Orly Linovski

University of Manitoba | UMN · Department of City Planning

Despite years of legally mandated public engagement for transportation planning, there is often little evidence that this results in more equitable processes or outcomes. Recently, there has been interest in improving engagement by having community-based or advocacy groups design, lead, and implement public engagement activities. This research exam...

Problem, research strategy, and findings Despite recent interest in the experiences of planners working in the private sector, much research does not distinguish between different organizational contexts. A key change in the consultancy market is the rise of global, publicly traded firms that provide planning services. This research draws on interv...

This research explores how the implementation of a single bus rapid transit (BRT) corridor affected transit ridership change in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. Key issues in measuring ridership change resulting from BRT include (1) understanding stop-level- rather than corridor-level change; (2) examining the ridership impacts of new infrastructure whe...

Transportation equity research and assessments undertaken by academics and practitioners stretches back decades. Despite the abundance of work, questions still remain about how decisions are made in the transportation planning process, including how routes are analyzed and prioritized. To understand this, we examine the potential equity outcomes of...

There has been significant work on transportation equity over the past 40 years, often prioritizing quantitative and modelling approaches. In contrast, this study draws on research on lived experiences, with a focus on equity-deserving groups. We find that the lived experiences of equity-deserving groups are well documented, in both the academic li...

Professional planners working in the private sector intersect with a complex sphere of business interests. Management consultants have a growing influence in many organizations, including private sector planning firms. Using a mixed-method approach to examine the strategies and priorities of management consultants, I find that management consultant...

Bias in policing is a concern in many Canadian cities, through there is little known about the impact on cyclists. This research analyzed the type and location of tickets issued to cyclists in Winnipeg, Manitoba to understand disparities in enforcement. We find that tickets are issued almost exclusively in inner-city areas, with the majority of tic...

While urban planning has historically been undertaken by the public sector, publicly traded firms are increasingly involved in a wide range of these processes. Financialization, with its emphasis on shareholder value, impacts professionals working within firms, including their conduct and ethics. This research focuses on institutional conflicts of...

We reflect here on the role of planning education in the UK, by exploring how current societal and educational trends might crystallise into contrasting scenarios of who the planner is, in a (dystopian) future 40 years hence. However, before imagining the world in 2060 we first look backward to 1950, to the deliberations of the Committee on the Q...

Though there has been significant interest in the financialization of urban space, there has been little examination of the role of planning practitioners in these processes. Professional practices in publicly traded planning and engineering “megafirms”—global companies created through mergers and diversification—are marked by the influence of capi...

The distribution of transportation benefits is mediated through planning professionals and elected officials, who frame the goals of these investments and can prioritize the importance of fairness in decision-making. Despite increasing evidence of the importance of transportation equity, there are broad questions about how equity principles factor...

Despite concerns about the privatization of urban planning practices, there is little known about the professional actors involved in this restructuring. Private-sector consultants, though beholden to the same professional standards as public-sector employees, face competing pressures of an entrepreneurial fee-for-service business model. This artic...

There has been the criticism that urban design is increasingly being used as an entrepreneurial strategy for cities, transformed into a tool for attracting investment. This article examines the evolution of urban design plans in Los Angeles to understand the relationship between urban design practices and growth. Rather than a clear break in orient...

This research assesses how professional expertise is constructed and deployed by public and private sector practitioners. In-depth case studies of urban design projects in two cities with differing local government capacities are used to critically examine professional expertise. The study finds that the expertise of consultants was portrayed as mo...

Urban design plans offer a window into the values of the urban design profession, but we have little knowledge of how they have changed over time, and the implications for design practice. The study provides a critical evaluation of the vision, methods, and content of urban design plans in large North American cities and a comparison with earlier g...

High speed rail (HSR) is planned for California and other US states, but there is a significant lack of knowledge regarding the urban development impacts that HSR systems have had in other parts of the world. The study identifies the important preconditions for positive development around HSR stations, the most important positive and negative effec...

Many city planners are increasingly focusing on urban design guidelines to shape future growth. However, the social implications of this type of planning rarely appear in city plans. Toronto's new planning policies are shown to establish a polarized view of the city, focusing on aesthetic concerns rather than the use and users of spaces. Interviews...

Building energy and Carbon emission calculation methods for regions are of limited use if appropriate input data cannot be economically generated. To enable a wider uptake of regional modelling methods an automated analysis system is required to replace or assist time-consuming and expensive manual surveys of building stock. Building age is an impo...