List of planning and design firms in Toronto and NYC

[xvodax]

Hello all!

2nd time poster..

late next summer, 2012. i'll be graduating with a BA from Fanshawe College in Integrated Land Planning.

i'm currently, building a list, of landuse planning and urban design companies through out the greater toronto area and new york city.. or companies that deal with planning in some way..

im sure, your wondering why NY.. well my sister lives there, so i wanna be closer to her.. but i understand its hard to live in the US when your not a citizen :/

if anyone can throw out names and places in or around the GTA (greater toronto area) or New York City region that would be great..

cheers

and any advice on how to get into these high-end companies would be great.. i know i have the ability to do it.. and the graphical/planning skills needed.. its just beating out the rest




22 firms in toronto so far..

Toronto
- Hardy Stevenson and Associates Limited (HSAL)
- Urban Strategies Inc.
- Carson Woods Urban Planners and Architects
- Design Plan Services Inc.
- Macaulay Shiomi Howson Ltd
- Walker, Nott, Dragicevic Associates Limited
- LandINC
- MEP Design Inc
- M. Behar Planning & Design Inc.
- Intelliterra Planning & Development Consulting
- Janet Rosenberg and Associates

Landscapeing Arch
- Martin Wade Landscape Architects
- Green Apple Design
- Judith S. Wright Associates
- Greenberg Consultants
- Armstrong Hunter & Associates
- Peter J smith and co


Engineering and Development:
- Concert
-

Architects
- Core Architects Inc
- SMV Architects
- Kirkor
- Perkins and will


New York:
New York
- Philip Habib & Associates
- New York Planning Division
- Beyer Blinder Belle
- Buckhurst Fish & Jacquemart, Inc.
- AKRF, Inc.
- ACP Visioning+Planning
- margulies hoelzli architecture pllc
- caples jefferson architects
- Alex Garvin & Assoc
- H3

Architects NY
- SOSH Architects
- EM DESIGN
-Slice Architects

~Gedunker Greetings xvodax, not everyone here is uptight. That said, please use descriptive thread titles in the professional forums. Title edited. Thanks and carry on!

[nrschmid]

i wanna be closer to her.

How do you expect to even EARN a glance at your resume, let alone a phone interview, when you write this garbage? Clean up your grammar if you want to make a good first impression.

Most cyburbians do not hand over privileged information to people who don't make meaningful contributions to discussion boards. You will need to earn that right first.

i wanna be closer to her
i wanna be closer to her
i wanna be closer to her

It's like getting the lyrics of an awful bubblegum pop song stuck in your head.

[Blide]

and any advice on how to get into these high-end companies would be great.. i know i have the ability to do it.. and the graphical/planning skills needed.. its just beating out the rest

It's great that you're ambitious but you really can't be that selective in this economy. People are having a hard time getting any planning related jobs now regardless of any geographical preferences they may have.

Frankly you'll have very little chance of getting hired by any top firms straight out of undergrad unless you have a stellar portfolio or you know someone who works there; even then, the chances are low. This economy is just awful and you're trying to get into some markets saturated with some of the most qualified planning professionals in the US and Canada. You'll be competing with people with more experience and education than yourself. Then there's the issue that there are few openings or that a lot of these firms either don't hire planners or they only have a few on staff.

If you're real eager to get into these companies, your best bet is to get an internship there. Then they might have the resources to be able to offer you a permanent position afterwards. First you'll probably need to build up experience in Canada from any planning related job you can find then try to move on to bigger and better things from there. You also may need to consider pursing a Masters.

[xvodax]

i wanna be closer to her.

How do you expect to even EARN a glance at your resume, let alone a phone interview, when you write this garbage? Clean up your grammar if you want to make a good first impression.

Most cyburbians do not hand over privileged information to people who don't make meaningful contributions to discussion boards. You will need to earn that right first.

i wanna be closer to her
i wanna be closer to her
i wanna be closer to her

It's like getting the lyrics of an awful bubblegum pop song stuck in your head.

Oh, well sorry. I guess I did not understand that this public forum holds a higher class of professionalism. I will conduct myself accordingly next time and will hope that you can see past this honest mistake.

It's great that you're ambitious but you really can't be that selective in this economy. People are having a hard time getting any planning related jobs now regardless of any geographical preferences they may have.

Frankly you'll have very little chance of getting hired by any top firms straight out of undergrad unless you have a stellar portfolio or you know someone who works there; even then, the chances are low. This economy is just awful and you're trying to get into some markets saturated with some of the most qualified planning professions in the US and Canada. You'll be competing with people with more experience and education than yourself. Then there's the issue that there are few openings or that a lot of these firms either don't hire planners or they only have a few on staff.

If you're real eager to get into these companies, your best bet is to get an internship there. Then they might have the resources to be able to offer you a permanent position afterwards. First you'll probably need to build up experience in Canada from any planning related job you can find then try to move on to bigger and better things from there.

thank you, yes, through my research for a number of these positions, master degree is mandatory for a entry position to be considerd and with the lack of experience, an american firm would be hard pressed to move me down there.

cheers.

[Tide]

i wanna be closer to her.

How do you expect to even EARN a glance at your resume, let alone a phone interview, when you write this garbage? Clean up your grammar if you want to make a good first impression.

Most cyburbians do not hand over privileged information to people who don't make meaningful contributions to discussion boards. You will need to earn that right first.

i wanna be closer to her
i wanna be closer to her
i wanna be closer to her

It's like getting the lyrics of an awful bubblegum pop song stuck in your head.

Way to make the young student feel welcome here and provide constructive criticism. I know you think you are the &hit when it comes to job hunting, searching, continuing education and resume building but no need to come down that hard for a new poster. Loosen up a little.

I will say to xvodax that you can look in those cities but starting out right now you will have to go where the work is like Blilde said.

[NickSticks]

How much internship/work experience do you have? In the realm of technical skills how skilled are you in programs like ArcGIS, InDesign, SketchUp, CAD, Photoshop, etc.?

To be blunt with you, most of the firms you listed will probably not even consider you for a position without a first professional degree in architecture/landscape architecture or possibly a masters in urban planning. Unless you can prove to them that you can bring more technical skills to the table than people with the lots of experience and/or the educational backgrounds I mentioned, you may have a hard time getting your foot in the door.

[nrschmid]

Way to make the young student feel welcome here and provide constructive criticism. I know you think you are the &hit when it comes to job hunting, searching, continuing education and resume building but no need to come down that hard for a new poster. Loosen up a little.

One of my very first posts in 2006 was asking advice on formatting a zoning ordinance in landscape format and I was attacked left and right. I think I was excommunicated or something.

[Blide]

I guess another question that should be asked is what are your interests in planning? Most private sector planning firms are pretty specialized.

If your interest is urban design, it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to start looking into M.Arch or MLA programs now. You could go to a program in NYC and maybe get your foot in the door there.

[Raf]

I am going to be super blunt. It will be nearly impossible to land a job in the states without even a greencard. Why would a company sponsor you for a an H1-B visa when there are probably plenty of good canidates that are citizens that don't have as complicated as a background as a non-citizen. As others said, if you have connections or a knock out of the park portfolio/work experience maybe, but coming strait out of school, i doubt.

But reach for the stars! Good luck.

[DetroitPlanner]

Don't be so picky. You mention high end firms but there are lots on your list that you don't have that are much larger in scope. (look in the back of Planning Magazine) I'm not even sure why you would only want to cherry pick these types of firms anyways. Whats wrong with a smaller or regional firm? What is wrong with being a muni planner somewhere in ON?

[xvodax]

cheers all.

i'll take this all into consideration, maybe i just wanna be in the big city and what it all right now.

I'll definitly be more open to other options as they come. in the end, i know i'll be taking what comes my way, experience is key, no matter what direction i go.

In technical skills, i'm in a program that specializes in both the technical and theory, to be honest, mostly the tech. ArcGIS with many extensions, AutoCad. Sketch-up, Impressions, Illustrator, Indesign, Photoshop.. etc.

I've ran through 2 co-op stints already, working for a landscape designer last year, and currently now a planning department with a municapality.

Master Planning, Design, Land-use, Subdivision Design, Strategic Planning are what i would be intrested - in saying all this planning. i also posses landscape architecture skills that would be benefical. so the routes are pretty much endless right now.

cheers
xv

[Howl]

A month late, but you can complete your list of planning firms using this:

http://www.ontarioplanners.on.ca/con...Directory.aspx

Some firms are so small that they don't need a technician, while others are quite high-end and will only hire people with masters degrees or better. You should research them and figure out which is which before you send out resumes. You need to find the firms that do a high volume of grunt work for private developers and concentrate on them.

The firms that come to my mind are Malone Given Parsons, Walker Nott Dragicevic, Weston Consulting, MMM Group.