Campus
- Scarborough (UTSC)
Areas of Interest
- Urban geography
- Urban form
- Planning history and theory
- Property institutions
- Land development
- Suburbs
- International comparison
- Transit policy analysis
Biography
André Sorensen is Professor in the Department of Geography and Planning, University of Toronto. His current research examines urban institutions, institutional change, and temporal processes in urbanization and urban governance from a comparative and historical institutionalist perspective, with a focus on urban land and property development, infrastructure management, megacities, and the emergence of increasingly differentiated property and planning systems in urban settings. He has published over 60 papers and chapters, and co-edited 5 books, most recently the International Handbook of Megacities and Megacity-Regions. His monograph ‘The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the 21st Century’ (Routledge 2002) was awarded the book prize of the International Planning History Society in 2004. His paper 'Taking Path Dependence Seriously’ (2015) published in Planning Perspectives 30(1)17-38, won the Association of European Schools of Planning Best Paper Award in 2016.
Publications
Sorensen, A., & Brenner, A.K. (2021). Cities, Urban Property Systems, and Sustainability Transitions: Contested Processes of Institutional Change and the Regulation of Urban Property Development. Sustainability, 13(15), 8429.
Open Access https://doi.org/10.3390/su13158429
Sorensen, A. and D. Labbé (2020), ‘Megacities, megacity-regions, and the endgame of urbanization’. Chapter 1 in D. Labbé & A. Sorensen (Eds.), International Handbook on Megacities and Megacity-regions. Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar. Pp. 1-19
Open Access https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788972697/9781788972697.0000...
Sorensen, A. (2019). ‘Tokaido Megalopolis: lessons from a shrinking mega-conurbation.’ International Planning Studies, 24(1), 23-39
Friedmann, J., & Sorensen, A. (2019). ‘City unbound: emerging mega-conurbations in Asia.’ International Planning Studies, 24(1), 1-12.
Open Access https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/13563475.2019.1555314
Sorensen, A. (2018). ‘Institutions in urban space: Land, infrastructure and governance in the production of urban property.’ Planning Theory and Practice 19(1): 21-38.