1. Guest speaker and review for the final

2.  We will spend half of today’s class session with our guest and half reviewing for the final.  After class – from 11:30 to 1 – there will be a speaker in the Arbutus Room talking about gentrification as a phenomenon in Amsterdam, Vancouver, and Nanaimo.  Our guest today, Lisa Bhopalsingh, is a Senior Planner with the Regional District of Nanaimo currently working on addressing challenges related to Regional Growth Management and building more sustainable rural and urban communities.

3.  Originally from Trinidad and Tobago, Lisa later moved to England where she completed her high school education in Bristol followed by a BA Honours Degree in Geography and a Post Graduate Degree in Geography Education from Jesus College, Oxford University. After moving to British Columbia, she received a Masters in planning from the University of British Columbia and is a member of the Canadian Institute of Planners.  Lisa has over ten years of community planning experience in British Columbia involving Regional, Municipal and First Nations governments. Her interest in planning for a more sustainable future includes building community resilience through integrating land use planning with hazard mitigation and using plan- ning processes to strengthen a community’s social capital.

4. How are cities a major factor in exacerbating or curbing climate change? What is peak oil and what are its implications for cities? What are the implications of the changing demographics for how we plan cities? What about the changing economic base? What about the increasingly important role of arts and culture and place-making vs. space- utilization?

5. How have the issues facing planners and municipalities changed in recent years? How have urban growth patterns changed since World War II and before and what have been the driving forces behind these changes? What have been the characteristics and consequences? What are Condon’s 7 Rules and (how) are they interrelated? What are the strengths and weaknesses of the grid vs. other patterns (radial, dendritic, superblock)?

6. What is the “streetcar suburb”? Does it characterize the traditional pattern of all North American cities? What are the advantages of buses vs. streetcars vs. LRT vs. ‘heavy’ Skytrain and subway technologies, and by what criteria are they to be evaluated? What are some elements involved in optimizing transportation choice? What does mixed use look like and how does it relate to the five-minute walking circle (pedestrian shed)? What are the strengths of nodes vs. linear forms of development?

7. What does “jobs/ housing mix” refer to? How does one optimize diversity and affordability of housing? What are the implications of different building types for ecological footprint? What is the meaning of the statement “the site is to the region as the cell is to the body”? What does it mean to “design with nature”? How can one integrate the natural and built environments in an urban context?

8. What do linked green networks look like, and in what way are they potentially multi- functional? How does one protect and restore the hydrological regime in an urban region? How to optimize permeability and diminish ‘hardscaping’? What are the obstacles to and opportunities for creating more sustainable cities and regions? What are some particularly noteworthy examples of sustainable cities and regions?