This weekend, we celebrated both our newest Registered Professional Planners and those marking 25 years in the profession. Watching them together felt like seeing the full arc of a calling.

After two years as PIBC President, the top thing I’ve learned is this: our profession renews itself, generation after generation.

It’s a tough time to be a planner.

Housing crises, climate emergencies, biodiversity loss, failing infrastructure, public cynicism—some days the work feels impossibly heavy.

And yet: the very things that make this moment hard are also what make it meaningful. When the stakes are this high, planners don’t just participate in change—we have to lead it.

Why do Canadian cities feel so… well-behaved, compared to Paris?

The short answer: we’ve largely zoned out streetscape spontaneity.

In Canada, we need to shed—or at least rethink—a few old habits.

Paris rewards the flâneur and flâneuse—the idle walker-who-observes. Every corner, every café terrace, every balcony seems to hold a lesson in how cities can shine, and evolve. During my recent wanderings in Paris, I gathered eight ideas—small gestures and grand visions alike—that reveal how the French capital is quietly reinventing urban life.