Urban Design (Seneca) Flashcards
Why do you want to work at thinc?
I would say there are 2 main factors that make this position appealing to me.
The first is really the type and scale of the work that the practice is doing - my top priorities are doing work that has a connection to the sustainability of the environment and being in a position where I can work directly with communities to co-produce a vision for the spaces they live in and having looked through your portfolio I was really impressed with the breadth of the work that’s being done, but also how those two factors seemed really central to every project - and so I think the subject matter being parks and recreation and the practice being one that is centred around consultation and community visioning is really appealing to me.
And I’d say the other piece is more or less so the ethos of the organizaiton - and I don’t know who writes the copy for thinc, but I was just really impressed with how people-centred thinc seems to be - both in the sense of caring for the wellbeing of employees, but also bringing this focus to the work as well. And for me, even though it might sound small, even just seeing a sustainability policy and an equity and diversity policy on the website really made me feel a sense of trust in the direction of the company and really made me want to be a part of it.
Can you describe your most recent projects (Halton Region)?
While I was working at Halton Region I supported tasks related to the Regional Official Plan Review by:
- Conducting research on rural and agricultural-related themes
- Facilitating committee meetings by preparing relevant data and presentation materials and producing feedback summaries.
- Assisting with consultation meetings
by preparing slideshows, taking notes, and producing summaries of feedback - Preparing briefings for the director of planning about progress on policy directions for ROPR
- Project farmers to access funding for prodviding various ecosystem services on their farmland
- Collecting data about local farmers and the types of products and services they were producing and creating an inventory that was also used as part of the region’s marketing efforts
Can you describe your recent projects as a research assistant?
- Collected and interpreted data from OPAs of Upper- and Single- Tier municipalities
- Communicated with planning staff about their responses to provincial planning policy changes and collected qualitative information about decisions around farmland loss
- Presented preliminary findings at the 2023 rural symposium
Can you desribe your projects at Collingwood?
implementing a real-time data dashboard for prospective businesses to be able to access relevant information about Collingwood
- Conducted an extensive review of vacant properties in the town using ArcGIS software to identify creative opportunities for growth of the Town’s employment base.
- Interviewed local businesses and created content to spotlight these businesses on our website and social media platforms
What was your role at the law firm like?
- Highly detail oriented position where I was tasked with editing and formatting legal contracts
- managing the billing system; and
- interfacing with clients to onboard and receive payments and schedule meetings
What did you do in your role as OPPI Liaison?
- Liaised with students about the conference, events, and OPPI related awards
- Organized outreach presentations for the university
- Met as a committee in October for a full day planning and feedback session (evaluated the OPPI conference, brainstormed blog posts and events for the year, and gave feedback on outreach presentations) alonside monthly meetings to discuss ways to improve OPPIs relationship with students
What did you do in SEDRD?
- Handled communications between the school administrators and students, including conducted surveys with students during the pandemic to help make decisions about returning to the classroom
- Hosted events such as documentary nights, bowling nights, potlucks, trivia, wellness days, and workshops
- Liaised with other groups on campus to amplify communications about opportunities on campus
Explain a situation where you had a difficult customer and what you did to address it?
- When I was working at Halton Region I would support the consultation process with the Region’s Agricultural working group through various tasks including note taking. And it was a very contentious process. And at the end of a session I would send out the summary of feedback to participants so they could confirm that their voices were being represented accurately.
- And when I did this, I would inevitably get complaints from participants that their perspectives weren’t being represented correctly, but then if I changed something in the document and shared it again, another member would argue that the revision was also inaccurate. And so it became a very difficult interaction for me to handle. So after this happened a couple of times, I realized that it was both an inefficient use of my time to be processing all of these complaints in this way and that it was also encouraging distrust of the consultation process.
- So after thinking about how we could better reflect the participants voices, I suggested that I would take notes with my screen shared so that corrections could be made during the meetings. And what was interesting about this was that there were rarely occasions where a change was requested because the notes were being taken in real time and they could see how I was reflecting their voices. And I think this really helped to build a sense of trust and transparency within the group and ultimately prevented additional disagreements from occuring after the fact. And so, for me, addressing this difficult interaction was about finding a creative way to resolve what they perceived to be an unreliable process by creating greater transparency.
What is your greatest strength?
- Attention to detail and critical thinking –
- studying philosophy taught me to think outside the box and to weigh every detail carefully, and I have found this allowed me to really stand out in my masters program.
- For example, as a case manager at the OLT when I receive a new case I have to review the documentation package that the Municipality sends to us and produce a briefing note for the presiding member - and depending on the case this package can be well over a thousand pages. So a few weeks ago I received an appeal for a ZBLA where there were 2 third party appellants who had were neighbours of the applicant that had hired a planner to represent them in the hearing - which is not entirely unusual, but as I was reviewing the documentation I noticed there were a number of small errors in their paperwork that on their own didn’t cause any issues, but it led me to question whether the planner was familiar with OLT processes. After digging into the case a bit more I found out that the planner they hired had actually written a planning report for the appellants to submit to municipal counsel. After reflecting on this, I realized that the appellants were more than likely going to use this report in their defence, but in turn realized that this would require the same planner who was representing them to be available for cross-examination - which would ultimately lead to a conflict of interest. By realizing this early in the process, I was able to communicate this potential conflict of interest to the appellants and prevent the planner from putting herself in this compromising position, which ultimately could have led to a hearing adjournment.
What is your greatest weakness?
Brevity – I find it difficult to limit communications because I want to do my best to ensure my reports are clear and comprehensive while remaining approachable for people who are not planning experts
- but I also recognize how important it is to be able to communicate clearly without overloading readers
– I have looked for feedback from peers and professors throughout school and feel I have really improved in this area over the past few years, but I am also aware there is still room for growth
What are your goals for the future?
- To be honest, I think I’m still figuring that out
- I know that I want to be in a role where I can take a people-first approach and work quite closely with municipalities to create spaces that ultimately support community development from a grass roots level up
- I am passionate about rural development and sustainability and ultimately my priority is finding a work place where I can continue to grow and to work with people who share my vision of the world.
What was your favourite job and why?
Bishop’s University Organizations manager – I really enjoyed this position because it required me to be a mediator between the various student groups and the administration on campus, and while I found it very challenging to reconcile the differences between these groups at times, it was also a great learning experience.
- And in particular, I felt that there were a number of policies that were negatively impacting clubs on campus that required examination, including the lack of any policies related to forms of gender-discrimination within student organizations,
- but in trying to question these types of concerns I was also challenged to examine my own biases and to be a neutral figure in the process of developing better regulations. And working through this process was really rewarding.
Can you give an example of workplace conflict and how you overcame it? Between you and a customer? Between you and a colleague?
Workplace:
COVID working in a restaurant
- Representing the policies of both the government and the establishment I was working for. Being firm about our policy, while expressing understanding that they were frustrated and that you heard them
- Making clear who I was - that I wasn’t the owner and that I was just implementing the policies, while listening to their concerns to see if there was any room for a resolution (i.e. no need for vaccine’s on the patio at a point)
Providing information about where to find out more about the responsibility of restaurants. Giving them contact information for a manager where appropriate if there were concerns about how we were implementing the policy (avoid having them post online)
Colleague: Carole
- misunderstandings about my role and the expectations being put on me
- Changes to the needs of the firm
- A need to communicate to ensure further conflicts weren’t created
How do you deal with high stress situations?
o Serving, working for the law firm and now working for the OLT there’s a very significant need for strong time management skills
- I try to figure out what I can control and what is out of my control and then I try to prioritize what is in my control
o Break it down into easier to manage pieces, avoid scope creep, and delegate tasks where appropriate
o Communicate clearly to ensure proper expectations are set
What do you want to work on in this position?
- I would really like to come out of this position with a strong capacity to work with other technical experts
- and to work on my ability to be able to relay information that experts have shared to the public in a digestible way
- And I am really excited to work on my design skills, as I think this is a key component to planning that a lot of planners have very little knowledge of
Given an example of when you have been a leader?
This past March I organized and led a full day symposium at the University of Guelph, and I put together what I think was a really interesting panel of 6 experts to explore the question of whether planners have a role in advocating for good planning principles in relation to recent provincial policy changes.
- This included Victor Doyle, who was the architect of the greenbelt, Carolyn King, who was the first female chief of Mississauga’s of the Credit first nation, and Mayor Marianne Meed Ward, who serves as the mayor of burlington alongside several other roles.
- And this was something that I was feeling really passionate about at the end of my degree and it was important to me that I did what I could to really lead a discussion with my peers about what has been changing in the planning practice in Ontario and what our responsibilities are with relation to this change.
Give an example of when you acted like a team player
- Absolutely. During my time time working as a research assistant at the University of Guelph, I worked with our research manager and 2 other research assistants to collect and analyze data from about two thousand Official Plan Amendments, which required a very high degree of communication to ensure that we weren’t duplicating eachothers work and that we were maintaining consistency in our data analysis methods.
- And around January of last year one of the other research assistants had to drop off the project, and while it initially felt like it would make sense to divide her remaining work evenly between the rest of the research partners, I knew that at that time I had a higher capacity to be working on the project than the other research assistant did, so I offered to take on a higher proportion of the remaining data collection. And in return, the other research assistant offered to contribute more hours to the research project over the course of this summer to help better support the project after I left it.
- And I think my ability to recognize my own as well as others’ strengths and capacities in this situation and others has made me a really strong team player historically.
What is a piece of feedback that you received through a manager or teacher that you were able to integrate into your work?
- I had a manager at the restaurant that I’ve worked at for the past 5 years who once gave me a really good piece of advice. And it came after a particularly stressful shift where I had been vocal about the fact that disagreed with her about some of the decisions she was making. And at the end of the shift, we took the time to talk out our frustration, and she told me that my problem was that I gave great feedback, but that I always gave it at the wrong time.
- And I think because I really enjoy leading, in the past I have struggled more with power dynamics and had trouble understanding how to work effectively with a manager
- but this interaction really forced me to reflect on how I can contribute positively within a team and to provide feedback in the appropriate way to help build up my team instead of creating additional barriers for my manager.
In what ways has your previous work (or volunteer) experience and education prepared you for this position?
- I think one of my strengths is that I have quite a varied background and each of my experiences have contributed to my capacity as a professional today
- Hospitality industry has provided me with the soft skills to communicate with members of the public and colleagues in a clear professional tone, and to be able to identify their individual needs and cater to them appropriately - particularely throught consultation processes
- Administrative positions, such as my role with the OLT and the law firm I worked at have taught me how to work with other professionals and how to manage several projects at once with strong organizational skills
-my philosophy degree have taught me to be able to approach projects with big-picture thinking, while also being quite detail-focused, which I think plays really well with developing master plans
- Research has provided me with a strong background in working with a wide variety of Official Plans and Zoning By-laws from across the province and allowed me to consider how different levels of decision-making factor into development approvals.
- My co-op positions have given me confidence in my skills working with planning departments at a municipal level and have given me a strong background in liaising with the public, and the elements of development applications.
What sets you apart from other candidates/why should we hire you?
- My experience studying planning through a rural lens sets me apart from other candidates, particularely in relation to a number of the projects the firm works on that require sensitivity to the unique needs of rural communities and to the scale of development that is feasible and sustainable in those areas
- And I think my experience in hospitality is a massive strength for me. Having spent over a decade in the hospitality industry I am very confident in my ability to diffuse conflicts and to communicate with the public in a clear and professional manner - which I think is key to consulation efforts
-Coming from the public realm through my work with Halton Region, Collingwood and the OLT and UofG I’m quite comfortable with municipal planning processes and how public organizations work, in general
What are some of the organizational skills or tools you would use to assist you when working in a busy, high-volume workplace? Can you give an example of when you had to stay orgnanized.
- During University I often used Trello boards to manage tasks, share resources, and collaborate with teammembers. While working with the OLT I taughy myself how to use Microsoft Planner to manage my various cases through the hearing process since we had to keep our case information secure
- I also think it is incredible important to schedule regular checkins with managers and other team members to avoid miscommunications and collaborate on tasks where beneficial.
- Last fall I was commuting to Guelph for the final year of my masters, while working part time for Halton Region as well as at Bellwoods brewery as a server, and working on a research project at the university. So it was incredible important for me to be able to set clear expectations with my various managers and keep myself organized throughout this time.
