Planner, Urban Growth Modelling

Job Description - Planner, Urban Growth Modelling (51734)

Job Number

51734

Interested in strategic foresight for Edmonton's growth? A unique opportunity to apply your urban planning, modeling, and data science skills all in one.

The City of Edmonton is looking for a passionate Urban Growth Modeler to join our Urban Systems Assessments (USA) team. In this role, you will play a key part in shaping the future of our city by developing, maintaining, and implementing advanced spatial economic, land use, and transportation system models. These models are decision support systems essential for evaluating growth strategies, analyzing housing affordability, supporting mobility planning, and guiding infrastructure investments. If you are a highly skilled and motivated individual with a passion for urban development and a strong understanding of urban growth modeling, we encourage you to apply

As a Planner, Urban Growth Modeling, you will be responsible for developing, maintaining, and implementing complex models that simulate urban development patterns. You will collaborate with a multidisciplinary team of engineers, economists, urban and land use planners, and other specialists to ensure the accuracy and effectiveness of these models. Your work will directly impact the City of Edmonton's decision-making processes regarding growth strategies, infrastructure investments, and housing affordability. This is a challenging yet rewarding opportunity to contribute to the sustainable and efficient growth of our city.

What will you do?

- Develop, implement, update, calibrate, and validate Edmonton's Urban Growth Model.
- Establish processes for designing experiments and running many combinations of growth and mobility policies in an automated fashion.
- Develop techniques, algorithms, and machine learning models to create synthetic data for hard to find data items such as residential and non-residential market price and rents.
- Develop routines to derive sensitivities among key variables and their influences on residential and non-residential development patterns, housing demand, and affordability for different population segments.
- Engage with colleagues to develop future scenarios considering population growth, economic development, transportation infrastructure investment, and growth management policies to provide strategic foresight.
- Respond to analytics service inquiries and provide insights on urban growth patterns under different growth projections and policy actions.
- Engage with stakeholders, including colleagues, other departments, and external agencies through reports, presentations, and visualizations.
- Provide subject matter expertise and insights to the business areas, leadership team, and decision-makers on how to manage urban growth in a sustainable and efficient manner.
- Manage workload, develop proactive work plans, and establish the urban growth modeling platform as a trusted tool for achieving city plan goals and targets.

Qualifications

- Bachelor's degree in Urban Planning, Urban Geography, Urban Informatics, City & Regional Planning, Economics/Econometrics, or a related field.
- Minimum of four years of professional experience in planning, land use modeling, urban real estate, housing demand, statistics, and geospatial analysis.

Assets

- Post-graduate degree in City & Regional Planning, Urban Planning, Urban Economics, or a related discipline.
- Membership or eligibility for membership in the Canadian Institute of Planners and regional affiliate.
- Advanced training in computer modeling and statistics.
- Proficient in data processing, statistical data analysis, and data visualization with open libraries.
- Intermediate ArcGIS software proficiency.
- Proficiency in Tableau or similar visualization software.

Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities required for success

Subject Matter Knowledge:

- Urban Planning: Urban planning principles, City/Regional planning, land use planning, and urban development.
- Urban Economics: Urban economic principles, land economics, real estate markets, and economic development.
- Urban Growth Policy: Land use policy, growth management policy, land use regulation.

Technical Skills:

- Experience in discrete choice modeling, econometrics, systems dynamics, and agent-based modeling.
- Experience with simulating urban development, particularly in areas such as spatial economic development, real estate demand, real estate price, and location choice.
- Strong background in statistics and experience in statistical estimation and geospatial data analysis.
- Advanced proficiencies in GIS software (e.g., ArcGIS, QGIS), GIS routines and scripting, and spatial analysis techniques.
- Strong proficiencies with Python, R, and other scripting languages and open-source libraries.
- Experience with SQL, PostgreSQL, or other database management systems to manage large-scale geospatial data.
- Experience with machine learning (ML) model development for exploratory modeling, creating synthetic data, and predictive analytics.
- Familiarity with open-source libraries, packages, and hosting repositories such as GitHub.

Abilities:

- Ability to apply system thinking to analyze the complex interactions of urban growth, land use, transportation, infrastructure, and environmental impacts.
- Demonstrated ability to collaborate with interdisciplinary experts, stakeholders, data owners, and external agencies for continuous improvement.
- Strong written and verbal communication skills for explaining complex technical concepts to diverse non-technical audiences.
- A collaborative, self-driven, and result-oriented team player, open to cross-learning and sharing expertise.
- Alignment to our Cultural Commitments and Leadership Competencies.
- Embracing a culture of equity, diversity, reconciliation, and inclusion.
- Applicants may be tested.

Work Environment

- Note: This position may be eligible for a hybrid work arrangement with the flexibility to work from both home and the worksite as per the Letter of Understanding between the City of Edmonton and Civic Service Union 52.
- The weekly hours of work for this position are currently under review and may change at a future time. Any changes will be made in accordance with the City of Edmonton/Civic Service Union 52 collective agreement and the incumbent will be notified in advance.

The City of Edmonton values applicants with a diverse range of skills, experiences, and competencies, and encourages you to apply. We strive to provide reasonable access and accommodations throughout the recruitment process. To request an accommodation, please contact employment@edmonton.ca. Learn more about our benefits.

Up to 1 permanent full-time position

Hours of Work: 33.75 hours per week

Salary Range: $51.171 - $65.301 Hourly; $90,105.51 - $115,044.04 Annually

Talent Acquisition Consultant: PO/MM

Edmonton rests in the heart of Treaty Six territory in Alberta and the homelands of the Metis Nation.

Classification Title: Planner II

Posting Date

Feb 13, 2025

Closing Date

Mar 6, 2025 11:59:00 PM (MST)

Number of Openings (up to)

1 - Permanent Full-time

Union: CSU 52

Department

Urban Planning and Economy

Work Location(s)

7th Floor Edmonton Tower, 10111 104 Avenue Edmonton T5J 0J4

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