents. At the same time, some urban renewal projects have innovated new land policy instruments in an attempt to minimize displacement. This has made urban renewal plans key urban battlegrounds in the larger discussion about housing, local development and inclusion in Bogotá.
Sergio’s research is focused on the politics and governance of urban and regional planning; the global circulation of urban and regional policy models and “best practices;” as well as institutional and territorial approaches to local economic development policy, with an emphasis on Latin American cities and regions. More recently, he has been interested in analyzing the increasing judicialization of urban planning in Bogotá and the possibilities of urban inclusion beyond bureaucratic participatory planning. His work has appeared in international journals in urban and regional studies and in Latin American studies such as Urban Studies, Regional Studies, EPA: Economy and Space, IJURR or Latin American Perspectives, among others. He has co-edited four books on local economic development and on the global circulation, mobility and diffusion of policies.
Read Sergio Montero’s full biography on the Universidad de los Andes website