Benjamin Goldstein

Benjamin Goldstein is Assistant Professor of Environment and Sustainability and head of the Sustainable Urban-Rural Futures (SURF) lab. The SURF Lab (www.surf-lab.ca) studies and emphasizes urban sustainability at multiple scales. Through his work at the SURF Lab, Benjamin helps understand how urban processes and urban form drive the consumption of materials and energy in cities and produce environmental change inside and outside cities. He develops methods and tools to quantify the scale of these changes and the locations where they occur using life cycle assessment, input-output analysis, geospatial data, and approaches from data science. Benjamin is particularly interested in combining quantitative methods with theory rooted in social science to explore multiple dimensions of sustainability and address issues of distributive justice. His topical foci include urban food systems (esp. urban agriculture), agri-commodities, residual resource engineering, global supply chains, sustainable production and consumption, and energy systems.