Research Interests

I am interested in nature and environmental politics in urban and regional planning. Toronto is in the centre of an urban region that is home to one-quarter of Canada’s population. The Toronto urban region is a microcosm of global issues related to environmental and urban change, for example, how do we go about conserving nature close to where we live? Within this region, people live in many different kinds of urban and suburban neighbourhoods as well as exurban and rural areas in the countryside and cottage country. Where people live and work—the landscapes of people’s everyday lives—are shaped by a myriad of environmental, social, economic, and political processes into which land-use planning tries to intervene: these planning interventions are what I study.

Most of my research is on exurbia, and the environmental and planning impacts of the landscape of large-lot country residential homes at the urban-rural fringe outside of cities. I am interested in growth management approaches to limit sprawl and conserve nature, such as Toronto’s Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt.

More and more, I am interested in climate change, as the most pressing issue facing cities. Reducing emissions and adapting landscapes to extreme weather have become the focus of my work.

I teach courses on environmental planning, urban and landscape ecology, and environmental design.