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Charling Li

As a mechanical engineer by training, Charling found that completing a master鈥檚 degree in urban studies helped her develop new and broader approaches to sustainability challenges in the built environment.

鈥淏efore the Urban Studies Program, I was very much focused on the environmental side,鈥� Charling explained. 鈥淚 felt like something was missing, because I didn鈥檛 have much exposure to the social sciences through my undergraduate degree. I would wonder - if energy efficiency makes sense, why people weren鈥檛 doing that? Now, I have a much broader understanding of sustainability and resilience. There are so many other factors - like habit, history, cultural influences and policy that influence decision making at all levels. There are so many other reasons why sustainability solutions that may seem obvious from a technical or economic perspective aren鈥檛 being taken up.鈥�

Charling had already been working in the sustainability field after earning her engineering degree at the University of Waterloo. She was working as a green buildings design and construction consultant, but her desire to round out her perspective led her to the Urban Studies Program, and then, post-graduation, to consulting at Stantec. 鈥淭he Urban Studies program helped me understand that a technocratic approach is not sufficient to address the multi-layered and complex challenges in sustainable development. You can鈥檛 just throw money or engineering into solving issues that deeply involve people鈥檚 daily lives鈥� you need a deeper understanding of the social and institutional structures that drive decision making. I don鈥檛 think these opportunities would have been open to me prior my urban studies degree.鈥�

Charling also enjoyed the intellectually stimulating environment she found in the program. 鈥淭he other students were great. I went in wanting to learn about one thing 鈥� sustainable development - but I learned about so many different related urban issues because that鈥檚 what other students were interested in.鈥� She also ended up working, and even travelling to Europe, with one of the program鈥檚 professors, as part of a research project on ecourbanism.

鈥淚 left the program with so many more questions about sustainable development than I went in with; but this has made me a more critical systems thinker and more effective practitioner and better equipped to deal with the evolving challenges with sustainability,鈥� she said.

After several years in consulting, Charling recently took on a role as a renewable energy planner at the City of Vancouver, supporting the growth of the City's False Creek neighbourhood energy utility, which provides low-carbon heat and hot water. This was an opportunity for her to return to a subject she is passionate about, as district energy planning was the topic of her master's research. She is happy to be contributing to urban sustainability from a practical implementation perspective.

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