Communication skill can be a critical success factor in engineering. Engineering know-how is given added power when communicated with clarity and simplicity in presentations that are thoughtfully planned and effectively executed. In this course, each student will make a large number of short presentations to sharpen their skills and increase their confidence. Students will grapple with capturing the essence of complex subjects and expressing it through key words, data and images. Students will be able to develop a wide range of skills: visual representation of data, systems and mechanisms; structuring and sequencing a talk; managing the tools, equipment and physical and psychological aspects of presentations; delivering speeches with vivid voice and body language; and finally, skills in connecting with an audience and achieving the desired impact.

A growing body of social science research offers clear evidence that emotional intelligence (EQ) plays a crucial role in leadership effectiveness. We know that the most successful managers are able to motivate and achieve best performances through the ability to understand others, and the key to this is to first understand yourself. In this course, you will complete the most scientifically validated EQ assessment available, The Emotional Quotient Inventory (EQ-i) and receive a detailed report that identifies your leadership strengths and targets areas for development. You will acquire an enhanced level of self-knowledge and a deeper awareness of your impact on others. This will form the basis of a personal development plan that will help you improve your leadership effectiveness.In this course we will also examine evidence-based research that links leadership effectiveness to authenticity and mindfulness, both of which can be enhanced through mindfulness training programs. Simply defined, mindfulness is the awareness of one’s mental processes and the understanding of how one’s mind works. Using case studies, we will discover why companies such as Carlsberg, Google, Sony, and General Electric have trained hundreds of employees in mindfulness.

21st century career management skills and knowledge are critical success factors for engineers, to develop their own careers for the future, and as leaders and project managers, to help develop others' careers. Especially in engineering where career engagement influences innovation and productivity, career management is arguably the most important learning to bridge the gap between an engineering education and an engineer's ability to apply their learning in the real world.

In this course, students will learn about contemporary theories and issues in career development so they can apply their knowledge and skills, to benefit their own careers, and those of their team members, organization, and society. Students will learn an evidence-based framework for career clarification and exploration. Using this framework, students gain career management and job search strategies, increase hope and confidence, expand their network and use practical career management tools. In an increasingly volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world of work, students will consider career paths, hear and tell career stories, and gain skills to navigate a lifetime of transitions.

This course will examine leadership in relation to technology and the engineering profession. Topics will include: leadership theories, historic and current leaders, ethical leadership, teaming and networking, productivity and innovation, thinking frameworks, business leadership, and influencing people. Through this course students will explore their own leadership abilities and develop or strengthen their competencies in areas such as managing conflict, team dynamics, running effective meetings, developing others, and creation of vision and mission statements. The course will be delivered through lectures, workshops, readings, and guest speakers.

The objective of this course is to prepare students for the type of teams, processes and decisions used for complex socio-technical engineering design projects. The course will equip students with tools and strategies for leading, following other leaders, in this context. Students will have the opportunity to apply their learning on three hybrid team-individual assignments. The course readings will be sourced from real industry cases and experiences.

There is growing demand (and requirements) within both industry and academia to have engineers, leaders, researchers, and instructors who are versed in equity, diversity and inclusion (EDI) principles and leverage that knowledge to positively influence the development and impact of their work. However, engineers and STEM researchers often feel unsure how to properly navigate these social principles within their technical spaces.

This course is for both working professionals or research academics who operate within engineering industry, research or teaching spaces seeking to develop an understanding of EDI principles and how they may apply to their technical contexts. This course seeks to provide students with space to learn about and develop tools, strategies, and reflections when engaging equity and social considerations within their work.

This course provides training in these areas while focusing on your current research project, simultaneously providing you with future training and immediately applicable strategies to help you complete your thesis research project. Through facilitated activity-based workshops you will develop your research and project management skills, acquire strategies to identify and articulate a research hypothesis, set research goals and plan your research approach (including quantification of results and validation of quantitative metrics), and share research findings via oral, written, and graphical communication.

The course is designed to provide an overview of the theory and practice of community development, including an historical review, an examination of contemporary issues and debates, theories of social change, methodological considerations, and examples of current community development initiatives. Key concepts to be explored are the important definitions of communities, globalization and neoliberalism, differences in the types and styles of participation, the role of voluntary associations, minority groups and community leadership.

The studio introduces the basics of city-making and urban analysis in a set of design exercises. By means of didactic abstractions, the exercises isolate difference aspects of the city-ranging from infrastructure to signage - for scrutiny in a sequence of increasing complexity, culminating in a synthetic design project. The sequence also shifts the emphasis from issues of consolidation in traditional urban cores to dispersion in the post-metropolitan periphery, from city as physical structure to city as a system of communication. Attention is given to problems of representation particular to the complexity and dynamism of urban form and experience.

Urban Design Studio 2 is offered to students who have completed the urban design studio (URD1011Y). Students may select from different options announced at the time of before registration.

This course provides an overview of computing technology relevant to urban design. Students will gain exposure to database systems. geographic information systems (GIS) and computer aided design (CAD). Particular attention will be placed on the integration and movement of data between these technologies to form comprehensive urban information systems. Visualization and hypermedia will be examined as tools for communication, dialogue and decision-making.

This course will present a history of the development of the urban form of the city and the urban region of Toronto from the late eighteenth century to the present. We will explore the characteristic relationships that have grown up over the years between the distinctive topography of the city; it’s pre-settler indigenous patterns, early European settlement, and the evolution over time of its successive infrastructures, including railways, port facilities, expressways, transit lines and pedestrian walkway systems. These characteristic infrastructures will be described in terms of their gradual, systematic impact on the evolving form of the city. At the same time, the architecture of the city will also be described, but this description will demonstrate primarily how buildings became typological in the historical evolution of Toronto. One might say that the buildings will be depicted to the extent that they demonstrate the typical relationships of the city’s building typologies to its emergent urban morphology.

The course has been conceived to be of particular interest to urban design and planning students, but it is open as an elective to students in the architecture and landscape architecture programs as well.

This course surveys the design challenges of contemporary urbanism. In so doing it focusses upon modern, postmodern, and postcolonial architecture and city planning from several standpoints of critical theory - such as Marxism, feminism, deconstruction, phenomenology, psychoanalysis, as well as the various modernisms and influential reactions to them. To complement the normative dimension of such critiques, interdisciplinary perspectives drawn from urban geography, history, sociology, anthropology, planning theory, and political economy will furnish an account of the social, cultural, political, and economic forces now shaping cities - with an optimistic view to creating alternative visions and forms of urban space.

Urban Design & Development is a course about the competing forces that shape our cities and communities. The course will involve students in the examination of the complex relationship between public policy and urban form and reveal the various ways that government policies, politics, and market forces shape the physical form of our cities and communities in both intentional and unintentional ways. In a seminar/lecture format students will examine how modern cities are designed and built and the mechanisms by which government and society attempt to understand, guide and regulate the individual buildings, neighbourhoods, open spaces and infrastructure that are the products of those forces. There is a natural tension between public and private forces – and the success or failure of cities often depends on the ability of opposing sides to work together to find an optimum development solution. In Ontario, when parties are unable to agree on the form of the proposed development -- developers are able to appeal their case to the Ontario Land Tribunal (OLT) -- formerly the OMB and the LPAT.  

Starting with an understanding of the provincial, regional and local structures that form the framework for growth, students will examine the policies and guidelines that the various levels of government employ to shape their communities. This examination will include consideration of the numerous forces at play including policies, by-laws and guidelines and the ways in which they are interpreted and enforced by municipal staff, politicians, the general public and the OLT. During the term, students will have opportunities to engage with the dynamics of urban growth through in-class lectures; directed reading and research; presentations by individuals involved in proposing and planning for development; and individual or group seminar/presentations on relevant, selected topics.  

Urban Design Studio Options is a set of advanced studios on various topics chosen by faculty based on their research and design interests. Topics vary from year to year. 

Supervised independent research on a topic defined b the student, leading to the formation of an urban design thesis proposal. Emphasis is on the completion of a comprehensive and critical review of literature and relevant works as well as the development of a clear proposal for the design thesis.

The course is taught in individual tutorial with the thesis advisor and following a program tailored to the particular research demands of the particular topic.

Execution of an independent design thesis to be undertaken by each student under the supervision of a thesis advisor and leading to the fulfillment of the requirements for an urban design thesis.

Provides an overview of the Canadian and U.S development industries within the real estate development process. The course covers the financial basis of urban development projects (private and public finance); the participants; land assembly procedures and land banking; mixed use projects, sectoral and scale differences within the development industry market and locational search procedures. Finally, it addresses the interface of the industry with the public sector.