Emilie Adin

Emilie K. Adin’s career has spanned British Columbia, first as a consultant working for First Nations governments and non-profit organizations, and later in senior municipal planning positions with the City of Langford, the City of North Vancouver and the City of New Westminster. 

Emilie was inducted as a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners and serves as Immediate Past-President for the Planning Institute of British Columbia. She was recently named by Business in Vancouver magazine as one of BC’s 500 Most Influential Leaders, one of the top six professionals in the province in the category of Urban Planning and Design. Emilie’s professional planning work has been recognized by Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the Canadian Institute of Planners, the Community Energy Association, the Union of BC Municipalities, and the Planning Institute of BC.

Emilie has been an instructor or presenter in several local government and community planning courses at Royal Roads, Capilano and Simon Fraser Universities and UBC’s own School of Architecture and Landscape Architecture. Emilie has long volunteered her time locally, provincially, nationally and internationally, including as a Juror for Urbanarium’s Decoding Timber Towers design competition, an examiner for a Master’s Thesis at SFU, and as a chair for the Regional Planning Advisory Committee for Metro Vancouver. 

As a Registered Professional Planner with over 25 years of experience in planning practice, Emilie values the importance of mentoring future generations of planners, including high school and college students, SCARP students, candidate members who seek certified membership in CIP/PIBC, and planners who are new to the region, province, or country.

Emilie holds an MA in Planning from SCARP, an MFA in Creative Writing from University of King’s College, and holds several other credentials. Emilie has written widely on affordable housing, urban design, social equity, and climate action. Her bylines include The Globe and Mail, The Tyee, Spacing, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency and Planetizen, and Emilie has written over 20 PlanGirl Travels columns in Planning West magazine.

Beyond Emilie’s passions described above, her greatest joys outside of work involve her family, her garden, x-country skiing, swimming in lakes, and a whole lot of reading and writing. But buy her a cape, and she’s always up for being a planning cheerleader, a city building superhero.

Emilie has lived on the unceded lands of the Algonquin, Dene and Lekwungen nations, and the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓ and Sḵwx̱wú7mesh speaking peoples.