My principal focus has been the older neighbourhoods of large cities and the social groups that experience them and attempt to shape them. This focus lies across the fields of urban and social geography, though cultural and political factors are always present. My PhD research interpreted life in an African-American neighbourhood in inner city Philadelphia. Since then I have emphasised Canadian cities, though comparative projects have included Australia, the United States and Israel. Several projects led to books, including Neighbourhood Organizations and the Welfare State (with Shlomo Hasson), a study of the actions of inner city neighbourhood groups, The New Middle Class and the Remaking of the Central City, examining gentrification in six Canadian cities, and currently, Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines, interpreting transnational relations between East Asia and Vancouver/Toronto of wealthy immigrants to Canada.

For the past decade my primary focus, and that of my graduate students has concerned immigration and the city, as part of the Vancouver Centre of the Canadian Metropolis Project on immigration and urbanisation. See www.riim.metropolis.net

Another focus has been debate on various approaches to explanation in human geography, and participation in conceptual discussion on such themes as human agency, qualitative methods, post-modernism, landscape as text, aestheticisation, consumption, race, and multiculturalism.