ECONOMIC PLANNING

Brent Toderian is a strong proponent and practitioner of “complete cities and complete communities”, and the most challenging aspect of such is often strong, integrated and diverse job-space. In Vancouver’s Downtown and Broadway Corridor, Brent led strategies that protected and expanded job-space capacity to ensure a “Downtown that Works” in the face of strong residential speculation and pressures. He led the strategic amendment of older industrial policies next to mass transit to facilitate economic development and transit ridership, while protecting but re-visioning key older industrial lands for new forms of manufacturing and production. Brent led the creation of the City’s first Green Enterprise Zone initiative, and participated actively in Vancouver’s first city-wide Economic Development Strategy. Protecting and expanding job-space lands for resilient cities has become one of the most important city and regional issues in Metro Vancouver, in part through Brent’s leadership and work.

In Calgary, Brent initiated the City’s first cost-of-growth processes for inner-city and suburban development, co-led the City’s Employment Centre Strategy and Jobs / Housing Balance Strategy, and stressed job-space and office development in the “Thriving Centre City” theme of the award-winning Centre City Plan. He oversaw master-planning of numerous industrial and mixed-use developments, including the largest planned office / institutional town centre planned for the city, the Seton District.

In Ontario, Brent led the largest municipally-initiated Study / Strategy on Economic Development and Tourism to that date, on behalf of seven coordinated municipalities in the Georgian Triangle region of Ontario, centred on Blue Mountain.

In all three provinces, and for the public and private sector, Brent led planning and design processes and the negotiation of office, job-space, industrial and mixed-use projects.