Q: Can you tell me about your current work? What do you do, and where do you work?

A: I’m an Associate at Urban Strategies Inc. I work at the nexus of planning, design, and community engagement. I phrase my work in that siloed way because that’s often how we’re used to understanding the different roles in the industry. But what I really try to do is bring these roles together in anything that I work on. Not in the sense that I do everything myself, but rather it’s about thinking about things holistically.

Projects I’m working on now include many larger framework plans, typically known as ‘master plans.’ I’m working on some mall sites, such as Jane Finch Mall and Scarborough Town Centre, as well as Pinewood Toronto Studios, a film campus down in the Port Lands. In the past, I’ve done some equitable neighbourhood revitalization work in an amazing community in East Detroit known as East Warren/Cadieux, which is a very different context from Toronto. It’s always nice to take yourself out of that Toronto-centric mindset and see what else is happening.

I’m also part of a team undertaking equity and engagement work for BC Housing on a Tenant Relocation Strategy and Toolkit, which they’re hoping to develop as a best practices document for the industry, in addition to it being a guide for their work.

Q: That sounds like really important work! Going off of that, what is your favourite part of working in planning?

A: I love learning about communities, especially in Toronto. As a resident, I have a sense of all our diverse communities based on my experiences within the city, but I feel like doing work in this field gives you the opportunity to learn about communities in a much deeper way.

Living in them is definitely the most intimate way to learn about them, but working in them and trying to plan for them is a very different task. To do our work well, you have to learn about the histories that have taken place, as well as the current sociodemographic and cultural landscape and organizations working within the communities. I love that I can uncover more about the city in this way through my job. More than I think I could learn in my day-to-day because you can’t live in five communities at once. But in our industry, we work in five communities at once, so we really get to embed ourselves in a way that we learn about them deeply. Or, we ought to.

Q: I see you did your undergraduate degree in planning. What initially motivated you to pursue urban planning?

A: I originally wanted to go to journalism school because I had a desire to write and tell stories, but my parents told me I couldn’t get an Arts degree. Classic. I spoke with my older brother about it after, and he said, “If I could go back to school, I would have done urban planning.” So, I applied to Waterloo’s planning program.

In my first few years, I was a bit lost. We were learning about all these different things- Jane Jacobs, Robert Moses, eyes on the street, how to use SketchUp, how to draw trees by hand, etcetera, etcetera. But I still had no idea what urban planning really was.

Then, I got my first co-op with the City of Hamilton in their community planning department, and I did some engagement work through that, which is when I realized there was still space for storytelling within urban planning. I think that’s what drew me back in and made me really fall in love with the profession. It was understanding that planning is just a different way of storytelling –  it involves listening to other people’s stories and bringing them together and planning for growth and change and the future with them in mind. So, in the end, through planning, I was able to do what I wanted, but in a different way.

Q: Is there any particular advice you’d give students pursuing planning?

A: Living in cities, we experience them every day. But as a planner, it can be easy to divorce that experience from our work. The more I work in the profession, the more I’ve started to connect the two and realize that every day when you’re walking down the street, you’re seeing the outcomes and impacts of this industry in real-time.

Urban planning feels like this crazy psychosocial experiment that we’re all participating in; building these cities and seeing how they work and flourish and function and thrive – or don’t in certain places and why that is.

Sometimes, it can be hard to understand all of those impacts behind a computer screen, on Zoom meetings or in boardrooms, at an engagement event or when working with the community because we’re so focused on the specific site or work at hand. But it’s also important to understand the longevity of our work and see it and experience it for ourselves. For example, living in Toronto as a renter is tough these days, and the experience of that is something I try to bring into my work because as planners, we can really make a change in the rental landscape.

So, my one piece of advice is – don’t divorce your experience of the city from your work and professional expertise. Bring these things together to inform the type of practitioner you want to be and what you advocate for and move forward on through your work,

Q: How have you been involved in the ULI? Why would students benefit from joining this organization?

A: I’ve gone to ULI events for a few years now. This year, I’m part of ULI’s Curtner Urban Leadership Program, a program for emerging leaders to come together and tackle key civic issues. The Program is organized around a different theme every year, and this year’s theme is about approaching community and civic challenges with joy rather than being afraid of them, and centering joy within our processes and outcomes. So, that’s been a really great opportunity with ULI.

ULI and the Curtner Program have also opened me up to other opportunities. For example, the ULI had a ‘Women, Life, Freedom’ event a couple of weeks ago. I met Gelare Danaie – an Iranian-Canadian designer and founder of the human-centered design firm DEXD –  through the Curtner program, who asked me if I wanted to help with planning that event when she learned I was also part of the Iranian-Canadian community. Even opportunities like that, to just be involved in planning an event around a theme you feel connected to, means something as a professional, and I think that ULI provides endless opportunities for that.

The ULI also has student volunteer opportunities, so I suggest taking those on. I wish I knew about them as a student because I think that’s how you really get to meet people. Going to events is great, but networking can be daunting, especially as a student. So, these volunteering opportunities, where you get to provide your expertise, skills, or even just time, are a great way to get to know people and to get to know ULI.