Urban Planner, City of Toronto
Sociology, Bachelor of Arts (BA) 1989

I have a BA in Sociology and a Masters Degree in Urban and Regional Planning. My field is community planning at the city of Toronto which is a municipal government job. My job is my career but I consider myself an urban sociologist where I look at urban problems in their entirety and then seek spacial solutions to these problems. Not all problems can be solved by spatial solutions as many are political and how we distribute resources but spacial solutions is one component of an endless list of societal problems. My main area of interest is in affordable housing which I see as both a social and an economic problem. It is economic in that many people cannot afford housing based on their income but it is also a social problem as it creates crowding, diseases, addictions when the solutions are not found by the market or our government. My education has taught me in sociology the necessity of seeing social problems using a holistic analysis and then providing solutions through best practise and management.