Brent Toderian

Brent Toderian is an international consultant on advanced urbanism with TODERIAN UrbanWORKS, Vancouver’s former Director of City Planning, and the President of the Council for Canadian Urbanism. Follow him on Twitter @BrentToderian

Member for
18 years 2 months

Contributed 69 posts

Full Bio

Brent is President of TODERIAN UrbanWORKS in Vancouver, Canada, and has over 24 years experience in advanced and innovative urbanism, city-planning and urban design. He advises cities & innovative developments all over the world, from Ottawa to Oslo, from Sydney to Medellin, from Auckland to Helsinki.

Brent left the role of Chief Planner for Vancouver in 2012 after 6 years, with accomplishments that included 2010 Winter Olympics-related planning and design; the internationally regarded EcoDensity Initiative; the Greenest City Initiative; new skyline-shaping and public view corridor strategies; innovative active transport/public use of streets approaches; the Cambie Corridor Plan and other next-generation TOD actions; the transformative Laneway Housing Initiative; and many other ground-breaking initiatives. He led all visioning, planning, and urban design for Vancouver during a challenging era of significant change, and earned an international reputation as a successful city-maker. He also oversaw all architectural and design approvals, where he brought in new approaches for green design and architectural diversity.

Brent is also past Manager of Centre City Planning + Design in Calgary Canada, where he pioneered innovative approaches to visioning, design and architectural review, and created/led the award-winning Centre City Plan.

His career started as an award-winning planning and design consultant based in Ontario Canada, with projects from Toronto to Yellowknife.

A passionate practitioner + advocate for creative city-building, Brent is the founding & current President of the Council for Canadian Urbanism (CanU); a regular columnist on CBC Radio on "city-making"; an Advisory Board member of ULI BC; a contributing blogger with Planetizen, Huffington Post & SPACING; and an active leader in many global organizations related to cities. He is a sought-after international speaker, writer, teacher and collaborator on issues of advanced urbanism.

He can be reached at [email protected], on twitter @BrentToderian, and on-line at www.toderianurbanworks.com.

Does Twitter Support a Better Global Urbanism?

A few weeks ago I had lunch with a friend and fellow urbanist, Bob Ransford. Lunches with Bob are never boring, as we get right into things, and often debate. Bob’s a communications specialist and a longtime member of the Twitteratti (<a href="http://twitter.com/BobRansford" target="_blank">@BobRansford</a>), so amongst discussions about strengthening urbanism in the Cascadia Region, and affordability debates in Vancouver, I asked him a question that’s been on my mind for the last month: Is Twitter a positive tool for global urbanism? Put another way, is twitter facilitating smarter discussions on international city-building, or are we all getting dumber, 140 characters at a time?

Olympic Cities and Advanced City-Making - Part 1

Today marks the two year anniversary of the closing ceremonies of the 2010 Vancouver Olympics, and 150 days until the start of the 2012 London Summer Olympic Games. Soon millions around the World will turn their attention to London, and in fact to venues across the UK, for the largest sporting and cultural event on Earth.

The Law of Traffic Congestion, according to "The Flash!"

Across the world, city-builders who understand the complex relationship between land-use, car infrastructure and road congestion, struggle to communicate it in a simple way that resonates with the public. It's now well-demonstrated in transportation demand management (TDM) research and practice that you can't build your way out of traffic congestion by building roads, and in fact the opposite is true - the more free-ways and car lanes you build, the more people drive and the more congestion and other negative results there are.

"And the Winners are...": re:CONNECT Stand-outs Announced!

Last week, at an event attended by over 300 Vancouverites, we announced the winners of our re:CONNECT Open Ideas Competition regarding the future of our Viaducts and Eastern Core. If you missed my past posts on the steps leading up to the big night, it might help to read <a href="/node/52012" target="_blank">here</a> and <a href="/node/52571" target="_blank">here</a> first.

New Visions for the Viaducts - Vote for your Favourites!

As my <a href="/node/52012" target="_blank">last post profiled</a>, Vancouver is creatively working to define the future of our Georgia and Dunsmuir Viaducts - infrastructure that I've referred to as "the asterix" beside the statement that Vancouver has no freeways within our city. One of several inputs into that process is an open ideas competition called <a href="http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/planning/reconnect/index.htm" target="_blank">re:CONNECT</a>.