Planners shape our world

Submitted by Simon O’Byrne, Senior Principal (Edmonton, AB)


Simon O'Byrne



From the creation of great spaces to the design and implementation of sustainable and vibrant new communities (and oh-so-much more), planners create the world in which we live, work, and play. So today—World Town Planning Day—provides a perfect opportunity for us all to celebrate planning and our profession.

World Town Planning Day acknowledges and celebrates the accomplishments of planners around the globe and is celebrated in 30 countries. With local and national events, this day serves as a reminder that everyone should get involved to help build better communities. Planning is not only about today; it provides direction for the future while also adapting to changing expectations of people.

People most commonly associate planners with the design of a community or residential subdivision. And that is a huge component of what we do. This kind of work is definitely exciting as we watch an entire community come into being—like Palmer Ranch, one of the largest master-planned communities in Florida. My colleagues in Sarasota have been working with the land owner of this bare, 10,000-acre land holding, establishing a foundation of environmental systems and creating an entirely new community complete with a housing mix of 10,500 units, employment centers with 4 million square feet of office, industrial, and commercial uses, as well as recreational and lake facilities.

But in addition to this kind of traditional development design, we planners do so much more—we design places that are worthy of people’s affection. We conduct economic development studies. We write policies and land use zoning bylaws, foster public/private partnerships, and lead complex and politically charged projects on a variety of scales.

One of my favorite examples is a project to plan a new downtown district in Edmonton, Alberta. At the center of the planning process, our planners created a new downtown special area zone, the Arena and Entertainment District (AED) Zone, that mandates regulations on urban design, at-grade street frontage, 360-degree architecture, articulation of building facades, nightscaping, and winter city design while ensuring exceptional architecture. This kind of comprehensive effect on the look and feel of a place is a perfect example of how planners contribute to land use planning and creating an awesome place for people to visit and enjoy.



The Arena and Entertainment District
(AED) in Edmonton



And planning isn’t limited to the “looks” of a place; it often extends to its entire structure and function. My Stantec colleagues, for example, recently prepared a comprehensive infrastructure plan for the Province of PEI, addressing water and wastewater, transportation, green energy, and community facilities infrastructure across the province. Work involved an overview of economic and demographic trends on the Island, a comprehensive inventory each infrastructure sector under study, and a survey of PEI municipal units to obtain information on their infrastructure needs.

The same sort of big-picture view went into a recent look into the feasibility of a community-based transit system in Musquodoboit Harbour, Nova Scotia. The results of our studies of various alternatives for routes, rates, vehicles, and funding indicated that the community needed a small-scale transit system with regular and consistent service to adjacent communities and key services. The community hopes to launch a pilot program based on this assessment.

Today’s observance of World Town Planning Day has given me the impetus to think about projects like these and remind myself why I love my job. To learn more about what planners do, both in the US and Canada, visit the Canadian Institute of Planners (http://www.cip.ca/), American Planning Association (http://www.planning.org/), or American Institute of Certified Planners (http://www.planning.org/aicp/)