The School of Community and Regional Planning offers two-year professionally oriented master’s degree programs and a research-oriented doctoral program. Its research and capacity building projects are conducted through the Centre for Human Settlements, and a number of SCARP faculty members have (or have had) projects and work experience in Asia:
- Associate Professor Leonora (Nora) C Angeles, who holds a joint position with Women’s and Gender Studies Undergraduate Program, has been involved in a number of applied research and capacity-building research projects in Vietnam, Brazil and Southeast Asian countries. In the summers of 2008 and 2010, she led SCARP planning studios in the Philippines. This year’s studio was on the topic of Municipal Development Planning in Plaridel, Bulacon, Central Luzon.
- Professor Emeritus Peter Boothroyd has led UBC projects funded by the Canadian International Development Agency to build planning capacity in Thailand, Vietnam and Brazil. Currently, through the UBC-UN HABITAT Exchange Program and in collaboration with Dr. Nora Angeles and Centre for Human Settlements staff member Erika de Castro, he is developing courses that will focus on institutional capacity for collaborative governance. Courses will be conducted in the Philippines with De La Salle University to help build the capacity of other universities to assist in the process of creating regional institutions that can provide much needed collaborative governance of watersheds threatened by uncontrolled urban industrialization and informal settlement.
- Professor Stephanie E. Chang holds a joint position with the Institute for Resources, Environment, and Sustainability (IRES) and is a Canada Research Chair in Disaster Management and Urban Sustainability. Her current research addresses community disaster resilience and sustainability, mitigation of infrastructure system risks, and urban disaster recovery. She is particularly interested in applications to cities of the Pacific Rim.
- Associate Professor Michael Leaf is the former Director of the Centre for Southeast Asia Research (CSEAR). The focus of his research and teaching has been on urbanization and planning in cities of developing countries, with particular interest in Asian cities. Since his doctoral research on land development in Jakarta, Indonesia, Dr. Leaf has been extensively involved in urbanization research and capacity building projects in Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, China and Sri Lanka. He is currently conducting a research project on “Informality and governance in Peri-urban Southeast Asia: A Study of the Jakarta and Hanoi metropolitan regions.”
- Honorary Professor John Friedmann has been appointed as Honorary Advisor to the China Academy of Urban Planning and Design. Many of his articles have been translated into Chinese. He is also a frequent visitor to universities such as Tongji and Tsinghua, respectively in Shanghai and Beijing, and has conducted research in collaboration with a colleague at Ningbo University. Recently, he presented a paper at a conference on the future of Chinese cities at Hangzhou as a guest of the Shanghai Expo, and he is about to return to China for a series of conferences in Shenzhen and Beijing.
- Adjunct Professor Ann McAfee graduated from UBC (SCARP) with an Interdisciplinary Doctorate in City Planning and Urban Land Economics. Dr. McAfee has advised cities in North America, China, Philippines, Mexico, Brazil, Poland, Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Sweden, and Ukraine on strategic planning. This includes projects funded by the World Bank, Canadian International Development Agency, Institute of Public Administration for Canada, Canadian Urban Institute, and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. Dr. McAfee recently served as Canadian Project Manager for an award winning two-year study on Community Development in Shanghai and as a member of a four-person audit panel charged with reviewing the Melbourne 2030 Plan. She is currently advising the Canadian government on Decentralization and Local Governance funding to Ukraine, and will be teaching SCARP’s Strategic Planning course in the 2011 Winter Term.
- Adjunct Professor Teresa Poppelwell is a planning consultant with more than 10 years of policy, program and management experience with international organizations (UN and NGOs) in a number of countries in Asia, working extensively in post-disaster and post-conflict countries including Afghanistan, Iran, Burma, Maldives and Indonesia. She works primarily as a technical consultant to the UN, working closely with national governments, aid actors and often academic institutions, think-tanks and governments in numerous Asian countries. She is currently engaged as the Housing Recovery and Reconstruction advisor to UN-HABITAT following monsoon floods in Pakistan. Recent assignments include: (1) Shelter advisor to the UN system following Cyclone Nargis in Myranmar; (2) Researcher on housing and community recovery responses in Aceh, Indonesia five years after the tsunami; and (3) Human settlements advisor to a joint UN/WB assessment report on Papua, Indonesia.
- Assistant Professor Jinhua Zhao was appointed to SCARP on July 1, 2010 and holds a joint position with Civil Engineering. He is in the research design stage for a Martha Piper Fund-supported research project, “Life Aspirations and Urban Mobility Transformation in China: A Multi-Urban Research.” In Fall 2011, he will be teaching “Transportation Planning in Urbanizing China,” which will provide an overview of China’s transportation planning in the context of her economic reform, urbanization process, land use and housing reforms, motorization trend, large- scale infrastructure construction including high speed rail, transportation system integration, public transit management etc. Dr. Zhao also runs an NGO, China Planning Network, which is a think-tank focused on China’s urbanization process and its implications for transportation and housing, energy and environment, and economy and development in Chinese cities. Within China, CPN provides a mechanism for communication across academia, industries, governments and the public; between China and the West, CPN serves as one of the definitive platforms to fuse western scholarship and expertise with China’s development practice. CPN is dedicated to advancing the state of scholarship on China’s urban development and aims to make the world scholarship on cities and their development accessible to the widest population in China.
