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The Bulding 3. © Uwe Grützner​/​Department of Spatial Planning

In Memory of Benjamin Davy

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© Ben Davy
With great sadness, we mourn the loss of Benjamin Davy, who passed away on January 24, 2025, at the age of 68. Benjamin was an outstanding academic in research and teaching of land policy and spatial planning.

From 1999 to 2019, Ben Davy was the chair and professor of Land Policy, Land Management, and Municipal Surveying at TU Dortmund University. During his tenure, he significantly shaped research and teaching in the field. In his role as President of the International Academic Association on Planning, Law, and Property Rights (PLPR) as well as President of the Association of European Schools of Planning (AESOP), Ben Davy influenced and inspired the academic community through his passion for academia and thorough research. He was a co-founder of PLPR and the thematic group on Planning, Law, and Property Rights within AESOP.

His devotion to international academic exchange on theories and philosophy of property, planning, and land policy is, for example, reflected in statements such as that PLPR felt like a "meeting with friends" to him, however, friends who shared his love for critical exchange and his search for questions to be answered. Even after his retirement, he supported and encouraged young academics to find their own way of taking a critical stance. Most recently, he served as a guest professor at the University of Johannesburg (South Africa).

Ben Davy will be remembered as an extraordinary thinker whose international perspective and comparative approaches to planning, law, and property rights are his lasting legacy. Notably, he introduced the Theory of Polyrationality into the field of spatial planning and maintained an unwavering interest in questions of justice in spatial planning.

Ben Davy will be remembered by the international academic community across the globe as someone who questioned conventional thinking and enriched scientific discourse with unexpected perspectives. He will also be remembered as someone whose priority it was to support and promote young academics.

The department of spatial planning loses a valued colleage, we will miss him dearly as a friend and colleague.

 

Prof. Dr. Thomas Hartmann
Chair of Land Policy and Land Management Department of Spatial Planning TU Dortmund University

 

 

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