# Erick Villagomez [He/his](https://equity.ubc.ca/resources/gender-diversity/pronouns/) Part-Time Lecturer - Email: - Bio - Research - Courses ##### Bio Erick Villagomez is a Lecturer in the School of Community and Regional Planning at the University of British Columbia, where he teaches architecture, urban design, visual representation, and critical approaches to design and planning practice. His work examines how cities are shaped by often-invisible systems—technical standards, economic models, regulatory tools, and representational practices—and how these systems influence power, equity, and democratic participation. Trained as an architect, Villagomez’s scholarship critically interrogates dominant assumptions in contemporary architecture, planning, and urban design, including the presumed neutrality of economic and environmental metrics. His writing explores how tools such as zoning, floor space ratios, development viability models, architectural form, and carbon accounting function not only as technical instruments, but as political and ethical ones. Alongside his academic work, Villagomez is the founder and principal of **Metis Design | Build**, a private practice that engages projects ranging from furniture and residential construction to urban design and spatial research. The practice adopts a holistic, hands-on approach to design and making, foregrounding material realities, construction processes, and the social and environmental consequences of design decisions. This direct engagement with building practice informs his teaching and scholarship, grounding critical inquiry in lived, material experience. Villagomez is the founding editor of **Spacing Vancouver** and a long-standing public scholar whose work bridges academic research, professional practice, and civic discourse. Through books, essays, and public-facing series, he has worked to make planning knowledge accessible while exposing the assumptions embedded within it. At SCARP, Villagomez emphasizes visual literacy, critical thinking, and ethical responsibility as core competencies for future planners. His teaching treats representation, drawing, and emerging technologies—including AI—not simply as skills, but as ways of understanding and questioning the systems that shape urban life. ##### Research His research, consulting and writing has influenced patterns of urban development locally and abroad — contributing to the adoption of ‘green’ urban design processes, plans, codes, standards, guidelines and prototypes. ##### Courses ### PLAN 221 : City Visuals **[Erick Villagomez](/directory/erick-villagomez)** As a course, PLAN 221 provides an exploratory journey through the vast world of visualizing the city. Students will gain an understanding of the types and hierarchies of visualizations of the city and how to interpret them and use them to read the city. As such, it provides a basic introduction to drawing type fundamentals (plan, section, elevation, paraline, etc.) as well as techniques of representation (use of hue, value, etc.). The latter is supplemented with design analyses exercises (deconstructing different representations) and culminates in a ‘city visual’ design exercise. The course is currently scheduled to meet twice a week for 1.5 hours each session. - Level - Undergraduate - Eligibility - Second-year standing or above in any program ### PLAN 221 : Urban Design **[Erick Villagomez](/directory/erick-villagomez)** As a course, PLAN 221 provides a exploratory journey through the vast world of visualizing the city. Students will gain an understanding of the types and hierarchies of visualizations of the city and how to interpret them and use them to read the city. As such, it provides a basic introduction to drawing type fundamentals (plan, section, elevation, paraline, etc.) as well as techniques of representation (use of hue, value, etc.). The latter is supplemented with design analyses exercises (deconstructing different representations) and culminates in a ‘city visual’ design exercise. The course is currently scheduled to meet twice a week for 1.5 hours each session. - Level - Master's - Eligibility - Enrolled in MCRP ### PLAN 504 : Urban Design and Visual Representation **[Erick Villagomez](/directory/erick-villagomez)** As a course, PLAN 504 provides a exploratory journey through the vast world of visualizing the city. Students will gain an understanding of the types and hierarchies of visualizations of the city and how to interpret them and use them to read the city. As such, it provides a basic introduction to drawing type fundamentals (plan, section, elevation, paraline, etc.) as well as techniques of representation (use of hue, value, etc.). The latter is supplemented with design analyses exercises (deconstructing different representations) and culminates in a ‘city visual’ design exercise. The course is currently scheduled to meet twice a week for 1.5 hours each session. - Level - Master's - Eligibility - Enrolled in MCRP ### PLAN 587A : Introduction to Physical Planning and Urban Design **[Erick Villagomez](/directory/erick-villagomez)** A studio/seminar on the history of the physical form of cities and theories of city design. Topics include social impacts, heritage and environmental conservation, urban revitalization, and the legal and administrative instruments for the implementation of city designs. - Level - Master's - Eligibility - Enrolled in MCRP ![Erick Villagomez](/sites/default/files/styles/square_200/public/profile-images/2022-09/Erick%20Villagomez.jpg.webp?itok=CGxk1p4j) ### Research and Specialties - Housing - Settlement patterns - Urban development - Urban greening - Urban infrastructure - Urban systems