Books

Silver Buckshot: An Abundance of Housing Solutions (coming in 2025!)

Reading a story in the media about housing in Canada leads to an inescapable conclusion: something is very wrong with our housing system. The promise of homeownership is broken, rents are out of reach for all but the wealthiest households, and government-funded housing solutions have not decreased the number of Canadians in core housing need. The alternatives to homeownership have been depicted as undesirable alternatives for decades, but the private housing market will never be able to provide units that are affordable to a significant share of households. There are thousands of people experiencing homelessness across the country. We are losing rental units to demolition or redevelopment faster than we can build new ones.

If you’re like me, you’re tired of hearing about the state of Canadian housing. Reading mainstream media—or worse, social media—it’s easy to believe that this is a wicked problem, so complex that it’s virtually unsolvable. We are victims of unaffordability, financialization, neoliberalism, and displacement, and can only numbly observe as things get worse. We are told there aren’t enough resources, enough capital, enough of anything. And yet…solutions are being implemented all across the country. Somehow.

Silver Buckshot is about how organizations are building housing that is about people, not about profit. It is about every person who is volunteering their time to educate their peers, building capacity among other organizations, and developing new approaches to scale up production of affordable housing. It is about the abundance of small, incremental changes that are leading to a paradigm shift in the way we think about safe, high quality, affordable housing in Canada.

Transit-Oriented Development: Learning from International Case Studies (2020)

Published by Palgrave MacMillan as part of their Pivot series, this book uses international case studies to present insights on the policies, actors, and institutions that are critical to successful transit-oriented development (TOD). TOD has many potential benefits for cities and regions, and is considered a critical element in reshaping sprawling car-dependent urban regions into denser regions built around transit corridors. However, it is not a magic bullet solution for metropolitan transportation problems: challenges persist, such as displacement of local residents and regulatory barriers. How has TOD been successfully implemented? How can we integrate the positive aspects of TOD while minimizing its negative impacts? 

Transit-Oriented Development: Learning from International Case Studies presents research conducted by Luca Bertolini and I at the University of Amsterdam, exploring 11 international case studies, including a meta-analysis, rough set analysis and policy transfer workshops. The authors discuss the findings and present solutions to persistent challenges to transit-oriented development. Additional literature on eTOD (equitable TOD) strategies, as a fundamental component of planning for regional transportation, shows that these approaches can result in more collaborative processes, community-led development that minimizes the negative impacts of transportation infrastructure. As our Dutch colleagues stated, TOD can be considered a policy concept that can be used as a story to unite people. Our book was launched in September 2020, and by December it had sold 370 copies, by January 2021, 500 copies and by February 2021, 600 copies. As of May 2023, we have sold over 3,600 copies: Summary of e-book downloads

The book was translated into a Chinese language edition in 2022, and you can find copies in 191 libraries around the world.

Planning Canada: A Case Study Approach (2016)

Published by Oxford University Press Canada, the book is designed for instructors who teach or study planning in Canada, and for anyone with an interest in urban studies, human geography, or sustainable development. It introduces undergraduate students to planning through the use of case studies focusing on Canadian cities and regions. It gives students an understanding of how projects/policies/programs are initiated, developed, and implemented. Contributors from academic/research institutions and from planning practice (public, private, and non-profit sectors) have presented cases to trigger discussions among students. Cases are organized by the following areas, with some cases crossing sub-disciplines: community development and social planning, urban form and public health, natural resource management, housing, participatory processes, urban design, urban redevelopment, transportation and infrastructure.

CIP President Eleanor Mohammed with Tim Shaw, me, Penny Gurstein, and Silvia Vilches. Tim, Penny and Silvia are chapter authors who were present when the book received the Award of Merit

Need more proof that the book is perfect for your course? Jeremy Senko, who reviewed the book for Spacing, wrote, “It goes without saying that the planning case studies chosen from across the country have been carefully curated for the highest impact and educational value, as well as relevance to today’s pressing issues. This is why the book is as successful as it is…Planning Canada: A Case Study Approach should be required reading for any planning course taught in Canada.” The book won the 2017 Canadian Institute of Planners Award of Merit for Planning Publications.

The jury believes that this textbook is a substantial pedagogical tool and introduction to planning in Canada and that Planning Canada will ignite the passions of future planners for years to come.

–Canadian Institute of Planners website

Even if you don’t teach in Canada, many planners learn from international policy ideas, so the case studies can provide a valuable source of planning processes, techniques, and practice for comparison with those in your own cultural and legal context.

…despite the book as a whole being overtly Canadian-focused, the chapters work as standalone readings and provide useful research into a variety of Canadian cases which can individually be of wider interest to international researchers or integrated into planning courses wishing to offer a valuable international angle.

–Rowan Arundel, University of Amsterdam

Part One is interesting because of the many characteristics of Canadian planning which are parallel to those of the discipline in Australia and New Zealand…Several case-studies stand out in terms of possible contribution in an Australian context.

–Johanna Rosier, University of the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia

Maybe this is why you can find a copy of Planning Canada: A Case Study Approach in 73 libraries worldwide!