Welcome Incoming Graduate Planners!

Congratulations on joining one of Canada’s leading and most innovative planning programs. Your Association of Graduate Planners (AGP) is thrilled to introduce you to the University of Waterloo’s graduate planning program. We are confident that your experience within the Faculty of Environment will be both enjoyable and enriching and we are committed to making it the best experience possible.

The AGP is your representative student body, the student voice that interacts on behalf of graduate planners with the U of W planning administration, OPPI, and CIP; works on funding opportunities to support student life; and last, but not least, organizes events and activities for planning students to kick back, get to know one another, and have a good time.

First we would like to get you prepared for “Master’s Frosh Week” starting September 7^th, 2010. The AGP and the Environmental Graduate Student Association will be holding important introductory sessions, socials, TA workshop and your mandatory milestone component during this week.

We would also like to introduce to you some exciting events that will be occurring in 2010/2011. Most importantly, the AGP led a successful bid to host the Canadian Association of Planning Students (CAPS) annual conference, here at the University of Waterloo in February 2011. The theme for this year’s conference is “Resilience: Planning for Dynamic Futures.” The three day conference brings together planning students from across the country; creating an opportunity for students to showcase their research, learn about modern planning issues and opportunities from leading professionals in the field, and mingle with hundreds of fellow planning students. This is truly an exciting opportunity for the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo to shine, and we need your help to make this event a great and lasting success.

There will be many opportunities for you to become involved this year from joining the AGP Executive to volunteering at and in preparing the CAPS conference. Check out the CAPS website (http://caps-aceau.org/) for conference developments and take a look at the AGP website (https://uwagp.wordpress.com/) to “meet” the AGP executive, find out what is new in the world of Waterloo planning.

On behalf of the AGP, we would to once congratulate you on your decision to attend the University of Waterloo, and we welcome you to the School of Planning Community. Please contact either of us if you have any questions at all. We look forward to meeting you in the September. See you at the Grad House!

On behalf of your AGP Executive,

Warm regards,

Kathryn Randle      &       Brad Bradford

2010 Co-Presidents
Executive Council
Association of Graduate Planners
University of Waterloo

krandle@uwaterloo.ca, bbradford@uwaterloo.ca

Future of the Map Library

In the name of growth, expansion and efficiency, big change has a way of finding big solutions.

The Faculty of Environment is growing. The growing pains are hoped to ease by the construction of a 3rd building (EV3). But in the shuffling it appears that perhaps the Map Library might have to seek exile in the Dana Porter Library.

In one way, this is a rational choice of centralizing library activities and utilizing productive space (i.e. less space for students and basic research within the Faculty, replaced with activities by the Centre for Teaching Excellence and the Centre of Knowledge Integration). Researchers are not losing access to the resources, as the move will merely get rid of its users enjoying the amenities within the Faculty.

Questions arises

• Is this good for students?
• Is this good for the overall Faculty Character?
• Is this an attack on the theoretical idealized mixed-use within one building?
• As the Faculty is growing bigger, is its ‘heart’ maintaining a healthy beat?

Responding to Growth

Responding to Growth at student, faculty, university, neighbourhood, city, regional, national or international levels – be it institutions, malls, apartment buildings, height and density targets, population moves or natural resource extractions – is a choice, at least until it affects you directly. Planners have a tendency to be interested in planning-related decisions, and planner’s engagement has more than once been argued to be what is needed to bring about an educated, engaged and productive community.

This, our friends, is a chance to form an opinion and have a say, because planners of tomorrow will not be the ones to only plan and not engage themselves. You may as well start getting involved now, sooner rather than later. Likely, doing good planning requires the ability to personally and communally foster energy and motivation to nourish a life of active engagement. This is indeed the stand the AGP takes, as we increasingly feel committed to involve ourselves and our organization in planning matters internationally (Haiti), nationally (CIP’s Planning for the Future, and the Conservative’s scrapping of the Long Form), and locally (relocating the Map Library).

So, what do you think? Let us know by posting comments or sending emails…

Planning for the Future (PFF), from our OPPI Student Delegates

Dear Student member,

Over the past 4 years, the Canadian Institute of Planners (CIP) has been working and involved with many members to improve the Planning profession for all planners across the country. This work has lead to the formation of a very important initiative entitled Planning for the Future (PFF). PFF covers many important and needed changes to our profession and we would like to highlight a few of them here for you today, but before we do here a few simple questions that you need to ask yourself:

• Do you believe that planning students have the right to an equal education whether they study in British Columbia or Nova Scotia?
• Do you want to attend an accredited institution that ensures you receive the best possible education?
• Do you want a planning degree that will allow for easy portability across Canada right after graduation?
• Do you believe the oral exams can have potential inconsistencies that lead to varied experiences?

If you answered yes to any, or all, of these questions, then you need to vote YES on the upcoming national election to approve the proposed changes outlined in Planning for the Future.

Like we said above, Planning for the Future covers many important and needed changes to our profession. Here are just 3 of those changes that we believe students should be made well aware of:

1. PFF ensures that students who have put the time and effort into their accredited planning degree can enter the profession well before people who don’t have an accredited planning degree.
2. PFF brings a standardized written test to obtaining full membership instead of the current oral exam that can have varied experiences and subject matter that ensures the same experience for anyone writing the exam. The written exam will cover ethics and professional practice, not material learned during our formal planning education.
3. PFF ensures that the education you receive is taught by professional planners who are experienced in the rich history, theory and practice of planning in Canada, by bringing in new accreditation standards to our Canadian planning schools.

To completely inform yourselves, please visit the OPPI website at www.ontarioplanners.on.ca and read through the prepared summary document found on the main page. You may also visit the CIP website www.planningincanada.ca and read through the several reports on National Competency, Ethical and Certification Standards found in the reports section. As well, if you have any questions on this important initiative please do not hesitate to contact us at danielwoolfson@gmail.com or azendel@yorku.ca.

Please click this link Ten Things you Need to Know Right Now About Planning for the Future for a pertinent summary of this initiative.

Thank you for your time in reading this letter.

Sincerely your past and present OPPI Student Delegates,

Daniel Woolfson (Present OPPI Student Delegate 2010-11)
Adam Zendel (Past OPPI Student Delegate 2009-10)