I have undertaken a number of projects on immigration to Canadian cities, including: immigration, housing and labour markets; offsetting immigration and domestic migration in world cities; immigration and poverty; immigrant churches as service hubs; multiculturalism and the governance of diversity. An abiding focus has been the experience of wealthy business migrants. This work is drawn together in Millionaire Migrants: Trans-Pacific Life Lines (2010). A principal long-term interest has been with processes of social and spatial change in older inner city neighbourhoods, notably work on gentrification, processes of urban reinvestment leading to housing renovation or redevelopment and the replacement and displacement of poorer households by the middle-class.

There are two current projects. The first is a comparative study of housing market bubbles, their causes, social consequences, and policy responses in five global cities. A second project involves participation in the national Neighbourhood Change Research Partnership, examining growing income inequality and polarisation in large Canadian cities

Dr. Ley was Department Head (2009-2012). He was the first UBC Director of the Metropolis Project, examining issues of immigration and integration in Greater Vancouver and beyond, and has been appointed a Trudeau Fellow and also a Fellow of The Royal Society of Canada. He holds a Canada Research Chair in Geography.

Elected as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK) (2022) and appointed to the Order of Canada (2022).

2024:

Ley, D. (2024). Residential alienation and generational activism in Hong Kong. Housing, Theory and Society. doi: 10.1080/14036096.2023.2297826

2023:

Ley, D. (2023). Housing Booms in Gateway Cities. Chichester UK: John Wiley.

Ley, D. (2023). Pinball wizard. Dialogues in Urban Studies, 1(1), 93-96. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/27541258231156798

2021

Ley, D. (2021). A regional growth ecology, a great wall of capital, and a metropolitan housing Market. Urban Studies, 58(2), 297-315. doi: 10.1177/0042098019895226

2020

Ley, D. (2020). Housing Vancouver, 1972-2017: A personal urban geography. The Canadian Geographer, 64(4), 441-54. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/cag.12663

Ley, D. &  Teo, S. Y. (2020). Is comparative gentrification possible? Sceptical voices from Hong Kong. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 44(1), 166-172. doi: https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12845

2019

Grigoryeva, I. & Ley, D. (2019). The price ripple effect in the Vancouver housing market. Urban Geography, 40(8), 1168-1190. doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/02723638.2019.1567202

Yang, Q. & Ley. D. (2019). Residential relocation and the remaking of socialist workers through  state-facilitated urban redevelopment in Chengdu, China. Urban Studies, 56(12), 2480-98. doi: https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098018790724

Elected as Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences (UK) (2022)

Officer of the Order of Canada, December 2022