What makes you passionate about planning?

I love the idea that the purpose behind our discipline is to imagine, and then enact, the futures we want to live in. From that perspective, our work is inherently creative and forward looking, even as we’re confronted by sticky systems. I also really enjoy being in a uniquely ‘undisciplined’ discipline – planning academics get to draw from a wide web of theories and methods to do our own kind of purpose-built social science. I love letting my curiosity guide my work.

Tell us about a project you are working on and why it excites you.

I’ve been building a project exploring alternative ownership structures for energy infrastructure that is picking up some speed right now. The work is about starting with communities’ creative ideas for transforming their energy systems, unpacking how we might get there, and exploring what planning and visioning processes can facilitate it. I’m lucky to be working with a great group of collaborators, which is make or break for me. Excitement is infectious to me, and the best way to get my brain working is to surround myself with thoughtful, passionate people. Working on climate change can sometimes be a bummer (who knew?), but my work fuels my belief that a better, more just world is possible.

What do you think will be the most important challenge for planners in the future?

Getting through what Emily Grubert & Sara Hastings-Simon call the “mid-transition”, which is the point in the climate and energy transition we’re living through now, when fossil-based energy systems co-exist with renewables. Our whole world has been shaped by fossil-based infrastructure, and transitioning away from it requires overcoming technological, infrastructural, social and political lock-in. We’re developing a new system under the constraints of the old one, a problem that planners are well-suited to work on. Climate change touches everything, and responding to it effectively will require entirely new planning practices.

What are you most excited about at your planning school?

I just finished up teaching my third year of an elective course on ‘planning for just energy transitions’. I think planners tend to talk more about adapting to climate change rather than mitigating it, but the energy world is absolutely full of planning challenges. Don’t get me started on siting and land use issues. Teaching the class has been a blast, and I’m currently finalizing student white papers on energy planning in Canadian provinces that UBC’s Centre for Climate Justice will publish online. SCARP’s MCRP students produce incredibly thoughtful work.

Please tell us about a place or plan that has influenced you.

I was born and raised in New Jersey and didn’t leave until joining UBC in 2023, so it’s not surprising that I’m deeply influenced by New York City. My mom grew up there, and around age 12 I was allowed to take NJ transit by myself to go visit my aunt in midtown. As a teen and young adult, my friends and I loved spending aimless days exploring different neighborhoods. I risk sounding cliché, but the diversity is remarkable, and my favorite cities and neighborhoods in the world are the ones where you can hear four different languages and smell five different kinds of food cooking. I’m really excited about Mayor Mamdani’s work right now, and his campaign did an awesome job of articulating the beauty of the city’s cultural and ethnic diversity. New York also probably sparked my interest in the tensions between formality and informality in planning. During my PhD, I worked with the US Forest Service’s Stewardship Mapping and Assessment Project (STEW-MAP), and got to learn about how New Yorkers steward the local environment. There are so many neighborhood-based groups that take care of the natural world and each other, and I think they’re doing just as much planning work as people with degrees and job titles.

What makes you passionate about planning?

I have had the privilege of living in multiple cities with unique planning contexts across North America. From the expansive suburbs of the Dallas Fort-Worth Metroplex to the dense pre-war neighbourhoods of Montreal, the different urban landscapes I have found myself in has deeply affected how I understand community. Diversity, beautiful spaces, and accessibility are the building blocks of great cities, and one day I simply made the connection that the planning profession is one of the most powerful avenues to influence these factors. 

Tell us about a project you are working on and why it excites you.

Alongside my fellow SCARP Studio team member Grady Chalmers, I have been researching the implementation of Small-Scale, Multi-Unit Housing (SSMUH) since the adoption of Bill 44 in BC. Supported by MODUS Planning, Design, and Engagement, this project has included key informant interviews with planning professionals across the public and private sector, developers, designers, and advocates, all looking to identify the challenges and opportunities this Bill has introduced. Unlike most land use legislation and policy, Bill 44 has managed to break its way into mainstream public discourse, provoking both outrage or celebration depending on who you ask. Planning in BC has a communication problem, and SSMUH has become another victim of this failure. I hope this project can help mediate some of these tensions and help those who believe in the promise of multi-generational infill housing better achieve healthier outcomes for all. 

What do you think will be the most important challenge for planners in the future?

As foreshadowed above, communication is currently the most important challenge for planners, and will only continue to be so regardless of the environmental, social, or economic landscape we find ourselves in. If planning as a profession and planners as individuals cannot intuitively reach the appropriate audiences in a timely, accessible, and engaging manner, our best practices and innovation will be sidelined, delayed, and met with skepticism. The emergence of AI, economic uncertainty, and disinformation will only continue to erode the public’s trust in institutions, including those in which planners wield their power. To manage existential threats like climate change and housing unaffordability, planners need to match this scale with equally robust communication with the communities we are accountable to.

What are you most excited about at your planning school?

The SCARP community is one of kindness, innovation, and action. I have been lucky enough to be surrounded by some of the most engaged, intelligent, and passionate people not only related to the field of planning, but community in general. It is not hard to be influenced by this energy and atmosphere when you walk in West Mall Annex on a Tuesday when the entire student body from both years are in classes all day. I cannot wait to enter into the world of city making and community building after graduating with my cohort, where I hope we can continue this action-oriented and joyful practice across BC, Canada, and the world. 

Please tell us about a place or plan that has influenced you.

False Creek South is the place that finally made me understand the power of intentional, community-focused planning. During my time working on Granville Island as the Water Park Manager and the adjacent False Creek Community Centre as a child-care worker and program assistant, I witnessed the fully realized vision of planners, advocates, and designers from decades before. The bold, risky experiment that is the redevelopment of the industrial waterfront into a mixed-income, pedestrian-focused neighbourhood has gifted multiple generations with a place to call home and city with a world-renown cultural destination for tourists and residents alike. Once I realized the forces which came together to shape this vision and maintain its unique structure, I knew I wanted to be a voice for this kind of livability.