Our Values and Strategic Plan

Our Mission

SCARP’s mission statement commits us, through education and research, to generating and transforming knowledge into action by planning in partnership to improve lives and communities and the quality of built and natural environments. 

Our Values

• Integrity, care and respect – in how we behave

• Curiosity, excellence and courage – in what we do 

• Inclusion, reciprocity and responsibility – in how we do it

My name is Heather Campbell,

the Director of the School of Community and Regional Planning,

a School focused on advancing planning education and research. Its identity is strongly informed by its location and in a culture that values social inclusion and environmental stewardship.

SCARP learns, works, and congregates on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territory of the Musqueam people. Our land acknowledgement is only the starting point for the important work of progressing reconciliation and more, and its meaningfulness is demonstrated in what we do.

We continue to learn from our Musqueam partners, and honour their sovereignty, rights, perspectives and culture. SCARP shares a unique and invaluable partnership with the Musqueam First Nation, and through that partnership they teach us that humility and an openness to learning makes our planning better. At SCARP we teach how to be an agent of this change.

If you read historical accounts and speeches, a recurrent phrase is that conditions now are more challenging than they’ve been in generations. However, right now does feel like such a point in history, heavy with challenges from the pandemic, the energy crisis, deep social inequalities and intolerance, increasing climatic variability, and several others. It is not hard to feel downcast by current circumstances, and yet it is the darkest moments in history that have opened up space for innovation and change. But that change isn't automatic.

It is the way of planners that we believe a better future can always be created. We are concerned with action and change, and the partnerships that make change work for all populations. But plans that sit on shelves or are stagnant to changing contexts are useless. The real question for each of us is to understand institutional processes and how to make change happen. That is why this journey begins with curiosity as well as the relaying of knowledge between generations of planners, with the understanding that each new generation will surpass the last, discovering something new, creating a transformational framework, or forge a renewed partnership with a community for a more equitable way forward.

Post-secondary School is a precious moment, where independent self-motivated learners and emerging professionals push intellectual boundaries and develop new capabilities. Listening to others, most especially to experiences outside our own, allowing ourselves to be surprised and to understand the world in new ways, is what education is about.

SCARP is a community of students, alumni, community partners, faculty, and staff. Each represent and are SCARP, and I hope to welcome you now.