Anna Kramer
Ph.D., University of Waterloo
M.Arch., Dalhousie University
B.Env.D., Dalhousie University
Ph.D. dissertation
Divergent affordability: Transit access and housing in North American cities
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I am interested in how urban planning contests or shapes spatial inequalities and access to the city, particularly across subjectivities of race, class, gender and queerness, and the mobilization of justice-oriented social movements to transform the city. I teach and practice in planning for transportation, housing and climate change.
Transitscapes – the social, economic, and urban form of places accessible to public transit; inequalities of access and affordability; urban planning’s role in processes of change and redevelopment; potential for mode shift.
Zoning – analysis of the role of spatial policies of zoning in constructing socio-economic segregation, exposing people to danger or safety, and enabling or preventing access to life-sustaining public infrastructures and community.
Urban encampments – the visibility, spatiality, state responses and political generativity of the unhoused and supporters in public space during and in the aftermath of the pandemic.
Call for MSc and PhD applications:
I’m welcoming graduate student applications for research on housing issues. I am best able to support students with a commitment to housing justice. My research is on the role of the state - particularly urban planning - in facilitating housing extraction, in managing surplus populations, and in structuring the ‘unhousing’ system and housing supply. I’m open to diverse methodologies. If this sounds interesting and you have an idea for related research, please reach out!
Appreciated: Grounding in critical geography, Marxist political economy, feminist and queer theory, and/or political ecology with insight about the context of racial capitalism, settler colonialism, cis hetero-patriarchy, border imperialism, the intensification of policing, climate catastrophe, current fascisms, alongside modes of resistance and refusal, anarcho-communisms, abolition, landback, community organizing and social movements.
For a September 2026 start (apply winter 25/26). Funding available. Contact anna.kramer [at] mcgill.ca.
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Writing and knowledge mobilization
Zones of Exposure: Urban micro-environments of air pollution and residential intensification. Sustainable Cities and Society, 2025. Co-authored with L. Minet.ÌýOpen access .
Improvising Spatial Solidarities: The Public Park as a Commons. co-authored with J. Upton Crowe. In Baker, R. and Ferrer, A. Dispatches from the Threshold: Tenant Power in Times of Crisis. Fernwood Press, 2025. Excerpt .
Banishment through Branding: From Montreal’s Red Light District to Quartier des spectacles. Co-authored with R. Fiolka and Z. Marshall.Ìý, 2022.
Oranges are not the only fruit: The publicly owned variety of land trust. Co-authored with J. Spicer and L. Stephens.Ìý, 2022.
Camp evictions are the sharp end of Canada’s predatory housing policies.Ìý, 2021.
. Co-produced with the Encampment Support Network Explainer’s Committee, 2021.
Activism in the Real Estate State. Conversation with S. Stein and housing activists in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal.Ìý, 2021.
Can transit investments in low-income neighborhoods increase transit use? Exploring the nexus of income, car ownership, and transit accessibility in Toronto. Co-authored with E.Y. Barri et al.ÌýÌýPart D: Transport and Environment, 2021.
Inside and Outside: A meditation on the yellowbelt. Chapter inÌý, 2019.
The unaffordable city: Housing and transit in North American cities.Ìý, 2018.
Transit access and social equity: Background paper to the 2041 Regional Transportation Plan. (Lead author).Ìý, 2018.
The death and life of ‘Transit City’ – searching for sustainable transportation in Toronto's inner suburbs. Co-authored with C. Mettke. In Thomas, R. (ed.) Planning Canada: A Case Study Approach (pp. 374-383). Don Mills: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Recentralization as an alternative to urban dispersion: Transformative planning in a neoliberal context. Co-authored with P. Filion and G. Sands.Ìý, 2016.
Meeting the public's need for transit options: Characteristics of socially equitable transit networks. Co-authored with A. Goldstein. Institute of Transportation Engineers Journal, 2015.
Divergent affordability: Transit access and housing in North American cities.Ìý, 2014.
Transformative metropolitan development models in large Canadian urban areas: The predominance of nodes. Co-authored with P. Filion.Ìý, 2012.
Metropolitan-scale planning in neoliberal times: Financial and political obstacles to urban form transition. With P. Filion.Ìý, 2011.