Faculty from universities and research institutes in Canada and globally 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. Limited funding is available to support research, research assistance, and research-related expenses (up to CAD $20,000). Appointment periods are for one month to one year, starting July 1 of each year.
Visiting Professors must:
- Have a clear project focus aligned with School of Cities mission/vision/values
- Hold a continuing professorial appointment at their home institution
- Have evidence of funding or salary continuance for the duration of the visiting residence (including for travel to, accommodation, and living expenses in Toronto)
- Have a track record of excellence in urban-related research and/or teaching
- Demonstrate a commitment to community engagement
During their appointment, Visiting Professors should be prepared to:
- Deliver at least one talk (seminar, public lecture or moderated panel discussion)
- Make themselves available for mentoring graduate students and postdoctoral fellows
- Publish a working paper or other form of knowledge mobilization (video, data visualization, report, whitepaper etc.)
- *Note that the School of Cities can provide administrative support to facilitate the above activities
Past Visiting Professors
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.
Read David Gordon’s full biography on the Queen’s University website
Sergio Montero is Associate Professor of Geography & Planning and Inaugural Director of the Institute for Inclusive Economies and Sustainable Livelihoods (IIESL) at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. Prof. Montero is interested in place-based and inclusive approaches to reimagine local economic development and urban & regional planning. His research is often comparative and emphasizes thinking from the Global South and from the peripheries of economic development.
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.
Dr. Montero’s recent research has been focused on the politics and governance of urban and regional planning; on the South-South and South-North circulation, learning and adoption of international policy models and “best practices,” particularly around sustainable transport; and on local and regional economic development strategies, especially in Latin America. He has published on these topics in several academic journals such as Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, Urban Studies, Economic Development Quarterly, Latin American Studies, the Journal of Rural Studies or the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, among others. He has edited two books on local economic development in Latin America (in English and Spanish) and a recent collection on the global mobilities and diffusion of policy knowledge (in English and Portuguese). Sergio is associate editor of the journal Regional Studies and international corresponding editor of Urban Studies. He holds a master and PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of California, Berkeley (USA) and a BA in Economics from Universidad de Granada (Spain). Before coming to the University of Toronto, he was a professor of urban & regional development at Universidad de los Andes in Bogotá, Colombia.