Professor James McKellar

Associate Dean

 

James McKellar is Associate Dean, External Relations, Schulich School of Business, York University, Toronto, Canada and Professor and Academic Director of the Program in Real Estate and Infrastructure. Prior to joining York University, he was a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and served as the first Director of the Center for Real Estate at MIT. In addition to MIT, he has held faculty appointments at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Calgary. He is also Adjunct Professor at Johns Hopkins University in Washington, D.C., assisting in developing their infrastructure curriculum. He has lectured at universities in North America, Asia and Europe and addressed various industry and government groups across the world. 

 

Professor McKellar has both a Master in Architecture (M. Arch) and Master in City Planning (M.C.P) from the University of Pennsylvania and a Bachelor of Architecture from the University of Toronto. He was a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania where he was Director of the Urban Design Program and then at the Faculty of Environmental Design, University of Calgary where he held the positions of Chair, Architecture and then Chair, Urban Planning. He has been a visiting lecturer in architecture at Harvard University and Rice University, and in real estate in India, China, Japan, Russia, Poland and Turkey. Professor McKellar has a life‐long involvement in the real estate industry and has consulted to businesses and governments in many parts of the world on real estate matters covering housing, development, finance and investment, asset management, and market performance. He is co‐editor with Olga Kaganova of Managing Government Property Assets: Sharing International Experiences, May 2006, published by the Urban Institute in Washington, D.C. he is currently co-authoring a new book titled, The Business of Infrastructure. 

 

In past several years his teaching and research has focused on the emerging field of infrastructure and the business models driving large-scale public infrastructure projects. He teaches three graduate level course in the MBA program: Real Estate Development; Partnership Models for the Delivery of Infrastructure; and, Sustainable Cities which examines infrastructure in the context of rapid urbanization and population growth, particularly in emerging economies where new technologies, new business models and socio-cultural factors play a significant role. In June 2016, he will teach a new 2-day course at MIT on Delivery Models for Large-Scale Infrastructure. 

 

In addition to his academic work, James McKellar is principal of McKellar Associates Ltd. a multidisciplinary firm that specializes in strategic issues related to real estate and infrastructure. He is a former Board member, Vice‐Chair and Acting Chair of the Ontario Realty Corporation responsible for all of the Province’s buildings and lands; former member of the Oak Ridges Moraine Advisory Panel; former member of the Board of the Humber River Regional Hospital, Toronto, and Vice‐Chair of the Building Committee, former member of the North Pickering Land Exchange Panel; and former Vice‐Chair of the Oak Ridges Moraine Foundation. He is Founding Academic Advisor to the National Executive Forum on Public Property. He was a member of the Steering Committee, Waterfront Toronto, overseeing various proposal calls. He is a member of the American Real Estate Society; the American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association; the Urban Land Institute; and an Honorary Life Member of the Society of Office and Industrial Realtors (SIOR). He is a Fellow of the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada (FRAIC) and a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (FRICS).