Research Groups

• Constructive Takings at the Supreme Court of Canada: A discussion with Prof. Malcolm Lavoie and Prof. Doug Harris
  Tuesday, November 21 - 12:30 - 1:45 PM
  Ferris Hall, Room 106
  
  Professor Doug Harris
  
  The Supreme Court of Canada’s judgment in Annapolis Group Inc. v. Halifax Regional Municipality, 2022 SCC 36, is important and controversial. The Court held, by a 5:4 majority, that a municipalities’ zoning laws might amount to a constructive taking of private property giving rise to an owner’s right of compensation. Was this an affirmation of longstanding principle? Or was it, as the Court’s dissenting judges charged, a radical change in municipal planning law that gives “a windfall to developers who speculate at municipal taxpayers’ expense”? 
  
  The Law and Cities Research Group invites you to a pizza lunch presentation on this topic with Professor Malcolm Lavoie of the University of Alberta Faculty of Law and Professor Doug Harris of Allard Law. Professor Lavoie, who was an intervener in the Annapolis case, argues that the majority’s holding affirms common law principles and the rule of law. Professor Harris, by contrast, contends that the Court’s judgment represents “a significant failing” for having misunderstood Canadian expropriation law. Join them and moderator Prof. Sam Beswick on November 21 in the Moot Court Room 106 as they break down and debate the Supreme Court’s modern constructive takings jurisprudence. 
   
• Discussion with Professor Malcolm Lavoie
  Tuesday, November 21 - 3:00 - 4:00 PM
  Terrace Lounge, Room 402
  
  Following the lunchtime session on Constructive Takings at the Supreme Court of Canada, Allard Law Faculty, Ph.D. students and Visiting Scholars and Researchers are invited to continue discussions with Professor Lavoie and the Law and Cities Research Group over afternoon tea in the Terrace Lounge at 3:00-4:00pm. Feel free to drop in and out as time permits.

Past Events - 2023

• “Un-Democratizing the City? Unwritten Constitutional Principles and Ontario’s Strong Mayor Powers”
  Wednesday, October 18 - 3:30-5:00 PM
  Terrace Lounge, Room 402, Allard Hall
  
  Professor Alexandra Flynn
  
  This paper examines recent challenges to municipal authority in Ontario. In 2022, the Province of Ontario introduced legislation to change the scope of municipal authority and the governance of specific municipalities. The actions piggybacked a 2021 Supreme Court of Canada decision that upheld, in a 5:4 decision, the same provincial government’s unmitigated power to change the City of Toronto’s electoral boundaries mid-election. Ontario’s latest decision concerning the exercise of mayoral power with a one-third vote of city council represents the most recent iteration of the province’s assertion of authority over municipalities. While a violation of the unwritten constitutional principle of democracy could be invoked, I argue instead that municipalities must challenge these actions forcefully and directly by strongly asserting their status as democratic governments – not through the courts, but in their city council chambers.
   
• Urban Transformation Regulations and Applications in Turkey
  September 21, 2023 – 3:30 - 5:00 PM
  Terrace Lounge, Allard Hall ​​​
  
  Professor Gül Üstün
  Marmara University Faculty of Law, Istanbul, Turkey
  
  In Turkey, intensive migration started from rural to urban areas in the 1950s. Because of these population movements, cities have entered the process of dilapidation and started to lose their characteristics over time. In other words, the deformation in cities results from uncontrolled and irregular settlement in Turkey. To solve this problem, defined as unplanned urbanization or urban sprawl, methods such as sanitation, gentrification, and urban renewal (demolition and reconstruction of urban structures) have been developed.
  
  The most recent method used to intervene in urban sprawl is urban renewal. In Turkey, urban transformation is inevitable since earthquake risk has added to the problem of unplanned urbanization after the Marmara Earthquake in 1999. And it became popular again after the 2023 Earthquake. This presentation will consider a range of national laws, including the legislation that grants and defines municipal powers as well those dealing with historical and cultural properties and others addressing disaster risk, that are intended to guide urban renewal in Turkey.
  
   
• International Research Forum on Multi-Owned Properties 
  24-26 May 2023 
  
  The International Forum brings together researchers from around the world to share work on multi-owned properties, including condominium, strata property, common interest developments, and homeowner associations. Organized by the City Futures Research Centre, UNSW, and hosted by UBC’s Allard School of Law, the Forum includes two days of meetings at UBC and a field trip to one of Metro Vancouver’s neighbourhoods in transition from single-house lot developments to multi-owned condominium housing.
  
  The Forum keynote speakers are  Professor David Ley from UBC’s Department of Geography and Professor Ute Lehrer from York University’s Faculty of Environmental and Urban Change.
  
  There is an option to attend the first two days online. More information, including the program and registration details, is available on the Eventbrite registration site. Early-bird registration rates are available until March 24.
  
  The event qualifies for Continuing Professional Development (CPD) credits.
   
• Workshop - Who owns the city? Expropriation in the contemporary metropolis
  April 6, 2023 - 1:30 – 3:30 PM
  Terrace Lounge, Allard School of Law
  
  We invite anyone interested in questions around property, (urban) ownership struggles and housing to a small workshop that considers emancipatory potentials vs. colonial traps of expropriation. 
  
  Short presentations by:
  - Débora Ungaretti (School of Architecture and Urbanism, University of São Paulo), “Coloniality trap: expropriation as dispossession in contemporary São Paulo”
  - Hannah Vögele (Center for Applied Philosophy, Politics and Ethics, University of Brighton), “From Expropriation to Socialisation: Notes from the Housing Struggle in Berlin” 
  
  Response from Brenna Bhandar (Peter A. Allard School of Law, University of British Columbia).

Past Events - 2022

• Reassembling the city: understanding resident-led collective property sales
  December 8, 2022 - 3:30 pm to 5:30 pm
  
  This presentation will provide an overview of an ongoing research project examining the phenomenon of resident-led collective sales (land assemblies) in Vancouver and in Sydney, Australia, which is being undertaken by researchers from the University of New South Wales and Macquarie University in Sydney. The project aims to understand the group dynamics that arise when residents come together to sell their properties ‘in one line’, as well as identifying how different intermediaries facilitate this process and the implications of these sales for neighbours and the city more broadly.
   
• 8th Annual International and Comparative Urban Law Conference
  14-16 July 2022
  
  Organized in collaboration with the Urban Law Centre at Fordham University, New York City. Details of the Urban Law Conference, including the program and speakers, are available on the ICULC website.

2022

• Hoi L. Kong and Tanya Monforte, eds, Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022).
• Alexandra Flynn, “The Implications of Stakeholder Group Involvement in Urban Sustainable Development” in Kong and Monforte, eds, Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022).
• Hoi Kong, “Sustainable Urban Design: The Case of Montreal” in Kong and Monforte, eds, Sustainability, Citizen Participation, and City Governance: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2022)

2022

• Hoi L. Kong, “Constitutional Theory, Federalism, and Cities” in Erika A. Arban (ed.), Cities in Federal Constitutional Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022), 120.

2021

• Alexandra Flynn, "Business Improvement Districts and the Urban Commons" in Sheila Foster & Chrystie Swiney, eds, Cambridge Handbook of Commons Research Innovations (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press (PDF)
• Alexandra Flynn & Amelia Thorpe, "Pandemic Pop-Ups and the Performance of Legality" in Brian Doucet, Rianne van Melik & Pierre Filion, eds, Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities: Volume 1: Community and Society (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2021), 25. (PDF)

2022

• Sarah Ferencz, Alexandra Flynn, Nicholas Blomley & Marie-Eve Sylvestre, "Are Tents a 'Home'? Extending Section 8 Privacy Rights for the Precariously Housed" McGill LJ [Forthcoming in 2022]. (PDF)

2021

• Alexandra Flynn, "With Great(er) Power Comes Great(er) Responsibility: Indigenous Rights and Municipal Autonomy" (2021) 34 JL & Soc Pol'y 111 (PDF)

2023

• Douglas C Harris, “Condominium to the Country: The Sprawl of Ownership within Private Local Government in British Columbia” (2023) Law & Social Inquiry.
• Douglas C Harris, “Tending Gardens, Ploughing Fields, and the Unexamined Drift to Constructive Takings at Common Law” (2023) 61:1 Alberta Law Review.

2022

• Douglas C Harris, “Condominium: A Transformative Innovation in Property and Local Government” in Nicole Graham, Margaret Davies, & Lee Godden, eds, The Routledge Handbook of Property, Law, and Society (Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2022) 113. (PDF)

2021

• Douglas C Harris, "Embedded Property" in Randy K Lippert & Stefan Treffers, eds, Condominium Governance and Law: Global Urban Perspectives (Abingdon: Routledge, 2021) 29. (PDF)

2022

• Kristen Thomasen, Private Law & Public Space: The Canadian Privacy Torts in an Era of Personal Remote-Surveillance Technology (PhD Thesis, University of Ottawa, 2022). Available at uOttawa Research.

2021

• Kristen Thomasen, Suzie Dunn, Kate Robertson, Pam Hrick, Cynthia Khoo, Rosel Kim, Ngozi Okidegbe, Christopher A. Parsons, Submission to the Toronto Police Services Board’s Use of New Artificial Intelligence Technologies Policy - LEAF and The Citizen Lab (December 15, 2021). Available at SSRN.

• Graduate Student Workshop
  17-18 March 2023
  
  This two-day graduate student workshop will offer participants the chance to receive personal feedback on their writing and to discuss their work in a relaxed environment. The workshop will take place at the Peter A. Allard School of Law - UBC Campus and be facilitated by faculty members in various disciplines. We welcome applications from doctoral and post-graduate students at Canadian universities whose projects, themes, methodology, or approaches are at the intersection of law and the humanities, or that otherwise have a significant law and humanities component.​​​​
  ​​​​​​
  More information is available on the Canadian Network of Law & Humanities website.