Associate Professor Pablo Mendez

Housing affordability and sustainable transportation; Low-carbon transitions and urban design

• B.A Honours (SFU), M.A. (UBC), Ph.D. (UBC)
• Email Associate Professor Pablo Mendez

Biography:

I use qualitative and quantitative research methods to study a wide range of housing related questions, including barriers to access and the ways housing markets shape the metropolitan built environment. My current project examines the links between housing affordability and sustainable transportation in Canadian cities. If you would like to do graduate studies related to low-carbon urban transitions, housing, and/or transportation in metropolitan contexts, please get in touch. I am especially interested in supervising students who have data analysis and/or GIS skills, but I’m keen to hear from students who have a qualitative research background too. Note I also have experience and enjoy supervising mature students who have been out of university for some time. In your email, please specify whether you would be coming to Carleton as a domestic or international student. If you would be applying as an international student, I’ll also need you to indicate whether you are able to fund your studies in Canada without financial support from me or the university.

Research Interests:

• Housing and metropolitan change
• Urban economies, markets, and livelihoods
• Sustainable urbanization

Recent Publications:

Ley, David, Alison Mountz, Pablo Mendez, Loretta Lees, Margaret Walton-Roberts, Ilse Helbrecht (2020) Housing Vancouver, 1972–2017: A personal urban geography and a professional response. The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien 64(4): 438-466.

Mendez, P. (2019) Economic restructuring and housing markets in Vancouver: The role of secondary suites. BC Studies 200 (Winter): 187-214.

Mendez, P. (2018) Encounters with difference in the subdivided house: The case of secondary suites in Vancouver. Urban Studies 55(6): 1274-1289.

Mendez, P. (2017) Linkages between the formal and informal sectors in a Canadian housing market: Vancouver and its secondary suite rentals. The Canadian Geographer / Le Géographe canadien 61(4): 550-563.

Mendez, P. (2016) Professional experts and lay knowledge in Vancouver’s accessory apartment rental market. Environment and Planning A 48(11): 2223-2238.

Mendez, P. and N. Quastel (2015) Subterranean commodification: Informal housing and the legalization of basement suites in Vancouver from 1928 to 2009. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 39(6): 1155–1171.

Mendez, P., Moos, M. and Osolen, R. (2015) Driving the commute: Getting to work in the auto-mobility city. In A. Walks (Ed.). The Urban Political Economy and Ecology of Automobility: Driving Cities, Driving Inequality, Driving Politics. Routledge.

Moos, M. and P. Mendez (2015) Suburban ways of living and the geography of income: How homeownership, single-family dwellings and automobile use define the metropolitan social space. Urban Studies 52(10): 1864-1882.

Moos, M., P. Mendez, L. McGuire, E. Wyly, A. Kramer, R. Walter-Joseph, M. Williamson (2015) More continuity than change? Re-evaluating the contemporary socio-economic and housing characteristics of suburbs. Canadian Journal of Urban Research 24(2): 64-90.