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 brent@toderianurbanworks.com, on twitter @BrentToderian, and on-line at www.toderianurbanworks.com.

Laneway Housing Getting Lots of Attention

Since Vancouver Council unanimously supported the preparation of bylaws to introduce <a href="/node/35805" target="_blank">laneway housing across the City</a> in single family zones, the housing idea has been getting consistent media attention. Although we're in the process of using modeling and dialogue to answer the last few questions - what the parking standard should be, and the exact dimensions of the 1 1/2 story model - the most common question I get is "when can we apply for one?"

Competitions help young designers get B.I.G

Perhaps the biggest difference between the design processes in Europe and North America, at the building scale and increasingly at the neighbourhood scale, is in the use of design competitions. I've been fascinated by this difference for some time, and make a point while in every competition-friendly city I'm in, to dig a little deeper.

Water City Design - Copenhagen and Vancouver

In 2008 I took a wonderful trip to Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Malmo, Sweden. Although the occasion involved invitations to speak on Vancouver's waterfront achievements and challenges, it was really an opportunity for me to learn from these dynamic cities, and see the best and worst of European waterfront design and master-planning.

Is Your Planning Department Passionate?

As we move into a 2009 full of staggering urban challenges - economic, environmental, social, and leadership challenges - do our planning departments have the passion, creativity and leadership to be what our cities need them to be?

Water City Design: Vancouver

Since arriving in Vancouver, I've realized that we are part of a "peer group" of international water cities. Through waterfront design conferences where the same cities seem to get invited time and time again, or through deeper and more interactive collegial opportunities for shared learning such as summits or study trips, these global water cities are taking every opportunity to learn from each other's successes and failures around water-edge planning and design.