After being publically ousted from his job as the City of Vancouver's head planner in January 2012, Brent Toderian had several options.
He could have had his pick of other top planning jobs at Canadian cities, including Toronto. He could have joined a large planning firm, like the Ontario company he left on the verge of becoming a partner to work for the City of Calgary. Or, as several of his friends suggested, he could have taken a few months off to relax, catch up on some reading and ponder his next move.
Instead, Toderian, 43, stayed in Vancouver and set up shop as a roving urbanist-for-hire.
A year and a half later, he continues to work out of a home office in the condo near Chinatown he shares with his wife, a planner for the City of Burnaby.
His consultancy, Toderian UrbanWorks, is a sole proprietorship, and he has no plans to expand any time soon.
"I'm still young, and I may decide to build a company," said Toderian. "But for now, I'm enjoying the freedom to do work that interests me and say no to work that doesn't."
Those projects have included the Fleetwood town centre plan for the City of Surrey, a city-wide plan for the City of Regina, planning work for the Credit Suisse office tower in Vancouver, and working with municipalities in Colombia, Australia and Finland.
That freedom contrasts with the politicized intensity of his six-year stint with the city, which started in 2006 while Sam Sullivan was mayor.
In November 2008, Gregor Robertson was elected, a regime change that included a new city manager, Penny Ballem.
Toderian's relative youth and reputation for shaking up Calgary's suburbs made him a person of interest. While still in Calgary, Larry Beasley, Vancouver's legendary previous planning director, told Toderian to "get ready."
"My response was always, Larry, I don't want to work for you, I want to be you," said Toderian. "The irony was I didn't mean I wanted his job … what I wanted to do was do what Larry was doing [but] in Calgary."
During his time at the City of Vancouver, Toderian shaped and guided controversial policies like ecodensity, saw the Olympic Village turned into "a political punching bag" and tackled the city's sacred view corridors.
Along the way, he faced public complaints from developers and architects that he moved too slowly on approving their projects – criticisms he dismisses as "a narrative that would get repeated without any evidence."
The job consumed most of his waking hours and became increasingly difficult as the years went by.
"In the almost six years that I was there, the first three years of that job was the best job of my life," he said. "And the last three years were the worst job of my life."
Toderian said he saw the culture of the city hall change dramatically while he worked there. He believes the workplace has lost much of the creativity and innovation it once had.
"It's a lot harder to get things done at city hall now," he said. "It takes a lot longer to get less done."
But while the experience may have been a trial by fire, Toderian has since emerged as a star on the international planning circuit. He has developed a nearly constant stream of tweets, blog posts and media commentary that is shaping the conversation on how to create a livable city.
That constant presence has also brought him to the attention of potential clients: once reluctant to tweet, he got his first consulting job through Twitter.
And as he made clear during an interview at the Vancouver Art Gallery café, he's not planning on going anywhere.
Gordon Price, director of the city program at Simon Fraser University and a former city councillor, and said the idea of hidden density, like laneway houses, and the Cambie corridor plan, which linked neighbourhoods together along the Canada Line, are two ways in which Toderian put his mark on the city.
"It's a great brand, and it has international cachet. Clearly it's now part of his bonafides."
Toderian grew up in Perth, Ontario, but spent time in Montreal staying with his mother's family. The contrast between small town and big city sparked his lifelong love affair with cities.
"Playing hockey in the rear alleys, taking the metro and … shopping in the snow on Saint Catherine Street – this to me was a city."
His father was a country music singer who toured small-town Ontario in the summer, his mother was an executive assistant who showed him "the value of extreme capability."
He assumed he would be either a lawyer or a musician but was steered into urban planning by teachers in high school and university.
"I loved place watching and trying to figure out how things function," he said "I was fascinated by that."
After completing his undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo, Toderian was hired at MHCB, an Ontario planning and architecture firm with a reputation for toughness.
"I worked for a very tough guy who gave me a very thick skin," he said.
Nine years later, he jumped from private practice to the City of Calgary.
Now, the fact that he has worked in private practice and two big cities in three provinces is part of his consulting product, as is his experience leading municipal planning departments. He said cities often hire him to be an "urban provocateur" – someone who comes to town and shakes things up.
"What I prefer is to embed myself in a city. This is what I did in Surrey," said Toderian, referring to recent work on Surrey's Fleetwood town centre.
John Fleming, director of planning at London, Ontario, recently hired Toderian to work with his staff for several days on a redrafting of London's city plan.
"He knew London, so he was able to speak with some familiarity about what we are dealing with," Fleming said.
"At the same time, he had been exposed to planning on the national and international stage that really brought very different perspectives to the table."
Fleming credits Toderian's involvement with putting local media attention on the project — and getting the public fired up about city planning.
"He really created a buzz in our community on a subject that often is overlooked."
