Larry Beasley

LARRY BEASLEY is the retired Chief Planner for the City of Vancouver.  He is now the “Distinguished Practice Professor of Planning” at the University of British Columbia and the founding principal of Beasley and Associates, an international planning consultancy.

After more than thirty years of civic service in which he led the initiatives to transform Vancouver’s inner city as well as its neighbourhoods and took the lead role in development approvals, Mr. Beasley now teaches and advises on urbanism around the world.  He chairs the ‘National Advisory Committee on Planning, Design and Realty’ of Ottawa’s National Capital Commission; he is Senior Advisor on Urban Design in Dallas, Texas; he is on the International Economic Development Advisory Board of Rotterdam in The Netherlands; and he has just completed five years of service as the Special Advisor on City Planning to the government of Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates.  For three years he was the vice-president of a major Canadian development company, Aquilini Development and is now Special Development Advisor to one of Canada’s preeminent companies, Concord Pacific Developments.   

Mr. Beasley has studied architecture and has degrees in geography and political science (B.A.) and planning (M.A.).  He has also been awarded two Honorary Doctorate Degrees (Hon. L.L.D.), from Simon Fraser University and Dalhousie University.  He is a Fellow of the Canadian Institute of Planners, an Honorary Member of the Canadian Society of Landscape Architects and has been recognized as an “Advocate for Architecture” by the Royal Architectural Institute of Canada.  In 2007, he received the Kevin Lynch Prize from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  He is a Fellow of the Dallas Institute and sits on the Board of the Canadian Urban Institute, among other volunteer community services.

Mr. Beasley is a Member of the Order of Canada, his country’s highest civilian honour for lifetime achievement..