About My Work
I have undertaken research -- chiefly on housing, housing policy, suburban development -- in a variety of countries. These include Canada, the United States, and several British ex-colonies, including Kenya, the West Indies and India. In much of this work I have made comparisons between countries. In some of it I have explored international connections. This was notably true of my colonial research, related work on the dissemination of ideas about housing policy across international agencies in the early postwar period, and recent research on the diffusion of the language used to describe suburbs worldwide.
Citations
How Cities Matter (Cambridge, 2021)
The Suburban Land Question. (co-edited with Ute Lehrer). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2018)
What’s in a Name? Talking about Urban Peripheries (co-edited with Charlotte Vorms). Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017).
Building a Market. The Rise of the Home Improvement industry, 1914-1960 (University of Chicago Press, 2012)
Creeping Conformity How Canada became Suburban, 1900-1960 (University of Toronto Press, 2004).
Changing Suburbs. Foundation, Form and Function, edited, with Peter Larkham (London: E and FN Spon, 1999).
“Globalising cities and suburbs” (with Roger Keil). In Alison Bain and Linda Peake, eds., Urbanization in a Global Context. A Canadian Readers Guide. Toronto: Oxford University Press, 2017, pp.52-69.
“Transnational urban meanings. The passage of ‘suburb’ to India, and its rough reception.” In Andrew Sandoval-Strausz and Nancy Kwak, eds., Making Cities Global. The Transnational Turn in Urban History. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), pp.223-240.
“Suburbanization and suburbanism” in James D. Wright, ed., International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Second edition. (Oxford: Elsevier, 2015).
“International policy for urban housing markets in the global South since 1945”, in Faranak Miraftab and Neema Kudva eds. Cities of the Global South (New York: Routledge, 2015), 122-123.
“Urban land markets: A southern exposure,” in Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield, eds., The Routledge Handbook on Cities of the Global South (Routledge, 2014), 109-121.
“The Magpie and the Bee. Jane Jacobs’s Magnificent Obsession.” In Timothy Mennell and Max Page, eds., Reconsidering Jane Jacobs Washington, D.C.: American Planning Association, 2011, 65-81
“Meaningful Types in a World of Suburbs.” In Mark Clapson and Ray Hutchinson, eds, Suburbanisation in a Global Society. Research in Urban Sociology No.10. Bingley: Emerald Group publishing, 2010
“Housing Policy for the Colonial City. The British and Dutch Experience Compared.” Urban Geography 30,5 (2009): 1-23
“Development and Hybridity Made Concrete in the Colonies” Environment and Planning A. 40 (2008): 15-36
“The Rise of Housing in International Development. The Effects of Economic Discourse” (with Godwin Arku). Habitat International 31, 1 (2007): 1-11.
“Housing and Economic Development: The Evolution of an Idea Since 1945” (with Godwin Arku). Habitat International 30, 4 (2006): 1007-1017.
“Housing as a Tool of Economic Development Since 1929” (with Godwin Arku). International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 29, 4 (2005): 895-915.
“A Double Irony. The Originality and Influence of John F.C. Turner”. Habitat International 27, 2 (2003): 245-269.
“A Mixed Message. The Agents and Forms of International Housing Policy, 1945-1973” (with Ceinwen Giles). Habitat International 27, 2 (2003): 167-191.
“Aided Self-Help Housing. A Case of Amnesia: Editors Introduction” Housing Studies 14, 3 (1999): 277-280.
“Slipping Through The Cracks. The Origins of Aided Self-Help Housing 1918-1953”. Housing Studies 14, 3 (1999): 281-309.
“The Silence of the Experts. Aided Self-Help Housing. 1939-1954”. Habitat International 22, 2 (1998): 165-189.