Positions Available

Course description

Contemporary city development trends, policies, and practices across the globe as explored against the backdrop of culture and technology. Includes hands-on learning.

Course description

Examination of various approaches to hands-on engagement with urban communities while examining the meaning of public, community, and participation. Restricted to BA Urban Studies students with second-year standing.

Course description

Considers the city as a terrain for the manifestation and mediation of social justice. Explores how the allocation of land, goods, and services in cities (re)produces social stratification, and how institutions and civil society negotiate just and unjust outcomes.

Course description

This course will examine green cities as a planning problematic: simultaneously essential for addressing global environmental degradation and part of urbanization processes that have fueled that degradation. We will examine the key historical, conceptual, and applied aspects of urban greening in cities throughout the world, with an emphasis on North America. As we develop our understanding of how, why, and under what conditions green cities take shape, we will examine both process and outcome – questioning overly-simple descriptions of the urban greening agenda. We will uncover through case-based analysis and community-engaged partnership what we mean by green cities; why we need green cities; and how we make green cities, given the challenges and opportunities.

Course description

Examination of how the diverse, multicultural, and cosmopolitan aspects of cities create challenges and opportunities for community planning. 

** IMPORTANT NOTE: Applying and accepting the offer to this position means you must be available in Term 1 and Term 2

Course description

Application of key elements of urban studies theory, concepts, and methods to a community-engaged urban challenge. URST students only.

Course description

This course undertakes a detailed, comparative examination of the history, and possible futures of, planning in a global context. It examines planning in diverse settings and highlights the ways in which planning has been and might be conceived and practiced across the Global North and South. It seeks to introduce students to the wide variety of planning paradigms, approaches and techniques that have been deployed by planners and other actors who create and are affected by plans. The course highlights the differences and similarities in the way planning has been conceived and undertaken across geographies. It pays particular attention to the debates, trade-offs, compromises and tensions that have dominated the way planners have approached their work and how they conceptualize and plan for the future. Rather than focusing on descriptions of key events or people (although those are covered too), the course is structured around a number of important analytic themes that can help students understand the work of planners across a wide range of temporal, geographic, political, economic and cultural settings.

Course description

PLAN 501 is a core course of the Masters of Community and Regional Planning (MCRP) program at SCARP. This course explores the relationships between planning (as a discipline and profession) and reconciliation efforts happening in cities and communities across Canada. We will reflect on questions like: What is the role of planning in perpetuating settler colonialism? How might planning contribute to reconciliation efforts moving forward? How can planners decolonize their planning practice? During this course we will: contextualize ourselves within Indigenous and settler-colonial histories; critically examine what reconciliation means (and to who) and how it plays out in the ‘era of reconciliation’ in what is now known as Canada, learn from Indigenous planners and worldviews, and; examine what it might look for planners to decolonize their practice and genuinely contribute to reconciliation efforts through city and community planning.

Course description

How sustainability and resilience concepts shape planning practice, including planning’s successes and failures in addressing environmental problems. Policies and tools that communities can adopt and employ in response to climate change, loss of biodiversity, and related challenges.

Course description

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.

Course description

The real estate development process, from both public and private sector perspectives. Land economics and how economic forces shape land use decisions. Diversified economic development. Public infrastructure and services.

Course description

How planning theory and practice relate to and inform each other. The role of reflection in planning practice, and how planners can improve their practice through reflecting on experience. Reflecting on the Planning Studio, and on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes learned in the MCRP program.

Course description

Contemporary city development trends, policies, and practices across the globe as explored against the backdrop of culture and technology. Includes hands-on learning.

Course description

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.

Course description

The objective of this course is to understand the technological, social, ethical and policy challenges and opportunities for Smart Cities. This begins with a high-level overview of assessing key challenges that cities face including urbanization, social well-being, inequality, economic development and climate change; and through global case-studies and tutorials the course details key concepts, tools and frameworks to assess smart cities including: urban metrics and indicators, big-data analytics, data ethics and risk, and applications in urban modelling and simulation. Specifically, there is a focus on how data-driven analytics, and technological and social innovation can help address urban policy challenges and inform decision-making.

Course description

This course provides an overview of the theoretical perspectives and development of urban planning, highlighting contemporary planning issues and the translation of knowledge in policy and practice, towards the aim of fostering thriving communities and more just cities. For third- and fourth-year undergraduate students interested in urban planning.

** IMPORTANT NOTE: Applying and accepting the offer to this position means you must be available in Term 1 and Term 2

Course description

Application of key elements of urban studies theory, concepts, and methods to a community-engaged urban challenge. URST students only.

Course description

This course undertakes an examination of planning theory, with a particular focus on values and ethics, and explores the role of these topics in planning practice and in policymaking more broadly. It builds on the foundation established in Plan 500, which focused on the history of planning and on the theories and ideas that have animated planning, as undertaken by diverse actors, over the long term. In this course, we will pay particular attention to the important values-oriented and ethical questions that planners are likely to face in their work and which are also at the centre of much scholarly work on planning. Since planning as a profession and a field of intellectual inquiry is rich in theories, we will narrow our focus on a subset of themes and questions that are likely to play an important role in students’ lives as they go on to work in planning and which can provide useful lenses for guiding decision making and action. In short, the course will seek to be as applied as a theory course can be. The course will involve extensive in-class discussion, applied case exercises and site visits.

Course description

Legal principles affecting the administration of planning programs including the meaning and sources of the law, the separation of the functions of government, the Canadian Constitution and Charter of Rights and Freedoms, the law of Canadian municipal corporations, natural resource law, the nature and control of administrative action, judicial review of discretionary power, and the drafting of legislation. 

Course description

This course (PLAN 515) will introduce students to the laws within which Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and particularly in British Columbia, live, and which impact their communities and Nations. Students will gain an understanding of how law and governance inform planning with Indigenous communities.

Course description

How planning theory and practice relate to and inform each other. The role of reflection in planning practice, and how planners can improve their practice through reflecting on experience. Reflecting on the Planning Studio, and on the knowledge, skills, and attitudes learned in the MCRP program.

Institutional Context

The University of British Columbia and the School of Community and Regional Planning acknowledges the hən̓q̓əmin̓əm̓-speaking xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam people) on whose traditional, ancestral and unceded territory the University resides.

The University of British Columbia consistently ranks among the 40 best universities globally, and among the top 20 public universities in the world. Vancouver has a dynamic planning environment and is frequently rated as one of the world’s most desirable places to live. Times Higher Education (THE) ranks UBC number one in the world for taking urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts, and is ranked first in Canada for making cities inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

SCARP is internationally recognized for the excellence of its research and teaching. The School undertakes teaching and research across the sub-fields of planning, in line with being a professionally accredited planning program.

UBC Hiring Policies

At UBC, we believe that attracting and sustaining a diverse workforce is key to the successful pursuit of excellence in research, innovation, and learning for all faculty, staff and students, and is essential to fostering an outstanding work environment. Our commitment to employment equity helps achieve inclusion and fairness, brings rich diversity to UBC as a workplace, and creates the necessary conditions for a rewarding career.

About student positions

The University offers different types of student service appointments and are intended to assist properly qualified graduate students meet the cost of their studies, as well as to assist the University in meeting its educational and research objectives. Such appointments may involve part-time duties in research and other academic activities, or other academic activities and these positions are subject to availability of funds:

• Graduate Research Assistants (GRA) – non-union and funded by research grants - considered a form of Fellowship
• Graduate Academic Assistant (GAA) – student employment, non-union and hourly
• Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTA) – student employment, CUPE 2278, union – GTA I and GTA II

CUPE 2278 Collective Agreement