Research Interest:
Geography of Japan and the Pacific Rim
Geography of International Trade, Overseas Investment and Multinational Corporations
Disaster Research in the Pacific Rim
Multiculturalism and Local Governments

David Edgington has degrees from the University of London (BSc Estate Management), University of Edinburgh (MSc Business Studies), University of Melbourne (Masters in Urban Planning), and Monash University (PhD Economic Geography). He joined the Department of Geography at UBC in 1988, and was promoted to Associate Professor in 1992, and Professor in 2012. He retired in 2017. Before coming to Vancouver he worked as an urban planner in Melbourne, Australia. His current research and teaching focuses on the geography of Japan and the Pacific Rim. He was the Director of the Centre for Japanese Research at the Institute of Asian Research (2003-2009), and President of the Japan Studies Association of Canada (2014-2017).

My recent study on ‘Population and Housing Recovery in Tohoku, Japan’ used raw data collected by Communa Inc. (Sendai).

The three tables below show raw data on population, housing in Iwate, Miyagi and northern Fukushima, and evacuation orders/return of population in Fukushima.

D.W. Edgington. 2021. “Planning for Earthquakes and Tsunamis: Lessons from Japan for British Columbia, Canada”, Progress in Planning, 1-26 (in press), https://doi.org/10.1016/j.progress.2021.100626.

Roger Hayter & David. W. Edgington. 2021. “Panasonic in China: A Search to Overcome the Liability of Foreignness”, Journal of Asia-Pacific Business, 22, 58-83.

Edgington, D.W. 2020. “Regional Production Networks”, in A. Kobayashi (ed.) International Encyclopedia of Human
Geography (2nd Edition), Volume 11, New York, Elsevier, 343-350.

Gaubatz, P and Edgington, D.W. 2020. “Cities of East Asia” in S.D. Brunn, D.J. Zeigler, M. Hays-Mitchell and J.K.
Graybill (eds.) Cities of the World: Regional Patterns and Urban Environments, Lanham, Rowman and Littllefield,
447-490.

Edgington, D.W. 2019. “Forty Year After the China-Japan Treaty of Peace and Friendship: Reflections on Changing Economic and Commercial Relations”, in A. Fujiwara and J. White (eds.) Japan’s World: The World’s Japan: Images, Perceptions and Reactions, Conference Proceedings, The 31st Japan Studies Association of Canada Annual Conference, October 11-14, 2018, Edmonton, University of Alberta, 47-84,

Edgington, D.W. 2019. “Natural disasters in Japan”, in K. Coates, K. Hara, C. Holroyd, and M. Söderberg
(Eds.) Japan’s Future and a New Meiji Transformation: International Reflections, London, Routledge, 182-192.

Edgington, D.W. 2019. “Comprehensive planning in Japanese large cities”, Planning Perspectives, 34(1), 115-132.

Edgington, D.W. 2017. “`Building back better’ along the Sanriku coast of Tohoku, Japan: five years after the ‘3/11’ Disaster”, The Town Planning Review; 88, 615-638.

Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Fellowship Award (1997 – 1998)