Parts I and Part II of The Coriolis Effect explored how market-aligned tools like the pro forma have subtly—but powerfully—steered urban planning in directions that often favour capital over community. These tools, cloaked in technical neutrality, have become stand-ins for judgment, overshadowing the planner’s role as steward of the public interest.
But if the diagnosis is clear, the next question becomes urgent: What would it take to resist the pull?
This third piece looks forward. It outlines how planners can reclaim their critical faculties, rebuild internal capacity, and recover the courage to say no when the public good is on the line. The goal is not to reject technical tools outright, but to reassert judgment over algorithm—to put the planner, not the spreadsheet, back in the driver’s seat.
Reclaiming Judgment
A planner sits across from a developer. The numbers don’t pencil out unless the city allows another six storeys. The developer gestures to the pro forma. The planner hesitates.
In too many offices, this is where the story ends: the numbers “don’t lie.”
But what if they did?
Or rather, what if they were incomplete, selective—calibrated to an outcome defined not by need, but by precedent or profit? What if the planner had the fluency—and the institutional backing—to say: Run it again. Change the assumptions. Show me the version that preserves the rental units.
This isn’t fantasy. It’s what planning could look like when judgment isn’t outsourced—but reclaimed.
The Lost Tools of Planning
Once, planners were trained to do much of this analysis in-house. They worked through scenarios, tested density models, and debated trade-offs out loud. Today, much of that work is contracted out to consulting firms—whose deliverables are shaped by narrow briefs and too often go unquestioned.
It’s not that consultants are villains. It’s that the planner’s toolkit has become fragmented, with key instruments missing or dulled by disuse.
What’s needed is a renewed commitment to internal capacity: planners who can read a pro forma, challenge a retail impact study, spot the assumptions hiding in a transportation model, or call out an architectural rendering that misrepresents reality. Not to replace technical experts, but to interpret their work critically—and hold it accountable to public values.
Building a Culture of Integrity
To reclaim their evaluative role, planners need more than skills—they need institutional cover. Too often, municipal staff are expected to act as neutral go-betweens, translating developer claims into policy while navigating limited time, strained resources, and political pressure.
What’s needed is an infrastructure that supports scrutiny: internal peer review panels, third-party validation, public-facing modeling tools, and clearer protocols for when to push back.
Imagine an environmental assessment—but for financial models. Imagine a “public interest statement” attached to every development proposal, outlining not just financial viability, but equity, sustainability, and long-term community benefit.
These aren’t radical ideas. They’re overdue.
Planning Ethics 2.0
The first entry in the Canadian Institute of Planners’ Code of Ethics states that planners must “practice in a manner that respects the diversity, needs, values, and aspirations of the public and encourages discussion on these matters.” It’s a noble sentiment. But it says little about how to navigate politically driven modeling, speculative “value capture”, or the silence that descends when numbers dominate narratives.
Perhaps it’s time for a new layer of professional guidance—one that speaks directly to the planner’s relationship with technical tools. One that says: It’s your responsibility to ask who benefits, who’s left out, and whether the assumptions align with the city we say we want.
The Planner as Interpreter–Advocate
Reclaiming the planner’s toolkit is not just a technical project—it’s a cultural one. It means seeing planners not as neutral translators between developers and the public, but as engaged interpreters: professionals who can question, challenge, and weigh competing visions of the city.
Planners who know that neutrality isn’t always virtuous—and that speaking up in the public interest isn’t bias. It’s integrity.
The pro forma isn’t going away. Nor should it. But it’s time we put it back in its place.
If planners are to navigate the forces shaping our cities with integrity, they’ll need more than tools. They’ll need judgment. And the authority to use it.
Countering the Spin
Resisting the gravitational pull of market logic isn’t just about rejecting the numbers—it’s about reclaiming the authority to interpret them. It’s knowing when to pause, when to challenge what’s being presented as inevitable, and when to ask: Whose city is this serving?
Like the Coriolis force itself, these influences are invisible but powerful—redirecting trajectories without ever seeming to apply force at all. But if The Coriolis Effect has shown us anything, it’s that subtle shifts can have seismic consequences.
Planners don’t need to abandon the toolkit. They need to own it. To see beyond spreadsheets and into the lived experience behind every metric. To reframe technical neutrality as a political choice. And to remember: numbers don’t shape cities—people do.
This is how we counter the spin.
By reclaiming judgment, rebuilding capacity, and refusing to defer when the public good is at stake, planners can steer the profession back to where it belongs—not in the service of precedent or profit, but in the pursuit of possibility in the service of the greater public.
And that, now more than ever, is the true work of planning.
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The Coriolis Effect Series:
- The Coriolis Effect, Part I: Planning by Spreadsheet
- The Coriolis Effect, Part II: Beyond the Spreadsheet
- The Coriolis Effect, Part III: Reclaiming the Planner’s Toolkit
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The other related Spacing Vancouver pieces:
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Erick Villagomez is the Editor-in-Chief at Spacing Vancouver and teaches at UBC’s School of Community and Regional Planning.
