photo by c.s. cosco
I love cities. I love the planning issues and forces of change that shape our urban centres: transportation, affordable housing, immigration, growth management policies and complicated governance structures. Living in many different cities has made me somewhat of a philosopher about them: what makes them similar? What makes each unique? Going to school in Canada while hob-nobbing at American conferences has made me aware of the many differences between Canadian and American cities, and the structural changes that have happened in Canadian cities since the 1960s. Check out my blog for more thoughts on urban issues.
I have a Master of Arts from the School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) at the University of British Columbia, where my research focused on the transportation patterns of young people aged 17-25 in Metro Vancouver. I started my PhD at SCARP in 2007 and advanced to candidacy in 2009. My dissertation research is a case study of the housing and transportation choices of Filipino immigrants in Toronto. Currently I’ve finished my fieldwork and am doing data analysis, which I hope to be finished in fall 2010. A lot of this depends on my PhD Committee: Penny Gurstein, Tom Hutton, and Elvin Wyly. If you haven’t gotten lost on Elvin’s complex and fascinating website, you can check out my SCARP profile here, and contact me at planningutopia(at)gmail.com.
Before all this, I had a whole other career in landscape architecture and still keep up my interests in drawing and painting. All the artwork and photos on this site are mine, except the portraits taken by the very talented C.S. Cosco.