March » 2009 » Ren Thomas

The relevance of research

In an article in Saturday’s Globe and Mail, Jeffrey Simpson reports on a study on the factors that influence university attendance. University of Ottawa professor Ross Finnie and his co-author Richard Mueller, using Statistics Canada data, found that family income is less of a predictor of university attendance than the parents’ education levels, the number of books in the house, internet access, family dinner conversations, the presence of both parents in the household, and cultural background. Simpson points out that this causes a problem for governments who would like to increase university attendance: they have little control over what he calls “cultural” factors.

This is an interesting conundrum. As planning graduate students, we are often encouraged to think about the policy implications of our research. It must be practical in some way. While the first impulse is to ask how our research will impact policy development, a deeper examination of knowledge into action (as our friend John Friedmann would say) is more appropriate.

In an earlier post, I reported on our PhD panel at SCARP’s recent symposium on how research moves from academia into practice. The different methods we discussed were:

Giving policy makers empirical evidence upon which to base policy and programs
Publishing in a variety of non-academic venues including professional and trade conference presentations
Bringing different actors into dialogue through participatory planning exercises
Learning from planning practices in other countries
Using case studies as examples of planning practice in the teaching process
Re-examining traditional planning models to lead to paradigm shift

Using this broader framework to redefine the practical nature of our research, we can see the value of Finnie and Mueller’s work. While their study’s findings doesn’t give policy makers empirical evidence, they serve as a useful reminder that family income alone does not determine university attendance. In an era of rapidly rising tuition and concerns over equitable university access for all potential students, this is incredibly valuable information. We are in the habit of comparing ourselves to the US, where income can and does play a major role even at the elementary school level. American parents often choose their housing based on the locations of the best school districts.

Simpson points out that immigrants, especially from Asia, are much more likely to attend university than other ethnic groups; as a cultural factor, this is seen as impossible to adapt to policy. As part of this large ethnic category (South Asian) I can confirm that Asian parents put more of a priority on university attendance. Education is highly valued, even above marriage, for themselves and their children; they will even encourage married children to live away from their spouse to complete a degree, something that would never be encouraged in other ethnic groups. Many of these parents come from countries where they have seen the value of a Bachelor’s or Masters degree, and want their children to do as well as, or better than, they did in their own careers. While we can’t replace everyone’s parents with academically-oriented Asians, perhaps it’s time to gain some insight from Asian parents on how their children become such high achievers. If they help their children with homework more than other ethnic groups, perhaps schools could encourage study groups led by parents or encourage more dialogue between parents of different ethnic groups. If they use specific techniques to help encourage their kids or reward them for work done, perhaps other parents could learn these techniques and apply them. We are encouraged to learn planning practices from other countries; why not learn educational techniques?

Owning a dictionary, having many books in the home, internet access, and family dinnertime conversation were all found to predict university attendance. While the government certainly can’t mandate these practices (as Simpson jokes) schools could encourage parents to buy second-hand books, have fund-raiser book sales, or create web lounges for students to use after school with their parents. Community groups could have monthly dinner clubs for school-aged children and their parents. Instead of a play date for their kids, parents could host a kids book club.

The presence of two parents in the home, an increasingly rare occurrence these days, was also found to encourage university attendance. The two-parent household is implicated in all sorts of positive benefits, yet we do not know what specifically leads to all these benefits. If it is the fact that single parents often work longer hours and have less time to spend helping their children with homework, we can again see some program opportunities for children living in single-parent households: perhaps an after-school study group at a community center or help using the internet for class assignments.

In short, despite Simpson’s joke that governments could give tax incentives for dinner conversation or buying a dictionary (I’m sure Stephen Harper would disapprove), there are many ways in which this research could lead to paradigm shift in our perceptions of university preparation and equitable access to universities. Now that family income has been revealed as a less important factor than what Simpson calls “cultural” factors, perhaps it will free researchers to delve further into the factors that have the most impact on university attendance.

This example serves as a reminder that our research as planners need not have immediate policy relevance. It can move into planning practice in any number of ways, and can help change the way people think about important social issues. Finally, it illustrates our point that publishing in non-academic venues such as the Globe and Mail can move research into the public imagination.

White picket fences and fresh eggs?

Vancouver City Council recently directed staff to develop policy guidelines to let city dwellers keep chickens in their backyards, which is probably a thrill for local food aficionados and urban agriculture advocates. The Globe and Mail article tallies up the cost of keeping the birds, including food, scratch, shell and grit, hay, shavings, and startup costs. Their cost comparison between home-grown and store-bought eggs is as follows:

18 cents/egg for a backyard chicken (assuming 270 eggs per year and an annual upkeep of $49.80)
45 cents/egg for SPCA-certified, cage-free and vegetarian fed eggs at Capers
20 cents/egg for medium eggs at Safeway

Victoria and several other municipalities in the Lower Mainland already allow urban chickens. Seattle and Portland also allow the birds, and Seattle even allows miniature goats. The Vancouver policy will be developed with the City’s Food Policy Council, whose other initiatives include encouraging more food-producing gardens, allowing urban beekeeping (apiculture), and the Grow a Row Share a Row program, which encourages households to grow an extra row of vegetables for the Greater Vancouver Food Bank Society and Neighbourhood Houses. Other contributors to policy development will be the SPCA, the Humane Society, other municipalities and local health authorities.

The SPCA and the BC Poultry Association have already raised concerns, arguing that people might not know how to care for the chickens, or that they could spread diseases like avian flu. Of course, the SPCA certifies farms that take good care of their chickens, and the BC Poultry Association obviously advocates the ownership of chickens…just not by Jane Q. Public. Wouldn’t want to disturb the consumption cycle.

The backyard chickens policy, and other urban agriculture policies, have risen to the forefront of the media in the past two years, particularly as food shortages have affected countries like Italy and Mexico. Increased land devoted to growing corn for ethanol, political instability, international trade agreements, and climate change are some of the factors behind food scarcity. In the midst of this revelation, the Vancouver Food Policy Council adopted its Food Charter, which has five principles:

Community Economic Development
Ecological Health
Social Justice
Collaboration and participation
Celebration

Its goal is to get consumers to purchase more locally produced food, regional farmers to direct more of their production to local markets, restaurateurs to feature more local, sustainable food on menus, food retailers to shift more of their inventory to local and sustainably produced food, increased levels of “edible gardening” in the City of Vancouver, and enhanced backyard and neighbourhood level composting and recovery of edible food. Provided that human and bird health concerns are addressed, the backyard chickens policy seems like a good way to ensure residents have access to fresh, affordable food.

The Holy Trinity: policy, practice, and research

Yesterday the School of Community and Regional Planning hosted a symposium called SustainaWHAT? SustainaHOW? The aim of the two-day event was to bring together planning policy makers with practitioners and academics to discuss how to move from talking about sustainability issues to implementation.

As I mentioned in a previous post, several PhD students comprised a panel on how research moves from academia into practice. Ugo Lachapelle discussed how research in active transportation has given policy makers empirical evidence of the benefits of walking and cycling, which has led to policy and programs encouraging alternative modes could be implemented. James White spoke about the importance of practitioners and academic researchers attending each others’ conferences and about publishing in a variety of non-academic venues. Aftab Erfan discussed participatory planning exercises as a way to bring different actors into dialogue. Leslie Shieh discussed the value of learning from planning practices in other countries. Janice Barry proposed that using case studies as examples of planning practice in the teaching process provides a vital link between practice and academia. I spoke of the way housing and transportation models have been instrumental in shaping policy, and how a re-examination of these models can lead to paradigm shift. The example I used was how research into immigrants’ housing careers led to the finding that lack of foreign credential recognition was resulting in lower labour market participation, lower incomes and therefore lower homeownership rates among immigrants. These findings, and others indicating poor outcomes for immigrants, led to policies like the Canada-Ontario-Toronto Memorandum of Understanding on Immigration to develop short bridging courses at community colleges to help new immigrants get Canadian experience and find work, develop more immigrant services, and develop municipal websites to help immigrants find housing, public transit and employment information.

As another example, the session on planning for multicultural cities included panelists Dr. Dan Hiebert (UBC Geography), Paula Carr (Collingwood Neighbourhood House) and Bill Walters (Immigrant Integration Branch, BC Ministry of Advanced Education and Labour Market Development). Their examples went from theoretical (Hiebert researches immigration policy and integration) to practical (Carr discussed the original vision for the creation of a neighbourhood community centre and historic groundbreaking that included a wide range of ethnic communities, ages, and social classes). Interestingly, this was exactly the type of dialogue that Aftab had discussed in our PhD panel, and something that is rarely seen at conferences. It provoked a rather heated discussion between the three panelists, who have different ideas of what could and should be done by the state to facilitate immigrant integration. Hiebert argues that we need to drop the old questions of whether or not immigrants are integrating, whether or not we have ethnic enclaves, and how do we (non-immigrants) manage this. Rather we need to focus on whether more minorities are living in, and are these neighbourhoods ghettos? According to Hiebert’s research, more people are living in ethnic enclaves in Toronto and Vancouver, but the low-income immigrants are not concentrated in these areas. He found that the number of ethnic groups in minority enclaves was almost the same as in other neighbourhoods. He believes that we need a dichotomy between segregation and dispersal, cultural retention and integration. We need to see integration as more complex and understand layers of diversity. And we need to understand that there’s no “we” who should control immigrant integration. Doubtless Carr agreed; her own experience at the neighbourhood house showed the positive effects of community building in a very multicultural neighbourhood. Walter’s review of the Welcoming and Inclusive Workplaces Program showed a counter example of very top-town efforts to combat racism in our communities.

All told, the symposium was a rare example of the coming together of planning’s Holy Trinity. Here’s to more of the same.

Immigrant settlement patterns in Toronto

For the past few years there has been a remarkable amount of research looking at immigrant settlement patterns in Toronto, Vancouver, and Montreal. While these articles rely upon the latest data from the 2006 Census, they are informed by models of urban growth and change that are decades old. This, and their American origins, may influence their application to Canadian cities.

A recent example of the media coverage of immigrant settlement patterns is Doug Sanders article in The Globe and Mail (Are poor ‘ethnic’ areas cages?, February 28, 2009). Sanders asks whether areas with high immigrant concentrations are ethnic ghettos, “where people are trapped in a culturally isolated island of poverty and permanent segregation” or ethnic enclaves, “where people choose to live among fellow immigrants in order to forge ties to the new country, launch small businesses and help one another become members of Canadian society so that their kids can live elsewhere.” Sanders criticizes other writers who have implied that Canadian cities are becoming increasingly polarized and segregated. He also points out that many groups who have more segregated residential patterns are wealthy, such as the Jewish and Italian populations in Toronto.

Although Sanders never mentions them, long-standing theories about how cities grow and change underlie his article. The four most important are the concentric growth model (Charles Booth, 1902), the spatial assimilation model (E.W. Burgess, 1925), the housing career model, and the spatial mismatch model (John F. Kain, 1969).

The concentric growth model is by far the oldest; in fact, Booth was merely the first modern scholar to write about concentric patterns in cities. Burgess further developed the concentric model, arguing that socio-economic status increased towards the edges of the city. Concentric zones were the financial and office district, central retail district, wholesale and light manufacturing zone, heavy manufacturing zone, zone of workingmens’ homes, residential zone, and commuter zone. In 1920s Chicago, when Burgess was writing, the poorest areas of the city were next to manufacturing districts, while the wealthiest were located in rail and streetcar suburbs on the edge of the city. Chicago’s ethnic groups (main Italian, Chinese, and African American) lived in the workingmens’ zone. It was Burgess’ assumption that since the periphery of the city was the most desirable area to live, immigrants would eventually move outward as their socioeconomic status increased (the spatial assimilation model). Although the two models were criticized and found inaccurate only a decade later in Homer Hoyt’s 1939 study of 142 American cities, they have remained remarkably influential.

The housing career model is one of the most commonly used in research dealing with immigrants’ settlement patterns. It likely originated with the Federal Housing Administration (US) and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation early in the postwar era. Home ownership was then considered more stable and socially acceptable than renting; housing also quickly became a valuable consumer product in the late 1940s. The housing career model is based upon the idealized human life cycle, which includes pre-child, childearing, childrearing and launching, post-child, and later life stages. The model is linear and progressive; families are assumed to move towards single family home ownership and then to downsize as they get older. The model is used extensively in economic and housing forecasts, and in municipal planning documents.

The spatial mismatch model was developed by John F. Kain. In his view, a major reason behind spatial mismatch was the segregation of African Americans due to housing market discrimination. As cities grew and employers increasingly located in the suburbs, African Americans were unable to move to suburban housing, and in many cases unable to travel to suburban settings due to low car ownership. This resulted in longer commute distances and decreased labour market participation for African Americans.

Interestingly, these models were all (perhaps with the exception of housing career) created in the American context. While Canadian culture is similar, there are a number of marked differences between Canadian and American cities. First and foremost, Canada’s population is concentrated in very few large cites, and a good number of mid-sized ones. Toronto (5.1 million), Montreal (3.6 million), and Vancouver (2.1 million) are the Big Three. Following them are Ottawa-Gatineau (1.1 million), Calgary (1.1 million), Edmonton (715,500), Winnipeg (694,600), and Hamilton (692,900). Sixty percent of immigrants settle in the Big Three; the vast majority end up in Toronto (over 40%). Almost half (2.2 million) of Toronto’s population are immigrants.

Secondly, even back in the 1970s, researchers remarked that Toronto did not have a “race problem”. This is not to deny the racism faced by Chinese and South Asian Canadians a century ago, nor that faced by the Jewish and Italian communities until the 1960s (in fact, these four groups are still among the most segregated in Canadian cities). However, Canadian cities are devoid of the large swathes of inner city segregation common to many American cities. University of Toronto researchers Alan Walks and Larry Bourne studied residential segregation in all 27 Canadian Census Metropolitan Areas. While largest cities had the highest proportion of segregated neighbourhoods, there were no ghettos (which were classified as census tracts having at least 70% minority residents, 66% from one single ethnic group and at least 30% of ethnic group members living in such neighbourhoods). Although some groups were segregated, none approached the level of segregation experienced by African Americans in the US. Further, Walks and Bourne found that residential segregation decreased from 1991-2001, but many visible minority groups were moving into areas with high proportions of other visible minorities. The researchers linked this to the availability of low-rent apartment housing and increasing affordability problems among new immigrants. Other researchers have found that rising rates of segregation are in fact due to the fact that a commonly-used method, the Index of Segregation, measures the extent to which minority group members are exposed only to one another in their neighbourhood. As Canadian cities become more diverse, this likelihood increases, resulting in higher rates of segregation.

These differences between Canadian and American cities are crucial. In addition to this are trends common in postindustrial cities. Toronto and Vancouver in particular have tight housing markets and competitive rents. Combined with structural changes like immigration policy and economic restructuring, immigrants cannot possibly settle in Canadian cities following the concentric pattern established in the interwar period in the US. Numerous articles have explored the causes behind immigrants’ settlement directly in suburban areas in these two cities (see ‘Immigrants prefer suburbs to living in core areas’, Globe and Mail, March 31, 2008). Some, like Anthony Reinhart, imply that while the housing career model is incorrect here (immigrants are settling directly in single-family housing rather than transitioning into it gradually) the core principles of spatial assimilation are intact (immigrants are choosing the most desirable housing location). But in a city with high housing prices and high rents, are immigrants choosing the most desirable housing, or simply the most affordable? Are they, in fact, ‘choosing’ at all, when inner city neighbourhoods are increasingly dominated by luxury condos beyond their means? This remains to be seen.

Finally, should these models continue to drive our planning practices? For example, is it acceptable that the most desirable areas to live in are at the edge of the city? Is this true in today’s postmodern city with a strong demand for urban loft living? Should we focus housing policy on homeownership, at the expense of rental housing, co-operatives and other tenure types? When the average family cannot afford a home in Toronto or Vancouver, perhaps it is time for policy shift. In our multicultural country, is it acceptable that we expect immigrants to integrate into suburban neighbourhoods with the Canadian-born? Or have we finally accepted the idea that ethnic neighbourhoods and mixed neighbourhoods can co-exist? The media storm on this issue indicates that we have not.

VMT is down in the US…but not in Canada?

A company called Inrix analyzes over 30,000 road segments on more than 47,000 miles of the major highways in the 100 largest metropolitan areas in the US to measure urban traffic congestion. Here’s a link to their report, where they found a 3 percent drop in Vehicle Miles Travelled in the US in 2008. Some regions did better than others, of course: Riverside, San Diego, San Francisco, and LA had some of the largest decreases from 2007-2008, as did Honolulu, Miami and Seattle. Inrix found that high gas prices and a lagging economy were the primary root causes of the decrease…not increased public transit use. Still, it’s worth celebrating the fact that increased gas prices have a definite impact on car usage; in times of economic largesse higher gas taxes could be implemented.

This news comes on the heels of a New York Times article citing the highest public transit ridership in 52 years. Ridership rose sharply as the result of high gas prices in 2008, and remained high even when gas prices dropped in the latter part of the year.

This contrasts with Statistics Canada’s more dour observations: we drove 5% more in 2006 than in 2002. Stats Can reported that higher incomes and lower prices for other goods have partially offset the cost of higher consumption rates and gasoline prices between Census years (2001, 2006). As this article was released in August of 2008 before the current economic crisis had taken hold in Canada, things may have started to shift. StatsCan noted that in two earlier recessionary periods, Canadians did in fact consume less gasoline:

The volume of gasoline purchased by consumers fell 12.1 per cent between 1980 and 1984, when prices rose 65 per cent
Consumption fell 5.1 per cent from 1989 to 1991 when prices increased 12 per cent.

The effects in Canadian cities, then, are still to be seen. In the US, with many cities cutting transit routes, laying off transit operators, and raising fares due to the recession, ridership may not remain at the historic 2008 levels in the coming year.

Toronto does not equal New York

Kramer: What’s today?
Newman: It’s Thursday.
Kramer: Really? Feels like Tuesday.
Newman: Tuesday has no feel. Monday has a feel, Friday has a feel, Sunday has a feel….
Kramer: I feel Tuesday and Wednesday…
Jerry: All right, shut up the both of you!

What makes New York City feel like New York City? Why do some cities feel laid-back and others competitive? Why are people living in some cities friendly, while in others you’d be hard-pressed to get a mere “hello”? How can Seattle and Vancouver, a mere 220 im (137 mi) apart, feel so different? The natural setting of the place helps set the scene, whether it is Calgary’s view of the Rocky Mountains, Ottawa’s strategic place on the Rideau and Ottawa Rivers, or Charlottetown’s charmed seaside position on the sheltered side of Prince Edward Island. But this can’t be the whole story, or all seaside cities would feel the same.

A city’s history undoubtedly plays a major part in its personality. Paris’ glory days of bohemian art, poetry, and strolls on the Champs d’Elysees shaped the city as much as Baron Haussman’s reorganization. Chicago’s Great Fire forced architects to rebuild; it became the Gateway to the Midwest as rail and shipping lines began to converge on the city. Toronto’s reputation as a financial and banking capital was established by the turn of the century, creating an established upper class. Winnipeg’s strategic position among various Aboriginal communities gave it an early multicultural start. Montreal’s establishment in 1642 as a trading, shipping and immigration port lends it a European air. Small towns often provide great examples of history shaping our perceptions; often their names indicate their main historical claim to fame (Petrolia, Ontario; Medicine Hat, Alberta). When cities become known as centers of culture, business, or government, it forever shapes the unique “feel” of the place.

The urban design and layout of city contribute a large part to its social and spatial geography. The famous triplexes, cobblestone streets, granite curbs and irregular street patterns create old-world charm in Montreal. Not only are the triplexes architecturally interesting, they provide the city with a wealth of rental housing; Montreal still has by far the highest rental rate in Canada. Toronto and New York City are often compared; films set in NYC are often filmed in Toronto. It can’t be denied that the two cities share a superficial similarity: both are grid cities trying to reclaim their formerly industrial waterfronts. Both have massive modern skyscrapers in their cores, often shading the streets below for all but one mere hour of the day. Yet the two cities could not be more different. There is a grittiness in NYC that simply does not exist in Toronto, of the type that completely justifies Sinatra’s lyrics. “If I can make it there, I’ll make it anywhere” really doesn’t apply to Toronto…while the rents are high, they’re nothing like Manhattan’s.

Architectural styles help create a social atmosphere and establish a city’s uniqueness: the colourful clapboard houses in Lunenberg, Nova Scotia could not be found anywhere else. Their bright colours are the perfect foil for the omnipresent fog, and they are indisputably maritime. Chicago is known for its beautiful historic skyscrapers, an effort to re-establish the city as one of culture and influence. Toronto’s Cabbagetown, Chinatown, Rosedale and Danforth may not be nearly as well-known as Manhattan’s Tribeca, Upper West Side and Greenwich Village, which have been explored extensively in film, art, and literature. But they help define Toronto as a “city of neighbourhoods,” and highlight the various architectural styles: Victorian in Cabbagetown; aging Victorian, modern, and postmodern on the Danforth. With these styles come the social archetypes: yuppies (former hippies) in Cabbagetown; the Jewish elite in Rosedale; new immigrants and artists in Chinatown.

Economic circumstances shape a city as well. While Vancouver was becoming established as a natural resource economy, with little pretensions to urbanism, Toronto’s economy was solidly financial and insurance-based. This created a very dense, high-rise financial core in the city decades earlier than Vancouver, which is still reeling from the high-rises established in the 1990s. Vancouverites will likely never have the tolerance for density that Torontonians have; people who grew up within sight of the sea and the mountains cannot stand to be in the city at all. Vancouver has seen only one recession in the past few decades (1981-82), while Toronto has gone through three (1973-75, 1981-82, and 1989-97). Do economic upheavals create a particular social atmosphere? They well might, since competition increases as companies downsize and jobs become scarce. Detroit is now plagued with all the social problems associated with a once-thriving industry gone bust. In Bowling for Columbine, Michael Moore shows the desolation of Flint, Michigan following the decline of the manufacturing sector. Resource cities and towns have a distinctly different feel than manufacturing, financial, or cultural centers; those vulnerable to recessions have a distinctly depressive atmosphere.

Transportation likely plays a part in setting an urban scene. Chicago’s Loop District is shaped by the L-train, while the city itself grew, finger-like, along its rail lines throughout the 1920s and 1930s. This gives it a unique nodal development pattern compared to cities that grew after the advent of the automobile; its old rail suburbs each have their own unique feel. New York wouldn’t be New York without the subway; its boroughs wouldn’t be so well-established without its rail lines. Many New York stories center around the colourful differences between residents of the boroughs; of the different accents and ethnicities in the city. The character of the commuter was first created in New York. San Francisco’s cable cars and the Market streetcar line are indisputably a major part of the urban fabric; the cable car technology was is linked to the city’s steep topography and the lines divided the city into distinct neighbourhoods. Vancouver’s main streets, including Granville, 4th Avenue and Broadway, still show the legacy of streetcar-stop retail development even though they’ve been converted to electric bus routes. Los Angeles, while it has constructed many new miles of LRT, will probably always be best known as a city of highways. Cities with rapid transit inevitably have a busier, more urban feel than those that rely on buses because their capacities are so much larger and they travel so much faster. That distinct gruff New Yorker is possibly a product of over a hundred years of mass transit, mass crowds and mass competition.

Many would say that it’s people that create a unique social “feel”. But don’t these other factors play a major role in attracting and retaining certain types of people? Each year, artists, fashion designers and writers are drawn to the hip, cultural meccas of New York and Toronto. People averse to risk are unlikely to settle in a city with constant economic upheavals, which may be ideal for those in business or real estate. Those who crave outdoor recreation move to Vancouver, Seattle and Denver; winter sports fans end up in Montreal, Calgary and Aspen. Families are drawn to mid-sized cities with leafy urban neighbourhoods and affordable housing; urban professionals and students may be drawn to areas with older, period housing. Larger cities are more tolerant to members of ethnocultural groups, singles, couples without kids, and gays/lesbians. And let’s not forget those who choose to live urban lifestyles and take public transit, who tend towards Toronto, Montreal, New York and Chicago.

But none of this explains the unique place Toronto has in the heart of Canadians. As the largest city in the largest province in Canada, Toronto is often mocked by the many Calgarians and Haligonians who complain that “Toronto thinks it’s the center of the universe.” Will Ferguson joked in Why I Hate Canadians that Canadians went through stages of hating Toronto, moving to Toronto, wanting to move to Vancouver, and deciding to stay in Toronto. History? Architecture? Economy? Culture? Whatever the reason, Toronto is not Calgary or Halifax; it is most certainly not New York. And that’s probably a good thing.

All is one; all is planning

One of the main topics of conversation in our PhD programme is the ever-expanding definition of planning. For us, planning can include social and community development, ecological planning and natural resource management, transportation planning, land use planning, urban design and urban development. A student will never get past their initial committee meeting, let alone their comprehensive exam, prospectus, or dissertation defense, without answering the dreaded, “How is your research planning research?” Since our school has a Masters and a PhD programme, students at the Masters thesis defense are likely to answer this question as well.

The purpose of this question has eluded me for some time now. At our school we are taught that planning is so broad and all-encompassing that it can include…well, virtually anything. We know, from talking with other students at various schools across North America, that many schools concentrate on land use planning, policy development, research methods and tools used by planners in the field. This narrower planning focus produces planning professionals who are quite adept at their jobs in municipal government and consultancy. But does it produce researchers? Academics? Writers? This is less certain.

And how does the student answer the question of planning relevancy? Is it enough to answer that planners are concerned with non-motorized transportation, the location of affordable housing, participatory planning? In my case, I will be conducting research on the housing and transportation choices of immigrants in Toronto. I have found numerous examples in Toronto’s municipal and regional plans that show a new concern for housing and transit infrastructure provision. Toronto’s Official Plan documents show housing affordability and housing tenure are major concerns, as rental housing is not growing at a rate high enough to meet demand. Municipalities in the Toronto region, like Mississauga and Brampton, acknowledge their high rates of immigration and set out areas for future housing development and better links to adjacent transportation systems. Is my research going to “sit on a shelf somewhere” while practicing planners are concerned with more practical matters? Since local planners are writing policy about accommodating population growth through residential infill along transportation corridors, mine is indeed a planning question and my research could prove useful to those in this policy area. But it could also be useful in the wider debates around affordable housing provision, the shrinking middle class, income disparities, and immigrant integration. That’s my answer and I’m sticking to it!

We will be having a symposium next week at our school (SustainaWHAT? SustainaHOW?), and a few of us will be discussing the issue of moving from theory into practice. Our PhD panel will discuss the various ways that research in our areas has moved from academia to planning practice: through the intermediary of teaching, through action research, through the provision of hard data to be used in policy creation, by challenging existing models and bringing new ideas into the public discourse, by publishing our work in different venues and presenting to various professional organizations. We argue that it is our contribution to planning practice that distinguishes our work from related fields such as geography or sociology; we consider this more essential than any contribution to knowledge.

I would argue that a breadth of planning knowledge is, and will continue to be, essential in our complex and ever-changing world. We need planners who can work with communities to develop solutions to local problems, those who can work on land use and regulatory change, those who can plan new transportation corridors and bike paths, and those who can develop guidelines for better neighbourhoods. We need people working on both practical tools and on theory development. Planning history tells us that there is no one-size-fits-all approach.

Ren Thomas

M.A., Ph.D. Candidate (Planning, UBC)

The relevance of research

White picket fences and fresh eggs?

The Holy Trinity: policy, practice, and research

VMT is down in the US…but not in Canada?

All is one; all is planning

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