Planning Pool

The School of Planning at the University of Waterloo is proud to be hosting the 2011 Canadian Association of Planning Students – L’Association Canadienne des Étudiants en Aménagement et en Urbanisme (CAPS-ACÉAU) conference February 3-5th in Waterloo, Ontario. The annual CAPS-ACÉAU conference is Canada’s premier student planning event which provides networking opportunities between planning students, faculty and professionals, provides students with a platform to present their research, and sparks active debate on planning and design-related issues leading to innovation throughout the profession.

The theme of the 2011 conference is Resilience: Planning for Dynamic Futures. Resilience is entering the minds of planners at a time when socioeconomic changes are intensifying and increasingly affecting our daily lives. Characterized by a community’s … Continue Reading

Drought-stricken farmland in Australia, between Melbourne and Sydney. Thanks to Beleobus on Flickr for the great Creative Commons photo.

Today, PlanningPool is coming to you live from the Symposium on Resilience at the University of British Columbia, where we just presented a lively panel discussion about Digital Media. (Our slides are online here.) Thanks to Karen Quinn Fung and Frances Bula for participating in the discussion!

An interdisciplinary panel of graduate students and professionals are currently discussing the critical planning issue of “Uncertain Water Supplies: Increasing the resiliency of development to water crises”. Planning graduate student Asrai Ord introduced the panel with the observation that a majority of Canadians believe in the “myth of abundance.” Unfortunately, frequent claims that Canada does not have to worry … Continue Reading

If you’re in Vancouver on Friday morning and have some time, drop by the University of British Columbia’s Graduate Student Society building and see us present about digital media & public engagement! Registration is $25 for students and you can find out more information here.

Hope to see you then!

Edited to add:
Our introductory slides for this panel are now available on Slideshare here. Panelist Karen Quinn Fung’s slides will also be made available on Slideshare in the next few days.

City in a Bubble by Flickr user polishq

Nicole Boyer facilitated a panel of speakers yesterday at Gaining Ground. Bill Rees, Vanessa Timmer, and Vincent Tan spoke about why we need to rethink cities and what cities of the future could look like.

To set up the context of why we need to rethink cities, Bill Rees showed how cities tax our ecosystems. Rees blamed Cartesian Dualism for creating the idea of “the environment,” something that is artificially separated from people and has infinite energy, resources, and capacity for waste. He also questioned the idea that economic growth is necessary, showing that growth is only a new phenomenon when considering the whole … Continue Reading

The first morning of the Gaining Ground, Resilient Cities conference concluded with a presentation by Paul Hawken, renowned author of Natural Capitalism, the Ecology of Commerce, and Blessed Unrest. His remarks followed up on Mayor Gregor Robertson’s introduction of Vancouver’s Greenest City Initiative, so he opened by teasing Vancouver about our good-looking and charismatic mayor, whose work he takes seriously.

Creative Commons photo of Paul Hawken from 2007 by the Rainforest Action Network.

Hawken’s hopeful message is that resiliency is innate to cities, which are the most effective and natural epicenters of change. Humans’ most complex creations, cities are resilient for the same reason that ecosystems are resilient – with complexity comes efficiency. Culturally, … Continue Reading