Urban Systems on Supporting the Emerging Leaders Program

This post is sponsored by Urban Systems.

CIP’s Emerging Leaders Program supports up-and-coming planners by providing leadership training, mentorship, and networking opportunities in a professional setting.

Following the 2026 cohort’s final online session, we connected with Andrew Cuthbert RPP, MCIP, a senior community planner with Urban Systems, to hear his reflections on the program, its impact on participants, and why investing in the next generation of leaders matters.

Can you tell us a bit about Urban Systems and what you do?

 At Urban Systems, we work alongside local governments, First Nations, and other community partners to help build vibrant communities across Western Canada. We believe the best results come from building strong relationships and working collaboratively over the long term. What makes us unique is the diversity of expertise we bring together. Our teams include planners, engineers, landscape architects, economists, technicians, communications specialists, graphic designers, and administrative professionals and more. Our teams are truly integrated, which helps us solve problems and generate creative solutions.

My role at the company is as one of the leads of our Vancouver Planning Practice. I have been with the company for 10 years and work with a mix of municipal, First Nations, and other agencies. My job is to assemble teams to answer a wide range of questions for our clients. I have a background in Geography, GIS and Planning, which helps me assemble more technical elements and translate them to a wider audience. My work includes land use planning, active transportation, land economics and regulatory work. Some of my favourite projects are public space and downtown revitalizations because they require a more explicitly interdisciplinary approach with landscape architecture, engineering, and land economics.

Why did you choose to support the Emerging Leaders Program?

Urban Systems has collaborated with CIP for a long time and is pleased to be a partner of the Emerging Leaders Program. At Urban Systems, we view leadership as a shared and scalable responsibility, where everyone has something to contribute, so we actively seek opportunities, like this one, to invest in future leaders. At a company level, supporting the Emerging Leaders Program fits with that vision and approach.

I participated in the Emerging Leaders Program in 2023. I applied because I had found that I was leading more projects and that I had kind of ended up taking on more of a leadership role, which highlighted a new area of professional growth. When the opportunity to apply to the program came up, the timing was right for where I was in my career.

What impact do you think this program had on participants?

The Emerging Leaders Program leaves a lasting impact primarily from the connections that participants make throughout the program. Throughout the program, you hear from planners across the country, which is interesting because it reveals the unique challenges that folks encounter in their home communities, but it also reveals that many of the leadership challenges that we face are common, independent of that context.  We’re all working with people.

Did anything surprise or inspire you during the program?

I think a powerful sentiment that I was left with is the intrinsic connection between motivation and integrity.  Several speakers repeated that integrity takes years to build and can be taken away in a moment. It underscores the need not only to act with integrity in all cases, but that it also must be a core motivation for how you approach everything.

What advice would you give to emerging leaders in the planning profession?

If I were to impart one tip, it would be to work on your ability to imagine something in its next larger context. How does a project fit within a Council Strategic Plan? How does this street design fit within the broader transportation network? How does this housing development help alleviate different aspects of the local housing crunch? How does your job fit within your life?  Being able to answer these questions often offers low-hanging fruit that you can use to solve complex problems.