Richard Harris - School of Earth, Environment & Society

Richard Harris

Contact Info

Title:

Professor Emeritus

Office:

General Science Building, Rm 216

Phone:

(905) 525-9140 ext. 27216

Fax:

(905) 546-0463

Email:

...

Summary

I retired in 2019 but remain active in research and writing.

I am interested in how the built environment has reflected and shaped our lives, with particular reference to dwellings and residential environments. The influence of the built environment often becomes apparent, and also changes, over long periods of time, and I have found it fruitful to undertake historical research as well as studies of the present. (I am an Associate of the Department of History at McMaster.) Dwellings frame much of our daily life and offer a valuable prism through which to study social, cultural, and economic change.

I have used, and am using, housing as a prism in two contexts:

The history of housing, neighbourhoods and suburbs in North America in the twentieth century. By studying the linkages between production and consumption of these environments it is possible to ground, and extend, recent debates about the cultural construction of the economy, and about class and gender differences in the meaning of consumption. The most recent work coming out of this research is What's in a Name? Talking about Urban Peripheries (edited with Charlotte Vorms) (Toronto, 2017). A companion volume, The Urban Land Market (coedited with Ute Lehrer) will be published in 2018. My book projects at present are a survey of How Cities Matter, and A History of Canadian Urban Neighbourhoods since the 1880s.
The current housing scene in Hamilton, Ontario, paying particular attention to the character of the rental stock. Students have interviewed landlords and tenants, and are undertaking an analysis of the growth of condominiums and of patterns of ownership of the rental housing stock. Projected research will examine social and affordable housing. The results of these studies are being interpreted in the context of an analysis of the changing social geography of hamilton since 1970. This research is being undertaken in association with the Neighbourhood Change Research Project, directed by David Hulchanski at the University of Toronto. This project is examining neighbourhood change in seven Canadian cities.

Research Interests:

Housing; Suburban development; Urban social geography; Urban historical geography; Canadian and US cities in the twentieth century; Urban development in the British colonies.

Courses

SEES 3UW3: Cities in the Developing World

Media

Hamilton Spectator, July 2018
Hamilton Spectator, April 2018
Hamilton Spectator, Apirl 2018
Hamilton Spectator, April 2018
Hamilton Spectator, April 2018
Globalurbanhistory, November 2017
CBC News, January 2016
Hamilton Spectator, October 2015
Hamilton Spectator, September 2015
Hamilton Spectator, July 2015
Daily News, June 2015
Hamilton CHCH Tv, November 2014
Hamilton Spectator, January 2014
Globe and Mai l January 2014
Globe and Mail, January, 2014
Daily News, September 2013
CBC News, September 2013
University of Chicago Press 2012
Daily News Article Spetember 16, 2010
Daily News Article March 21, 2006
Daily News Article, July 13,2006
Daily News Article, Dec 22, 2006

Publications

Richard Harris. 2021. A dose of density. The urban counter-revolution. In Roger Keil and Fulong Wu, eds., After Suburbia. Urbanization on the Planet’s Periphery. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, forthcoming.

Richard Harris. 2021. Slums. Neglect, Clear or Improve? In Alan Mayne, ed., The Oxford Handbook for the Modern History of Slums. New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming.

Richard Harris. 2021. Aided self-help, Informality, and Commercialization: Do-It-Yourself. In Marcel Vellinga, ed., Encyclopedia of Vernacular Architecture of the World (London: Bloomsbury, forthcoming.

Richard Harris. 2020. Plus ça change. Neighbourhood inequality in Canadian cities since 1900.” In Jill Grant, Howard Ramos and Alan Walks, eds. Changing Neighbourhoods. Social and Spatial Polarization in Canada’s Cities. Vancouver: UBC Press, 31-52.

Richard Harris. 2020. Hamilton. Poster child for concentrated poverty. In Jill Grant, Howard Ramos and Alan Walks, eds. Changing Neighbourhoods. Social and Spatial Polarization in Canada’s Cities. Vancouver: UBC Press, 149-170.

Richard Harris. 2020. "The changing place of condominiums across a metropolitan area, 1970-2015." (with Geoff Rose) The Canadian Geographer 69,2: 294-309.

Richard Harris. 2020. Using Toronto to explore three suburban stereotypes, and vice versa. In Jan Nijman, ed., The Life of North American Suburbs. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 23-44.

Richard Harris. 2020. The World’s First Slum Improvement Programme. Calcutta’s Bustees, 1876-1910. Planning Perspectives 35,2: 322-342.

Richard Harris. 2019. Neighbourhood upgrading. A fragmented global history. Progress in Planning https://www.researchgate.net/publication/333498631_Neighbourhood_upgrading_A_fragmented_global_history

Richard Harris. 2019. "Hometown advantage. The making of a modern suburb." (with Jeremy Parsons) Urban Geography (2019) https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1647756

Richard Harris. 2019. A portrait of North American urban historians. Journal of Urban History 45,6: 1237-1245

Richard Harris. 2018. The Suburban Land Question. A Global Survey (co-edited, with Ute Lehrer). Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

John Belec, Richard Harris and Geoff Rose. 2018. The federal impact on postwar suburbanization. Housing Policy Debate 28,6: 854-875.

Sarah Christensen, Richard Harris and Kathleen Kinsella. 2018. A litmus test for neighbourhood change. Plan Canada 58,1: 38-43.

Richard Harris and Kaitlin Hendershott. 2018. How newspapers portray suburbs. A paradox. Journal of Urban Affairs 40,7: 974-991.

Richard Harris. 2018. Modes of informal urban development. A global phenomenon. Journal of Planning Literature 33,3: 267-286.

Richard Harris. 2018. Suburban stereotypes. In Bernadette Hanlon and Thomas Vicino, eds., The Routledge Companion to the Suburbs. New York: Routledge, pp.29-38.

Richard Harris and Ute Lehrer. 2018. Introduction. In Richard Harris and Ute Lehrer, eds. The Suburban Land Question. A Global Survey Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.3-42.

Richard Harris. Conclusion. In Richard Harris and Ute Lehrer, eds. 2018. The Suburban Land Question. A Global Survey Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.302-310.

Margot Rubin and Richard Harris. 2018. An effective public partnership for suburban land development: Fleurhof, Johannesburg. In Richard Harris and Ute Lehrer, eds. The Suburban Land Question. A Global Survey. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.258-279.

Richard Harris and Charlotte Vorms (eds.) 2017. What’s in a Name? Talking about Urban Peripheries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Richard Harris and Ashleigh Patterson. 2017. Landlords, tenants and the legal status of secondary suites in Hamilton, Ontario. The Canadian Geographer 61,4: 540-549.

Richard Harris and Kathleen Kinsella. 2017. Secondary suites. A survey of evidence and municipal policy. The Canadian Geographer 61,4: 493-509.

Richard Harris. 2017. Retrofitting Urban Studies. Journal of Planning History 16,3: 246-250.

Richard Harris and Roger Keil. 2017. Globalizing cities and suburbs. In Alison Bain and Linda Peake, eds., Urbanization in a Global Context. A Canadian Readers Guide. Toronto: Oxford University Press, pp.52-69.

Amy Shanks, Victoria Coates and Richard Harris. 2017. Doubts about ‘suburbs’ in Canada. In Richard Harris and Charlotte Vorms, eds., What’s in a Name? Talking about Urban Peripheries. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, pp.89-111.

Richard Harris. 2017. 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, pp.223-240.

Richard Harris. 2016. Through the Roof. How Housing became so #!*! expensive. Alternatives Journal. 42,2: 30-33.

Richard Harris. 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, 122-123.

Richard Harris. 2015. La questione du terrain suburbaine (with Ute Lehrer and Robin Bloch) Pole Sud 42 (2015): 63-85.

Richard Harris . 2014. Using Toronto to explore three suburban stereotypes Environment and Planning A DOI: 10.1068/a46298 Advance online publication, 2014 http://www.envplan.com/abstract.cgi?id=a46298

Richard Harris. 2014. Urban Land Markets: A Southern Exposure, in Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield, eds., From the South. A Cities Handbook New York: Routledge. 109-121

Richard Harris. 2014. Introduction (with Robert Lewis) to E.P. Richards, Report by Request of the Trust on the Condition, Improvement and Town Planning of the City of Calcutta and Contiguous Areas (Ware, Herts, 1914), vii-xxi. Reprinted with an introduction. New York: Routledge

Richard Harris. 2014. The Imprint of the Owner-Builder on American Suburbs. In Michael Conzen and Peter Larkham, eds., Shapers of the Urban Form. Explorations in Morphological Agency . London: Routledge, 193-216.

Richard Harris. 2012. Building a Market. The Rise of the Home Improvement industry, 1914-1960 Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Richard Harris. 2004. Creeping Conformity How Canada became Suburban, 1900-1960 . Toronto: University of Toronto Press.

Richard Harris and Peter Larkham, eds. 1999. Changing Suburbs. Foundation, Form and Function, edited, with Peter Larkham. London: E and FN Spon.

Richard Harris. 1996. Unplanned Suburbs. Toronto's American Tragedy, 1900-1950 . Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.

Richard Harris. 2015. Using Toronto to explore three suburban stereotypes Environment and Planning A (forthcoming)

Richard Harris. 2014. 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.

Richard Harris. 2014. Urban Land Markets: A Southern Exposure, in Susan Parnell and Sophie Oldfield, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Cities of the Global South. New York: Routledge.

Richard Harris . 2013. The Rise of Filtering Down. The American Housing Market Transformed, 1918-1929. Social Science History 37, 4: 515-549.

Richard Harris and Robert Lewis. 2012. Numbers didn't count. The streets of colonial Bombay and Calcutta Urban History 39, 4: 639-658.

Richard Harris . 2010. 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.

Richard Harris . 2009. The Birth of the Housing Consumer in the United States, 1918-1960. International Journal of Consumer Studies 33: 525-532.

Richard Harris. 2008. Development and Hybridity Made Concrete in the Colonies Environment and Planning A. 40: 15-36