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Melanie is an urban planner and Partner with Urban Strategies Inc. For 20 years Melanie has been working with communities across North America on city building initiatives in particular related to growth management, transit supportive development and sustainable communities. Her understanding of sustainable design, integration of land use and transit, urban form and economic realities has led to relevant and practical solutions to a variety of urban development challenges. She has worked on transit-related corridor and station area planning strategies in Waterloo, Calgary, Saint Paul, Minneapolis, Toronto, Oakville and Durham. Recently, Melanie led the Waterloo Region’s Central Transit Corridor Community Building Strategy, which considers opportunities to leverage investment in Rapid Transit with land use and city building objectives. This project received a 2014 Award of Excellence from the Canadian Institute of Planners. For the City of Saint Paul, Melanie led the preparation of a development strategy for an 18 kilometre line connecting Downtown Saint Paul with Downtown Minneapolis. With a direct link to almost 280,000 jobs, 123,000 residents and 15 distinct neighbourhoods, the strategy, an outcome of an extensive consultation process, was fundamental to articulating the relationship of the Central Corridor to the broader community-building, mobility, employment and place-making objectives of the City. She has since followed up on this work to lead the creation of 11 Station Area Plans along the Central corridor and is currently working on the transitional station area plans SW LRT Corridor in Hennepin County. In Calgary, Melanie’s transit development planning focused on the Brentwood, Lions Park and Banff Trail Stations along the Northwest Corridor of the CTrain. Melanie is a skilled facilitator, a role she utilizes regularly in her projects and has extensive experience engaging diverse communities, including youth, around transit-related city building projects.