Leonie Sandercock

Leonie Sandercock joined the School of Community & Regional Planning at UBC in July 2001 and served as Director of the School from July 2006 to November 2007. Her main research interest is in working with First Nations, through the medium of film as a catalyst for dialogue, on the possibilities of healing, reconciliation, and partnership. She is using her recently completed documentary (with Giovanni Attili) 'Finding Our Way' as a catalyst for dialogues in BC communities (see www.mongrel-stories.com and  www.facebook.com/FINDING.OUR.WAY.thefilm).

Other research interests include immigration, cultural diversity and integration; participatory planning, democracy, and information and communication technologies; fear and the city, particularly as this relates to 'fear of the other'; the possibilities of a more therapeutic model of planning; the importance of stories and storytelling in planning theory and practice; and the role of multimedia in planning.

Leonie was Professor and Head of Graduate Urban Studies at Macquarie University in Sydney from 1981-1986, before moving to Los Angeles where she had two careers, one in screenwriting, the other teaching in the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning at UCLA, both of which were life-transforming experiences.

She has also written books about sport (Australian football) and about the Australian labor movement, and had one of her screenplays produced as an ABC TV Movie of the Week in 1992 while living in LA. Her best known urban writings are Cities for Sale (1975); Public Participation in Planning (1975); The Land Racket (1979); Urban Political Economy: the Australian Case (1983), with Mike Berry; Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural History of Planning (1998); Towards Cosmopolis: Planning for Multicultural Cities (1998); and Cosmopolis 2: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century (2003). She now collaborates with Giovanni Attili (University of Rome) on documentaries and books: Where Strangers Become Neighbours: the integration of immigrants in Vancouver, Canada  (2009), and an edited collection Multimedia in Urban Policy and PLanning: Beyond the Flatlands (2010).

Working with two First Nations communities in north central BC since 2007 has brought about a change of direction in Leonie's work.  She is now focusing on the work of healing, reconciliation and the possibility of partnerships between Native and non-Native Canadians, and community development and cross-cultural dialogue in historically divided communities.

And she finds peace in a cabin in the forest on an island in the Pacific northwest.

In 2003 Leonie received a Canada Foundation for Innovation grant to establish the Vancouver Cosmopolis Laboratory at SCARP. This Lab is now being used to explore the uses of multimedia in planning practice and research. The first product of the Lab was the 50 minute documentary film, by Giovanni Attili and Leonie Sandercock, 'Where Strangers become Neighbours: the story of the Collingwood Neighbourhood House and the integration of immigrants in Vancouver'. Information about and a preview of this film can be found at www.mongrel-stories.com. This film received a Special Mention in the International Federation of Housing and Planning's film competition (Sept 2006) and an Honorable Mention in the Documentary section of the Berkeley Video and Film Festival (Oct 2006). The film is distributed by the National Film Board of Canada (www.nfb.ca). 

In 2005 Leonie received The Dale Prize for Excellence in Urban & Regional Planning, awarded by the Department of Urban & Regional Planning at California State Polytechnic University. The 2005 Dale Prize theme was "Voices in Planning: Transforming Land Use Practice through Community Engagement".

Also in 2005 Leonie received The Davidoff Award, from the American Collegiate Schools of Planning. This is a biennial award for the best book in the field of urban, regional, and community planning, in the spirit of the ideals of the late Paul Davidoff concerning social justice and equity, for Cosmopolis 2: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century (London & NY: Continuum, 2004).

In March 2007 Leonie received the BMW Group Award for Intercultural Learning for her writing on Cosmopolitan Urbanism and for her collaboration with Vancouver's Collingwood Neighbourhood House, with whom she shared first prize.

Major Areas of Expertise in Sustainability Planning

1. Planning Theory and History

My intellectual project for the past decade has been to diversify planning theory and history. In Towards Cosmopolis (1998) I used feminist, postmodern, and postcolonial theories to critique mainstream (modernist) planning theory and the ‘official story’ of planning history. In the edited collection, Making the Invisible Visible (1998), I go beyond critiquing the official story, and begin to explore insurgent planning histories, and the hidden or suppressed stories of marginalized social groups. I continue to be interested in theories of difference and their importance for planning practice. At the same time, I have tried to formulate a radical social project for planning, one that broadens the debate about what planning is, and who may be considered to be engaged in planning. One central question is how and why do cities change, And how might planning contribute to social transformation. Another question concerns the knowledge/power nexus, and who might be considered a ‘knower’, and what might be considered valid knowledge. A third challenge is how to democratise planning practices. Finally, I am currently engaged in an inquiry into the powers and limitations of story and storytelling in planning practice and scholarship.

• a) Most relevant course: PLAN 502
• b) Other closely related courses in SCARP: PLAN 602
• c) Other closely related courses at UBC:

2. Cross-cultural Planning

If the new cultural politics of difference asks us to take seriously issues of identity, voice, and the rights to the city of hitherto marginalized groups, then I ask, how should planning practice respond to this new political environment (the rise of civil society)? Should planning practices aim to be neutral with respect to gender, race, culture, or should these issues be tackled as part of a larger framework of social justice and planning? My answer is to expand the framework of social justice to address difference in the city. Thus I have developed a course that looks not only at the policy implications of ‘difference’ (all kinds of differences) but also looks at how practitioners can become more adept at working cross-culturally. Ongoing research includes inquiries into ways of institutionalizing anti-racism and diversity training for urban professionals and in urban governance, and ways in which marginalized groups can become makers of their own histories.

My current research project ventures into non-metropolitan Canada to explore the origins and continuity of Canada's own apartheid system, the segregation between Native and non-Native Canadians. The focus is a 90 minute documentary film 'Finding Our Way' (distributed by Moving Images, www.movingimages.ca) about racism and community change in two small communities in north central BC with a history of conflict between First Nations and non-Native peoples. The film asks whether there is a way forward out of this historic tragedy and what kinds of healing might be necessary.

• a) Most relevant course: PLAN 502
• b) Other closely related courses in SCARP: PLAN 548C
• c) Other closely related courses at UBC:

3. Immigration & Integration in the Metropolis

In Cosmopolis 2: Mongrel Cities of the 21st Century (2003) I argue that the migrations associated with globalisation since the late 20th century are producing empirically multiethnic, multicultural cities and that a central question for planning as a social project for the 21st century is how to manage our coexistence in the shared spaces of neighborhoods, cities, and regions (or, how might we stroppy strangers live together without doing each other too much violence?). Recent research on the Sri Lankan Tamil communities in Vancouver and Toronto has asked whether the ideal of multicultural citizenship embedded in (Canadian) national multicultural philosophy actually translates into a concept of rights to the city for specific immigrant groups. I’m interested in learning from local experiments in multicultural living, and Vancouver provides some interesting case studies. There are several big questions that need to be addressed. One is how to manage change at neighborhood level, as cultural demographics change, old communities disappear or feel threatened, and new communities need to be built. How can planning and urban governance assist in managing this sociological change? How are metropolitan areas changing as they absorb waves of immigration? Are there new social exclusions based on migrant status? How do these changes affect the whole gamut of planning practices and policies, from transit to urban design to recreational and community facilities to housing design and location? Planning in and with the multicultural city is a huge challenge for the 21st century.

• a) Most relevant course: PLAN 548C
• b) Other closely related courses in SCARP:
• c) Other closely related courses at UBC: