Thinking Beyond the Market is a full length documentary written by Brian Doucet, Associate Professor in the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo. The film will be released later in 2025.

Dr Brian Doucet is an author, filmmaker, photographer, researcher, award-winning teacher and Associate Professor in Planning at the University of Waterloo. His work critically examines housing, gentrification, displacement, transportation and neighbourhood change. Born and raised in Toronto, he lived in the Netherlands from 2004 – 2017, where he received his PhD in geography from Utrecht University in 2010. Since returning to Canada in 2017, he has held a Canada Research Chair, been awarded six major SSHRC research grants and was a 2025 winner of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance Teaching Excellence Award. He is the co-author of the award-nominated book, Streetcars and the Shifting Geographies of Toronto: a visual analysis of change, and a co-editor of the four volume book series Global Reflections on COVID-19 and Urban Inequalities.

Director Statement

Thinking Beyond the Market: a film about genuinely affordable housing is the culmination of years of research into why we are in a housing crisis and what we can do about it. It draws on my own work on displacement, gentrification and housing precarity in cities across the country, as well as important findings, evidence and examples that get to the root causes of the housing problem.

As an academic researcher and one of Canada’s leading experts on housing, it’s not enough to simply write articles that only my colleagues in a narrow field of inquiry will ever read. I’ve long worked to bring my academic research into broader public, political, planning and policy conversations. The ability to make a documentary film about housing is the ultimate way to bridge the ever-increasing divide between university scholarship and the people who make, shape and experience cities. I hope this film enhances existing conversations and begins new ones in communities across Canada and beyond.

More information about screenings and how to view the film here soon!