PhD » Ren Thomas

Finishing school

Steps in Completing a Ph.D.

Submit first draft. Wait for comments (January 7th).
Submit second draft. Wait for comments (April 5th).
Submit dissertation to formatting police and external examiner. Wait for approval (May 18th).
Final defense (June 20th).
Submit revisions. Wait for approval (August 15th).
Submit dissertation to online database. Wait for approval (August 22nd).
Make required formatting changes to rejected document. Re-submit dissertation to online database (August 24th).
Receive confirmation that dissertation has been approved (August 24th).

Reaching the end of an eight-month process: Priceless!

The bell tolls for Jack Layton

Less than four short months ago, I stood at the back of a standing-room-only crowd in a film studio in Burnaby. Two thousand people packed the building; there were still hundreds waiting outside. Suddenly, the crowd began to cheer wildly, waving orange signs and Canadian flags as a slim, well-dressed man strode energetically up to the stage. As the excitement built up, he ran up the steps, waving and smiling, shaking his now trademark cane in defiance of a recent hip replacement. This was his last stop on the campaign trail, and his party was enjoying a surge in popularity. Two days later, the New Democratic Party won an unprecedented 103 seats in the federal election, and slim, well-dressed “Smilin’ Jack” Layton became Leader of the Opposition.

It is a sad reality that Layton, who led the NDP to its most powerful position in its 50-year history, should not live to see the next Parliamentary session. Layton lost his battle with cancer quite quickly and unexpectedly in the early hours of Monday, August 22nd, and a nation mourns his passing. Many of us were looking forward to his sharp debating tactics and keen insights while defending the working class, urging protection of the environment, and supporting urban issues in Stephen Harper’s first majority government. The NDP as Loyal Opposition was the sole consolation, many of us believed, for the unsettling Conservative majority that came about on May 2nd after polls had consistently predicted another minority government.

Layton was a true leader: charismatic, passionate, fair, and deeply committed. And yet, he embodied contrasts. Layton grew up in a home steeped in politics; his father, was Conservative MP Robert Layton and his mother, Doris Steeves, was a grand-niece of William Steeves, a Father of Confederation. Although he received a Ph.D. in political science and taught at Ryerson University, Layton moved quickly into public life as a Toronto city councillor. From 1984 to 1991, Layton was one of a handful of left-wing councillors, known for cycling, coming to council meetings in jeans and opposing mega-projects such as SkyDome. He became head of the Federation of Canadian Municipalities in the mid-1990s. After a couple of unsuccessful campaigns to become an MP, he was elected leader of the NDP in 2003; he won the Toronto-Danforth seat in a 2004 by-election.

Like many politicians, Layton worked hard at refining his image, crafting his responses to the media and developing insightful critiques of policies and agendas. He made lots of public appearance and became something of a media darling in the 2000s; “Smilin’ Jack”, he had become. He wasn’t universally popular; no NDP leader could be. Yet there was something real, something of the ordinary and everyday Canadian, that remained in that calm, well-honed political persona. As John Ibbitson writes, “Always there was, at his centre, this unshakable belief in social justice, married to principled conviction that politicians should treat each other and the voters who gave them their mandate with some measure of decency and respect.” That honesty shone through this spring’s campaign trail, as Layton poured beers at a Montreal bar and sparred with Michael Ignatieff during the English-language debate. Despite his education, his political lineage, and his polished public image, Layton appealed to Canadians as the guy next door, the politician you’d most like to have over for drinks. Compared to Ignatieff, who struggled to connect with voters not just because of his Ph.D., but because he did not appear to have an unwavering commitment to Canadians or to the public service, Layton appeared dedicated and genuine.

Layton’s commitment to public service were evident even when, less than a month ago, he disclosed that he was fighting a new type of cancer. He promised to take a few months over to deal with his health and then return when Parliament resumed in September. As The Globe and Mail reports, he met with NDP staff just two days before his death to hammer out two letters: one to Canadians, and the second to his party outlining the direction for the coming months. As always, he was optimistic, but also realistic:

“Hope and optimism have defined my political career. … As my time in political life draws to a close, I want to share with you my belief in your power to change this country and this world. Your energy, your vision, your passion for justice are exactly what this country needs today.” Jack Layton, August 20, 2011

Jack Layton’s death will rock the NDP’s foundations as much as the death of its first leader, Tommy Douglas, who also died of cancer after a political career that shaped this country through the introduction of its most cherished social welfare programs. The NDP will struggle rudderless during the months to come, but they will be the Official Opposition for at least four years. They will have to quickly elect a new leader and work desperately to maintain a strong presence in Parliament among the Canadians who voted for Jack, and not necessarily the NDP.

I only saw Jack one other time, also at a distance. A few years ago he was in Vancouver for the annual Gay Pride Parade, where he rode in a car festooned with orange NDP balloons, waving and smiling at the thousands who lined Denman Street in support of the LGBT community. He was present just six weeks ago at Toronto’s Pride Parade, an event that Mayor Rob Ford boycotted. In the jaded world of politics, Jack Layton had an integrity that spoke to Canadians regardless of their political leanings: he was committed to doing what he believed was right. He now stands among those great Canadians who fought for the greater good–Tommy Douglas, Nellie McClung, Pierre Trudeau, Terry Fox, Lester B. Pearson–whose deaths struck us to our very cores. Canada was built upon the work of these.

A momentous Canada Day

Happy 144th Birthday Canada! What a year it’s been: Jack Layton leading the NDP to their highest number of seats ever in the House of Commons, the elections of Stephen Harper, Rob Ford (Mayor of Toronto) and Naheed Nenshi (Mayor of Calgary). Massive arrests at the G20 riots and Vancouver going all the way to the Stanley Cup final (then rioting). The launch of Spacing Magazine’s first national issue profiling urban issues across the country, and the removal of the long-form Census. The appointments of hockey superstar Hayley Wickenheiser, comedian Eugene Levy, and journalistic wonder Malcolm Gladwell to the Order of Canada, just in time for Canada Day. And of course, the arrival of Wills and Kate in Ottawa for their first royal visit, in time to mark the late Princess Diana’s 50th birthday (wait for it…July 1st, 2011).

This Canada Day also marks a one-year anniversary for www.renthomas.ca: it has been a year since I have begun collecting stats on this website. In the past year, over 10,000 viewers have visited the site; this June a record 1,200 viewers stopped by (an average of 40 per day). Just because anniversaries tend to bring out reminiscing, here are the most popular posts in the past year:

Top 10 Posts on www.renthomas.ca

Does Canada have an Ivy League? (1,500)
Modern racism in “the most multicultural city in the world” (922)
Segregated or integrated? American and Canadian ethnic populations (358)
SCARP + SALA: Design presentations (347)
SCARP + SALA: Our new building (186)
A roundabout way of decreasing pedestrian safety (122)
Toronto’s “class divide” (120)
Immigrant settlement patterns in Toronto (99)
Toronto does not equal New York (82)
A new era for transportation planning in Toronto? (76)

Wait, what? 1,500 of you read a little piece I wrote on Canada’s lack of Ivy League schools? Amazing: a post that grew out of observations I had made whenever I presented at American conferences has somehow drawn so many to this site. I’m pleased that hundreds have also been interested in my main areas of concentration: immigration and transportation issues in Toronto, Vancouver, and Canada. Stay tuned, I’ll be writing more on these topics in the coming months. Many local readers found my site through a couple of articles I wrote on the design process for the proposed School of Community and Regional Planning joint building with the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture (#4 and #5); their publication resulted in my highest daily number of viewers in November 2010. Clearly I have attracted both local and international readers who share my interests and follow the latest posts. Thanks so much to everyone who has found the site and stopped to read some of my thoughts on urban planning issues. Happy Canada Day and for those of you in the US, Happy Fourth!

Revisiting the ‘crit’

As many of you know, I spent my undergraduate years at the University of Toronto, where I was enrolled in the Landscape Architecture Bachelors program. Five years of 36 hours of class per week, which included 15 hours of design studios and endless hours of preparation for the studio grind. Design projects are often frustrating and there is little guidance provided, but most students enjoy studio more than their other classes. Once students graduate and work in private practice, they thrive on design work. Within a few years, many become project managers so they can have more control over design projects. Some of my classmates from the Bachelors program are now associates in their firms.

However, studio is often taught in an adversarial way that doesn’t seem to benefit the students. It doesn’t accomplish much to hear, “Your design sucks!” Receiving daily criticism on your design work can be intimidating and, if it is not constructive, demoralizing. One of the most trying experiences in any design student’s life is the final ‘crit’, where critics from outside of the school are invited to comment on their work. This is a more formal than the ‘pin-up’, which happens throughout the semester at any given time, and usually just involves your teacher and classmates. Students may spend a night preparing for a pin-up, but they invest a week or more (including several all-nighters) preparing finished drawings for a final crit. Even the setting indicates a shift in formality: while the pin-up is usually held in studio wherever a suitable white wall can be found to pin trace paper drawings, the crit is often held in a larger, more public room on the main floor of the building. The critics are often local architects, urban designers, landscape architects, and occasionally urban writers or thinkers. Again, sometimes the criticism is useful, but it is often hurtful and demeaning: I remember one Chinese student whose crit included a vicious criticism of his English skills. Another student received a fifteen-minute harangue on her choice of paper for the final drawings, which the critic deemed substandard. In both cases, the critic never said a word about the actual design (click here for more typical crit comments).

You can see why, when I was asked to be a critic for a design studio last week, I warily approached the invitation. An architect friend of mine was going to be a critic at Emily Carr University of Art and Design, here on Granville Island in Vancouver, and the class needed more critics. The students were architecture students from the University of Oregon who were in Vancouver on a field studio. Their assignment was to design a new building for the end of Railspur Alley; two of the existing buildings are underused. Under the guidance of their teacher, Associate Professor Stephen Duff, they had met with Granville Island planners and local retailers to get a sense of what types of uses were most needed (more artist studios, performance spaces, and teaching kitchens) and what was lacking (nightlife). We were going to be giving them feedback on their projects at the mid-term point; there is still a month until their final crit.

As usual, the students pinned up their projects on the walls: their trace paper sections and plans, cardboard models, and flurry of last-minute activity were all too familiar. What differed was the crit process. There were about eight critics, most of us schooled in architecture or landscape architecture, and most working in private practice. We were each assigned a student for five 35-minute slots, and we rotated throughout the two small rooms. The student spent about half of the time presenting their work, and then we asked questions, we made suggestions, and got into discussions with the students about problems they were having. Occasionally we were paired, so the critic-to-student ratio was 2:1. I found the ratio, and the crit process, to be much more productive for the students: they were involved in a real dialogue about their projects, rather than meekly receiving commentary in front of an audience. The students also seemed fairly confident about their work, which shows they had been mentored more than cajoled (and says a lot about their teacher, an affable and open-minded sort). However, they weren’t stubborn or defensive about their designs; on the contrary, all of the students I worked with were interested in the critics’ opinions, and intended to use the new ideas to keep exploring their designs until the final crit in June. What we had, then, was an exercise in problem-solving rather than an adversarial “Defend your idea!” Of course, this wasn’t a final crit; the students had time to keep working and change their designs. But I have a hunch that their final crit would be pretty similar, even if they were required to present their ideas and receive criticism in front of the whole class.

This crit was so superior to the antagonistic crits I experienced that I wonder why they aren’t always done this way. I’m pretty sure that the harsh, and often personal, criticism that we received at school didn’t make us better designers (and I know for a fact that it debilitated many students). I can hear the murmurs of “too soft” and “not rigorous enough” already, but as someone who has crossed the disciplinary divide, I assure you that students don’t receive stinging critiques on a daily basis from their sociology or chemistry professors. Even PhD students, as aspiring professors, are taught to give their students constructive criticism in the classroom setting and when grading assignments. Why aren’t more design studios integrating guest critics at the more informal mid-term crits, using a higher critic-to-student ratio, and spurring real dialogue about students’ designs?

Youth plan to rock the vote on May 2nd

In the past two weeks, an amazing development has taken root at university campuses across Canada.

Spurred by comedian Rick Mercer and activist groups LeadNow, Project Democracy and Apathy is Boring, students are holding vote mobs to show that they will be voting in the upcoming federal election. Media coverage of the vote mobs has been slow and grudging, but that doesn’t seem to have dampened the spirits of young voters.

Mercer’s rant was recorded on the day the government fell, March 29, 2011. In it, he said that there were over 3 million eligible voters between the ages of 18 and 24 and “as far as the major political parties are concerned, you may as well be dead.” He encouraged young people to get out there and “scare the hell out of the people who run this country”, since only 37% of this group voted in the last election. Mercer has been characteristically humble about his rant, saying that he had no idea young people would react the way they have. Beginning with the University of Guelph, students at over 25 universities have held vote mobs so far. The resulting videos are so fun, positive, and non-partisan that they have provoked both local (London Free Press, Guelph Mercury) and national (CBC, CTV) media attention.

One can’t help but notice the parties’ lack of response to students’ desire to vote this time around. If hundreds of seniors all across the country started mobilizing to vote, it would be front page news. When young people do it, it’s cutesy headlines (“Thanks a heap, Rick Mercer–the students might actually vote” and “Voting-mob mentality has young people running amok” at The Globe and Mail) and skepticism (“Will vote mobs translate into actual votes?”, Toronto Star ). One notable exception: the Toronto Star’s Youth Nation, which profiles candidates under 30 blogging about issues as diverse as renewable energy and social justice.

“I’m not sure what a flash mob is but it sounds a bit disconcerting … I don’t know about ‘flash’ or ‘mobs’ but I don’t like the context of either word.” –Conservative MP John Baird

Baird’s comment made many students shake their heads in disbelief. It illustrated the disconnect between federal politicians and youth. Several studies have shown that Canadian youth aren’t disengaged at all; they just participate in different ways and have different values from older adults (check out an article I wrote on youth participation in transportation planning a couple of years ago).

The sole political response to vote mobs has been from the Conservative party, who tried to have a special ballot held at the University of Guelph declared illegal. After the success of their vote mob, over 700 students stood in line for an hour to cast votes on April 13th; special ballots are often held for groups with lower than average turnout, such as students, aboriginals and those with physical disabilities. Elections Canada declared the Guelph special ballot valid, but in order to avoid controversy it said it was stopping all special ballots at universities. The Conservative party had already come under fire on April 3rd for kicking a couple of students out of a rally in London, Ontario, a move that Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff and NDP leader Jack Layton swiftly criticized (check out the Liberals’ cheeky “Hey Stephen Harper, stop creeping me on Facebook”). The events seem to have lit a fire of passion among students across the country (LeadNow assembled 3600 signatures within 12 hours in an online petition to have the Guelph votes declared valid). But one wonders at the wisdom of cancelling special ballots at universities: way to make voting harder and even more confusing for first-time student voters.

I was at UBC’s vote mob today with about a hundred other students. While the event itself was non-partisan, these images show that there was some interest from the major parties. The Young Liberals of Canada handed out flyers (above right) at the bus loop entering UBC. Conservative candidate Deborah Merideth (Vancouver Quadra) handed out free snacks after the event. And the Green Party’s Adriane Carr (Vancouver Centre) was also on hand (below right).

Young people have been discounted and discredited as lazy, apathetic non-citizens for far too long. They’ve seen the political leaders court seniors, women, families, and immigrant groups while persistently ignoring youth in this and every other election. Issues that matter to youth, like the environment, health care, education, and civil liberties (not to mention public transit), linger on the back burner while tax cuts and deficits dominate the media. It’s about time they took matters into their own hands.

Our newest graduates: Dr. Leslie Shieh and Dr. Janice Barry

A couple of weeks ago, we had what was probably the two busiest weeks in SCARP history. Susan Fainstein was here as our Scholar-in-Residence, SCARP celebrated its 60th anniversary, we hosted our third annual Student Symposium, and two doctoral students successfully defended their dissertations. Writing about all these other events has kept me busy until now!

Leslie Shieh examined Shequ (Community) construction in China, in particular the effectiveness of State policies in local communities (read the dissertation here). Her study, “Shequ Construction: Policy Implementation, Community Building, and Urban Governance in China” shows the impact of a wide set of policies intended to carry out administrative functions and deliver social care: under Shequ policies, thousands of service centers have been built, offering cultural and social services to residents. While many Western planners advocate for community-led change, Leslie’s interviews with local community groups and residents shows how much agency residents have under the Shequ policy framework and urban governance model, and challenges North American experiences of ineffective state planning interventions. Leslie’s work was published in City (“Restructuring Urban Governance: Community Construction in Contemporary China“, 2008) and she has a chapter in the forthcoming Global Capitalism and the Future of Agrarian Society (Arif Dirlik and Alexander Woodside, eds.). She is now busy publishing more of her research findings and working in the Vancouver urban development scene.

Janice Barry’s dissertation is entitled “Building Collaborative Institutions for Government-to-Government Planning:
A Case Study of the Nanwakolas Council’s Involvement in the Central Coast Land and Resource Management Planning Process” (read the dissertation here). She examined a government-to-government process involving a First Nations group and the Provincial government, using interviews and content analysis of policy documents. Her work contributes to the growing body of literature linking planning and new institutional theory, clarifying the drivers and dimensions of institutional change. Janice is currently a postdoctoral researcher in the Urban Studies department at the University of Glasgow with Dr. Libby Porter. They have just started fieldwork for another study involving First Nations communities in BC: “Planning with Indigenous Customary Land Rights: An investigation of shifts in planning law and governance in Canada and Australia.”

Congratulations to these stellar graduates, who have been great mentors, co-conspirators, and friends during my time at SCARP.

Royal Gala: SCARP turns 60

Keynote speakers UBC PhD student Ren Thomas and landscape architect Cornelia Oberlander spoke at SCARP's 60th anniversary gala (Image source: Vancouver Courier February 9, 2011)

On February 3rd, SCARP held its 60th Anniversary Gala at the Four Seasons Hotel in Vancouver. Over 300 people turned out for the event, including alumni from the first graduating class in 1953. The event was suggested by celebrated regional planner Ken Cameron, a SCARP alumnus, and it was a real success. Our MC for the evening was Vancouver planner Mark Holland, and he was well-suited to this task, with his deep voice and great sense of humour. Special guest for the evening was Cornelia Oberlander, Canada’s most famous landscape architect. Cornelia’s husband, the late Peter Oberlander, was the first director of SCARP and instrumental in the 1976 UN Habitat Conference. This year the entire Oberlander family joined us in celebrating a scholarship fund started in Peter’s honour. Other speakers included the Honorable Stephen Owen, SCARP Director Penny Gurstein, and Nick Sully from SHAPE Architecture, who will be working on SCARP’s new home, the Integrated Planning and Design Facility.

The second part of the evening featured reflections on SCARP’s past, present and future: Larry Beasley (former City of Vancouver planning co-director) addressed SCARP’s amazing past, I was pleased to speak for a few minutes on SCARP’s present, and Dr. Maged Senbel eloquently spoke of the future.

Alumnus Mark Holland and department head Penny Gurstein welcomed SCARPIES to UBC's School of Community and Regional Planning's 60th anniversary (Image Source: Vancouver Courier, February 9, 2011)

What stellar alumni we have…the heads of virtually every planning firm in Vancouver, many of the municipal and regional planners in BC, local developers, UN researchers, and the first PhD in planning granted to a Canadian woman (Ann McAfee, Larry’s co-director of planning at the City of Vancouver). Wow. Having been at SCARP for six years, it was also great to see many recent graduates who are now working at TransLink, BC Housing, HB Lanarc, and many other public, private, and non-profit bodies.

Fred Lee, sneaky photographer that he is, snapped these shots of us at the Gala. I’m sure there are more hovering around; a waiter at my favourite restaurant tipped me off to these in the Vancouver Courier (note: the captions are theirs, not mine).

SCARP welcomes Scholar-in-Residence Susan Fainstein

For the past three years, SCARP has been honoured to have high-profile planning scholars with us for one week under the Amacon-Beasley Scholar-in-Residence program. Our 2011 scholar is Dr. Susan Fainstein of the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Dr. Fainstein has also served as Acting Director of the planning program at Columbia University and as professor of planning at Rutgers University. Her many publications include the comprehensive edited volumes Readings in Planning Theory (2003, Blackwell) and Gender and Planning (2005, Rutgers University Press). She will be here from January 31st until February 4th, and will do a number of guest lectures at SCARP, Geography and Landscape Architecture. She will also be here for SCARP’s 60th Anniversary Gala and this year’s student symposium: Metropolis: Growing Just or Just Growing.

The Scholar-in-Residence program offers a great opportunity for students in related disciplines to chat informally, learn from, and become inspired by academic planners. Our first such opportunity came in 2009 with Dr. Tom Campanella from University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill). His path through landscape architecture to planning, and his interest in urban history and redevelopment, made him a very engaging and personable speaker. His interests in publishing for both academic and general audiences were also inspiring: his latest book, The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What It Means for the World (Princeton Architectural Press, 2008), tackled the rampant redevelopment taking place in China’s major cities. Our 2010 Scholar-in-Residence was Dr. Emily Talen of Arizona State University, who has written extensively on urban design, New Urbanism and socially mixed neighbourhoods.

Today, SCARP is hosting a “teach-in” of Fainstein’s latest book, The Just City (2010, Cornell University Press). Faculty members Penny Gurstein, Leonie Sandercock and Tom Hutton, along with PhD candidates Silvia Vilches and Victoria Barr, will discuss and critique The Just City in preparation for her visit. Three of us (Victoria, myself, and fellow PhD Candidate Jennie Moore) have also organized a roundtable discussion on justice and equity in planning (“Theorizing Growth in the Just Metropolis”) during the upcoming symposium where we will discuss the questions:

How can planners adrress issues of justice/ethics in their day-to-day work?
Is “justice” simply about equity or should it include notions of the “good,” democracy, sustainability?
What is the scale of the Just City? (Is it only within urban boundaries or in articulation to hinterlands and other cities as well?)

Susan Fainstein and John Friedmann will be joining us for this workshop. Here’s to an intellectually stimulating few weeks!

Congratulations Dr. Ugo Lachapelle!

In mid-October, in between the Association of Collegiate Schools of Planning (ACSP) conference in Minneapolis and a much-anticipated trip to Spain, I had the pleasure of witnessing the final doctoral exam of Ugo Lachapelle. Ugo came to SCARP under the supervision of Dr. Larry Frank, our Bombardier Chair of Sustainable Transportation. Ugo started his PhD the same year that I started my Masters at SCARP (2005), so it was particularly exciting to witness his exam and to hear that he passed and will graduate in the Spring of 2011.

Ugo chose to write his dissertation in the format of three papers, which could be published separately. His research focuses on the travel behaviour of public transit users and the relationship between transit and walking. Interestingly, the three-paper dissertation format, a relatively new innovation at UBC, has now been discontinued, making Ugo’s the only dissertation ever produced at SCARP to be published in this format. The dissertation, “Public transit use as a catalyst for an active lifestyle: mechanisms, predispositions and hindrances”, can be read here.

Ugo’s other work has been published in the Journal of Public Health Policy, in an article that examined whether people with employer-sponsored transit passes got more than the minimum recommended level of physical activity through walking. Ugo also published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine last year on how public health and transportation researchers study non-motorized transportation. His work, along with others spanning urban planning, public health and urban design, is a great example of the interdisciplinary nature of our research at SCARP.

Dr. Lachapelle is now a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Alan M. Voorhees Transportation Center at Rutgers University in the company of noted researchers Robert Noland, John Pucher and Devajyoti Deka. I’m sure he is also madly publishing his results, in between conference presentations at ACSP and the Transportation Research Board. Congratulations Ugo!

Update: Ugo will begin teaching at Université de Québec at Montréal, Département d’études urbaines et touristiques (Department of Urban Studies and Tourism) in Fall 2011.

SCARP + SALA: our new building

UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning (SCARP) is finally getting what it deserves: a new building. As I wrote in a popular post last year, there is considerable inequity among the faculties in terms of building facilities. Recently, SCARP joined forces with the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture to expand Lasserre and create a joint building for all three programs. Currently, the four short-listed firms are working on their design proposals, which will be presented this month.

The Lasserre building

West Mall Annex

The MacMillan building

The Landscape Architecture Anne

SALA building presentations

As you can see, all three programs are in desperate need of new facilities. The architects are all within Lasserre, but the landscape architects are split between the MacMillan building and the Landscape Architecture Annex. SCARP has been housed in two buildings, Lasserre (administrative and some faculty offices) and West Mall Annex (classrooms, computer labs, student and faculty offices), for many years now. Architecture and landscape architecture are now within the same faculty; a few years ago landscape architecture was housed in the Faculty of Land and Food Systems. SCARP remains independent of this union: our parent department is the College for Interdisciplinary Studies.

These needless silos have undoubtedly contributed to what many see as deep rifts between the three professions: while there are many students who traverse the divide and take courses in these related programs, the isolation remains. Students in all three programs seem very excited about the prospect of having more interaction with each other, more joint classes, and possibly more interaction between faculty. There is a lot of logic in this aspiration: architects, landscape architects and planners will be working closely together in practice once they graduate, and it is a sad fact that we don’t know how to work together, resolve conflicts and appreciate each others’ expertise. The students (and to some extent, faculty) hope is that a joint building will help in creating mutual understanding.

I remain cynical on the subject, and for good reason: my own experience at the School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture at University of Toronto taught me that a joint building is not necessarily utopia. Acculturation is defined an exchange of cultural habits that results when groups come into continuous contact: both cultures change, but each group remains distinct. Acculturation allows acceptance or rejection of aspects of both the ‘old’ and ‘new’ cultures, while assimilation implies total enculturation to the new, dominant culture. I would argue that architects tend to assimilate other closely-aligned fields. In our case, the architecture program was much larger (300 students compared to 125 in the landscape architecture program) and had considerably more faculty members. In the entire 119-year history of the school, it has always been headed by an architect. Consequently, the Borg-like architects dominated decision-making processes, from faculty hiring to program offerings to facilities, leaving the landscape architecture program to scramble for courses and instructors. By the time the school was revamped and rebranded and urban design program was added, the landscape architecture program had been largely consumed by the larger entity: it is now the John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design and 24 of its 32 faculty are architects. Resistance was, indeed, futile.

Outside of this administrative approach, there is something about the architecture profession that encourages a superiority complex. I’m sure this statement offends, so let me back it up with some concrete examples. In first year, our two studios were right next to each other on the same floor, so there was more room for social interaction (this was back when U of T had Bachelors degrees in both programs). But after that, landscape architects remained on the second floor (being a smaller program, there was enough space for us) while the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th year architects moved up to the third and fourth floors. The architecture students rarely condescended to socialize with the landscape architects, even they were only separated by one floor. As for joint classes, the accreditation boards of each profession require so many courses that in five years, we could only choose three classes ourselves, the rest being required. We did have history and theory together in first year, and site engineering (a class which the architecture students considered a waste of time) in second and third years. We also had a joint computer lab and library. But that was the extent of our co-mingling. I started out in architecture, but switched to landscape architecture in my second year. From the moment I made the switch, it was clear I was crossing the void: classmates no longer spoke to me, or asked condescendingly how I liked the easier workload in landscape architecture.

More than a decade later, I still run into acquaintances for whom the hierarchy is firmly entrenched: architecture is at the top, then landscape architecture, and then planning. At UBC, I ran into someone who had previously studied math and statistics, and had just finished his Masters in Architecture. When I mentioned I was studying planning, he replied, “Oh yeah? You must find that a lot easier.” (A common survival technique for architects, who work ridiculous overtime hours and rarely take time off, is to redefine the “normal” work week to have 80 or more hours; by this definition everyone else is a slacker). Many of my former classmates in both architecture and landscape architecture are still practicing in the field, and consider my pursuit of a planning PhD mildly amusing (and yet, surely they must consider this an achievement for someone who obviously has such a puny brain that she couldn’t hack it in architecture?) “Planners don’t actually DO anything,” they smirk. There is also the fact that architecture and landscape architecture are practical fields, and not research-based, so a PhD is not necessarily a requirement for teaching in these professions; consequently, it is viewed as a useless degree. “I’d rather do something real than something that’s just going to sit on a shelf,” is the common refrain. Having worked in the US, the UK and Canada, I can confirm that the hierarchy is firmly in place; I have friends working in Bombay, Shanghai, and Hong Kong who assure me things are the same where they live and work.

I think the opportunity for the new building and the opportunity for shared learning are exciting, but my own experiences at U of T have forever changed the way I think about collaboration. SCARP faculty and students, and planners in general, are big believers in participatory processes and collaborative decision-making. While we discuss the impact of power dynamics and imbalances in these processes and have some strategies in dealing with them, the fact remains that decisions tend to go in the most politically expedient direction, whether this means siding with the most vocal group, the group that is present at the most meetings, or the group with the most powerful friends. Collaboration and participation only work when each player is considered equal and is given equal opportunity to express views and impact the final decision. My limited experience with the current SCARP/SALA building suggest that this is not the case here, and I fear that again, resistance is futile: there have already been serious discussions about how much space each program would get, and if there will even be enough room for all of SCARP’s computer labs, classrooms and student offices. There seems to be little understanding of how planning students work and what types of spaces they might need (although we do have an urban design stream at SCARP, the majority of us don’t work in studios and most of us are not studying subjects that are related to urban design issues). Although urban design is a very popular stream at SCARP, in other years the community development/social planning stream has had the most students, or ecological and natural resource planning. Each year the admissions committee is very careful about admitting a balance of students to all the streams (currently there are six) in order to balance the number of students each faculty member supervises and the number that will enroll in each course. Most of the streams are thinly staffed (we have only one urban design professor) so this balance is important. A joint building with SALA might outwardly seem like we are heading towards the McGill model where planning is a studio-based degree, but actually this is unlikely.

I would love to be proven wrong on the new building and its design process, because nothing could be better for SCARP or SALA than to achieve a truly interdisciplinary melding of the three programs. It is a sad fact that in a city like Vancouver, which is held up as an example of urban planning and urban design, we don’t have a very strong urban design program. A joint building could give Vancouver designers and planners the chance to continue some interesting conversations on urban thinking in the city, the type of debate that happens at SFU’s lecture series; a laboratory for innovative design and planning. But we also need to preserve SCARP’s unique strengths: community development and social planning, ecological and natural resource planning, transportation planning, participatory planning and international development, many of which do not have a design component and are not usually offered at other planning schools. If you’re in Vancouver, come out to the architects’ presentations on September 23rd and 29th and get your chance to comment on them. The winner will be announced on October 20th.

Ren Thomas

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