Paul Boniface Akaabre
Pronouns: He/Him
Contact
Assistant Professor, School of Urban and Regional Planning, Science
- akaabre@ualberta.ca
Overview
Area of Study / Keywords
Urban Planning Housing Development Housing Finance Housing Justice Redevelopments Municipal Finance Socioeconomic and Spatial Justice Equitable Development Urban Livelihood and Food Security Land Governance and Property Rights Climate Change and Migration Digital Systems and Smart City Innovations
About
Dr. Akaabre received his PhD from the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at the University of British Columbia, where examined how traditional leasehold tenure functions and influences the flow of investment to housing improvements and (re)development as well as how leaseholders’ rights in such systems might be strengthened. Prior to joining the University of Alberta, Dr. Akaabre worked with the School of Cities at the University of Toronto, as a Postdoctoral Fellow, where he facilitated a series of workshops on Equitable Development Data Insight Training Initiative (EDDIT) that offers data analysis and storytelling training to non-profit, community, and government organizations working towards urban equity in small and mid-sized cities in the U.S. and Canada. He also led and contributed to some of the exciting projects at the School of Cities, primarily on evaluating potential solutions to the continent’s affordable housing crisis. Dr. Akaabre's interest in indigenous people and reconciliation-based planning as well as decolonization and redevelopment of aging, unjust and racially marginalized communities motivated him to work with BC Housing – a public agency and one of the biggest developers of housing in Western Canada – on the Riverview/səmiq̓ʷəʔelə land redevelopment project in partnership with the Kwikwetlem First Nation (KFN). He is a member of the Planning Institute of British Columbia (PIBC) and the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP).
Research
Dr. Akaabre's research focuses on the broad spectrum of housing development, finance and justice as well as how current planning systems and practices shape (in)equitable development and spatial (in)justice. This includes models of housing (re)development and financing, housing inclusion and exclusion (discrimination), displacement, ghettoization, and homelessness, as well as decolonization and redevelopment of aging, unjust, and racially marginalized communities. Additional areas of interest include municipal finance and governance, healthy and equitable cities, inclusive and equitable development, land governance and property rights (including the implementation of UNDRIP), climate change and migration's impact on key socioeconomic fabrics of the city, including housing, urban livelihood, poverty, and food security, and the equitable integration of smart city innovations into urban planning. His work is undertaken in North America and Sub-Saharan Africa and employs various methods (qualitative, quantitative-- field experiments, and mixed methods). Dr. Akaabre et al.’s work on the progressiveness of Canadian property taxation, which found that Vancouver and Toronto exhibit a particularly weak relationship between income tax and property values—partly due to influx of overseas wealth into the housing market (published in the National Tax Journal)—has received wide media coverage. A coverage of this study can be found on Global News. Currently, Dr. Akaabre is auditing housing discrimination in Canada and exploring models for redevelopment of aging and underutilized buildings (houses) in cities of Ghana and Canada, as well as how smart city technologies and digital systems can be designed and/or integrated into urban planning to address, rather than reinforce, socioeconomic and spatial injustice.
Courses
PLAN 412 - Finance for Planners
An introduction to municipal finances and the development process as it relates to the Planning profession. Prerequisite: ECON 101. Not available for students with credit in HGP 412. Restricted to Planning Major and Planning Specialization students.
PLAN 503 - Master's Project Proposal
Supervised development of a literature review and project proposal examining resilience in northern and resource communities. Course is pass/fail. Sections offered at an increased rate of fee assessment; refer to the Tuition and Fees page in the University Regulations sections of the Calendar.
PLAN 512 - Advanced Finance for Planners
An introduction to municipal finances and the development process as it relates to the planning profession. Sections offered at an increased rate of fee assessment; refer to the Tuition and Fees page in the University Regulations sections of the Calendar.
Featured Publications
Paul Boniface Akaabre
Dialogues in Urban Research. 2025 July; 10.1177/27541258251356973
Paul Boniface Akaabre, Karen Chapple, Sara O’Connor
Journal of Planning Literature. 2025 June; 10.1177/08854122251350602
Paul Boniface Akaabre
Taylor & Francis. 2025 June; 10.4324/9781003480884-4
Paul Boniface Akaabre
Journal of Urban Affairs. 2025 March; 10.1080/07352166.2025.2471720
Paul Boniface Akaabre
Cities. 2025 January; 158 (2025):105687 10.1016/j.cities.2024.105687
Paul Boniface Akaabre
Land Use Policy. 2023 August; 10.1016/j.landusepol.2023.106747
Thomas Davidoff, Paul Boniface Akaabre, Craig Jones
Canadian Tax Journal/Revue fiscale canadienne. 2022 January; 10.32721/ctj.2022.70.4.pf.davidoff
Paul Boniface Akaabre, Michael Poku-Boansi, Kwasi Kwafo Adarkwa
Cities. 2018 December; 10.1016/j.cities.2018.06.006
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