GEOG 346

GEOG 346Urban and Regional Management

WELCOME TO 346 AND HAPPY NEW YEAR! I’m Don Alexander – been at VIU for 7 ½

years, including teaching this course; also registered planner, writer on planning issues, and occasional research consultant.

My office hours are Tuesdays and Thursdays, 11:30 to 12:30, and by appointment, in Building 359/ Room 215. I will occasionally be late because of departmental meetings or unavailable because of other meetings.

I would like to hear from each of you for one minute as to why you are taking this course and if you have any special interests.

EXERCISE

Pick an urban region where you have lived during your life: what worked well, and what were some significant problems? (If you want, choose different regions for each).

This course is about how the imperatives/ crucial issues for urban and regional management are changing dramatically. In the past, the key ones were: “orderly” development (though too often the planners and managers were serving the interests of developers), infrastructure (roads, sewer/ water, hospitals, fire services/ police, community centres), adequate housing and green space, etc.

CHANGING IMPERATIVES A good idea for how planners view these

changing imperatives can be gotten from Planning Institute of BC’s 2012 Call for Papers: http://www.pibc.bc.ca/sites/default/files/2012-PIBC-Program-CallForProposals-Final.pdf

COURSE OUTLINE See course web site (no

Moodle) at http://web.viu.ca/alexander2

The textbook by Patrick Condon is short and sweet, and is written by a Vancouver prof who practices what he preaches. He has been involved in lots of green development projects, in addition to helping to run the Design Centre for Sustainability at UBC.

In addition, I have added some supplementary readings.)

COURSE OUTLINE

The course schedule is subject to changes, but I hope to start discussing climate change and water security issues on Thursday.

I want to cover these and some of the other key issues in urban and regional management before getting heavily into the text. They are background issues for him, but he doesn’t get into them in much depth. His approach is more descriptive and prescriptive.

See the dates, topics, questions and readings for each week, and note that an outline for your major project is due on January 26th, and your final project is due on March 29th.

COURSE OUTLINE A couple of changes with respect to the readings: both books by Peter Newman are available in the library and I have put them on reserve, though they may not be available right away. The grades are weighted as follows: 15% participation and attendance, 30% three mini-assignments (maybe reduced to 2), 30% major project (includes 5% for outline), and 25% final exam. The major project will involve looking at how one or more municipality or region is addressing one or more of the issues raised in this course and with what tools and approaches. More instructions to follow.

COURSE OUTLINE

There is an extensive bibliography at the end of the outline, with some items highlighted as being of special interest. I will provide an additional list of articles that will be relevant to the major project.

If you have any thoughts about the benefits of individual vs. group work, I would like to hear them.

See the section in the course outline about laptops and phones. They’re allowed, but don’t abuse them.

Any questions, concerns, or comments?