David Sadoway
BES (Hons) (Waterloo), MRM (SFU), PhD (Hong Kong)I am a faculty member and teacher in Kwantlen's Geography and Environment Department and am grateful to be working at a university that derives its name from the Kwantlen First Nation along with other Coast Salish Peoples on whose territories we live, work, play and learn.
My training is as an urban planner and an environmental manager. At the moment I am the Human Rights and International Solidarity representative of the Kwantlen Faculty Association to the Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of B.C. In 2020-21 I have also been involved with colleagues from KPU as a United Nations SDGs Open Pedagogy Fellow. I am also currently one of the CityLab instructors in The Department of Policy Studies (POST), with a focus on student projects and provocations linked to the KPU 2050 Campus Plan. And I am involved with the Arts Practicum, an interdisciplinary practical course experience linking KPU students to local community/activist groups, non-profits, governments and businesses.
Prior to coming to KPU, I lived and worked in Asia for over 15 years. I was a Research Fellow in the Division of Sociology at Nanyang Technological University in Singapore (2015-17), where besides teaching, I was involved in research on soundscapes and noise impacts on urban quality of life and livability. Before that I was a Postdoc Fellow at Concordia University (Montréal) (2012-14), where besides teaching, I studied the politics and governance of urban infrastructure in Indian cities. I have also been a visiting scholar, most recently at Norway's Bergen University, Department of Geography (Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation) (2019); and previously at Technical University of Darmstadt, Germany (Topology of Technology Faculty) (2013); as well as the National Institute of Urban Affairs, New Delhi, India (2013); and Academia Sinica, Taiwan (Center for Asia-Pacific Area Studies) (2008). My PhD work at the University of Hong Kong (2007-12) focused on civic environmentalists' uses of information communications technologies in Hong Kong, Singapore and Taipei. I also have previous work experiences with the United Nations system, government, non-profits; and with urban planning consultants in Toronto and Vancouver.
Collaborating with scholars close to home and around the globe, I maintain writing and research interests in: urban (im)mobilities; community informatics and participatory science; sonic urbanism; Canadian and global carbonscapes; and decolonization methodologies. I am interested in how people around the globe are working together to address common ecological, socio-economic, technological and political dilemmas and controversies.
Courses taught
- GEOG 1101 Introduction to Human Geography
- GEOG 2140 Regional Geography of Canada
- GEOG 2185 Regional Geography of East Asia
- GEOG 2250 The City
- GEOG 2380 Qualitative Methods in Geography
- GEOG 3220 Urban Planning and Politics
- GEOG 3320 Environment and Resources
- GEOG 4501 Current Geographic Issues : Energy Geography
- POST 2140 CityLab3 - Rethinking Community & ReDesigning the Post-Pandemic University
Scholarly Work
- Sadoway, D. & Shekhar, S. (2021). "Changing infrastructure in urban India: Critical reflections on openness and trust in the governance of public services," Chapter 6 in Eds. A. Chib, C.M. Bentley, M.L. Smith, Critical Perspectives on Open Development: Empirical Interrogation of Theory Construction. MIT Press (Open Access).
- Amir, S., Sadoway D., & Dommaraju, P. (2021)."Taming the noise: soundscape and livability in a technocratic city-state," East Asian Science, Technology and Society: An International Journal, DOI:
- Sadoway, D., Gopakumar, G., Baindur, V., Badami M.G. (2018). “JNNURM as a window on urban governance: Its Institutional footprint, antecedents and legacy,” Economic and Political Weekly, 53:2 (Review of Urban Affairs, 13 January).
- Sadoway, D. (2018). Conundrums in Comparative Urbanism. In: The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Urban and Regional Studies, A.M. Orum (Ed.). Malden: Wiley-Blackwell.
- Sadoway, D. & Gopakumar, G. (2017). “(Un)bundling Bangalore: Infrastructure bundling ‘best practices’ and assembling novel scapes,” Geoforum 79, 46-57.
- Sadoway, D. (2017). Fukushima and Beyond: Nuclear Power in a Low‐Carbon World. Farnham, UK: Ashgate Publishing Limited. xi + 202 pages. ISBN 978‐
- Sadoway, D. & Shekhar, S. (2014). “(Re)prioritizing citizens in ‘smart cities’ governance: Examples of smart citizenship from India,” Journal of Community Informatics 10:3.
- Horelli, L. & Sadoway, D. (2014). “Community informatics in cities: New catalysts for urban change,” Editorial, Special Issue on Urban Planning and Community Informatics, Journal of Community Informatics 10:3.
- Sadoway, D. (2013). “How are ICTs transforming civic space in Singapore?: Changing civic-cyber environmentalism in the island city-state,” Journal of Creative Communications 8 (2&3), 107-138.
- Sadoway, D. (2013). From associations to info-sociations : civic environmentalism and information communication technologies in three Asian tiger cities. (Thesis). University of Hong Kong, Pokfulam, Hong Kong SAR.
- Sadoway, D. (2012). “From associations to info-sociations: The co-evolution of civic associations and ICTs in two Asian cities,” Journal of Community Informatics 8:3.
- Sadoway, D. (2009). “Asian urban spatial sustainability: conservation, eco-modernization and urban wilding,” in Eds. J. Bolchover, J. D. Solomon, Sustain and Develop, 306090 Books 13, New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 155-168. ISBN 9780692000885 0692000887