Jim Simmons Author

Larry S. Bourne is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Planning and past Director of both the Graduate Program in Planning and the Centre for Urban and Community Studies (CUCS) at the University of Toronto. Professor Bourne is currently a senior scholar with the Global Cities Program and has just completed a term as Interim Director of the University's new Cities Centre in 2008. He received a B.A. (Hons.) in Geography from the University of Western Ontario, an M.A. from Alberta, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1966. Following a year as a post-doctoral research fellow in regional economic development he took up a position at the University of Toronto. He has since held visiting professor positions in Los Angeles, Melbourne, London, OECD (Paris), Warsaw, Texas and Tokyo. Tom Hutton is a Professor and Associate Director at the Centre for Human Settlements and School of Community & Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia. His research agenda concerns processes and outcomes of industrial restructuring in the metropolis. He is currently collaborating on an investigation of cultural economic development; a project on cultural development policy in Italy; and a comparative study of planning innovation for the Metro Vancouver and Amsterdam - North Holland regions. He has published extensively on urban geography subjects. Richard Shearmur is a researching professor at the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Urbanisation Culture at the Université du Québec at Montreal. He is the holder of the Canada Chair in Spatial Statistics and Public Policy and has a varied academic background, having studied Land Economy at Cambridge, worked for five years as a chartered surveyor and international property consultant in Europe, then completed a Master's in Urban Planning at McGill and a PhD in Economic Geography at University of Montreal. He has published widely on questions of regional development, peripheral regions, metropolitan economies, urban form and, more recently, on the geography of innovation. He also regularly acts as a consultant to municipal, provincial, and federal government departments in Canada. Jim Simmons is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at the University of Toronto, and Senior Researcher at the Centre for the Study of Commercial Activity at Ryerson University. He has been studying Urban Geography for more than forty years. He began his teaching career at the University of Western Ontario and relocated to the University of Toronto in 1967. Simmons' main area of research is the Canadian urban system, where he has worked with his colleague, Larry Bourne. He has written several books and over eighty articles and research reports about commercial activity.