News

van·tage

van(t)ij/
noun
noun: vantage point

A place or position affording a good view of something. "from my vantage point I could see into the front garden"

The photos on cover of the January/February 2017 edition of the Ontario Planning Journal were recently taken by event organizers of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute October 2016 Symposium in Hamilton, Ontario. The Rural Planning and Development graduate students from the University of Guelph are showing their tech social media savvy by being connected with everyone/everything that was happening at the conference on the topic of "Healthy Communities and Planning for the Public Realm".

Professor Al Lauzon, in the Capacity Development and Extension program, has recently published two chapters in the reference book The Encyclopedia of Strategic Leadership and Management. The titles of his chapters were "Building Adaptive Community Capacity to Meet the Challenges of Global Climate Change: Implications for Community Leadership" and "Meeting the Cognitive Demands of Leadership in Times of Uncertainty." 

Capacity Development and Extension Professor Helen Hambly along with Grain Farmers of Ontario's Mark Brock were featured on CTV's national morning show Your Morning on December 21, 2016 discussing precision agriculture and rural connectivity.

CTV video clip can be viewed here.

Macklin Hancock was one of the most prolific Canadian landscape architects practicing in the second half of the twentieth century.  His work and that of his firm, Project Planning and Associates Ltd, included projects around the world including Expo 67, Don Mills New Town and the Kuwait waterfront.

What does it mean to live rurally in the 21st century? This is the foundational question asked during each episode of Rural Routes Podcasts. The online podcast program was created in 2015 through a partnership between the Leslie Harris Centre for Regional Policy and Development and the Canadian Rural Revitalization Foundation. In Episode 12, Dr. Ryan Gibson of SEDRD shares his experience meeting with researchers at the Cold Climate Housing Research Centre in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Second year BLA and MLA students participated in a day-long design charrette on November 4, 2016 with the City of Guelph staff. The focus of the charrette was the complicated Guelph intersection of MacDonnell, Wyndham, Wellington, Arthur and Elizabeth streets, where one also encounters two rail crossings. All this, and the Speed River corridor with associated bike paths and trail system, made for a complex and difficult design problem which we labelled "The Knot".

The second year Master of Landscape Architecture students were given a tour last week of the Westminster Woods Subdivision Greenway System by the City of Guelph's Engineering Technologist Rachel Ellerman. The greenway stormwater system is an innovative approach through the use of large-scale bioretention facilities. In developing the design, the City, consultants and developers worked together to ensure the success of these stormwater features, which have the added benefits of a native plant corridor, providing both habitat and aesthetics.

The Atlantic Provinces Association of Landscape Architects (APALA) and the Landscape Architecture Canada Foundation (LACF) have awarded the 2016 Peter Klynstra Memorial Scholarship to Emma Tarbush, a 2017 Master of Landscape Architecture candidate at the University of Guelph.