Recognition
Honorary Members
Honorary membership in the Canadian Institute of Planners is the highest honour the Institute can bestow upon a non-planner. This prestigious distinction recognizes educators, journalists, civil servants, community members, and other individuals working outside of the planning profession who have made a significant contribution to the discipline.
Becoming an Honourary Member
To become an Honorary Member, an individual must be nominated by a CIP member in good standing and adhere to the nomination criteria. The nomination is brought before CIP’s Honours and Awards Jury, which makes a recommendation to the CIP Board of Directors. New Honorary Members are presented during the honours and awards ceremony at CIP’s national conference. Honorary Members do not hold voting rights in the Institute.
For nominations guidelines, visit CIP’s Honours page.
Our Honorary Members
Through his distinguished career and dedicated citizenship, Michael Harcourt has been a constant advocate for innovative and responsible community and regional planning. As a community lawyer, City Councillor and Mayor of the City of Vancouver, and as a Member of the Legislature and Premier of British Columbia, Harcourt has shaped and supported more sustainable, vibrant, livable, and equitable cities and regions. He has been a friend and ally to planners, to the planning profession, and to the people, communities, and regions we serve.
Harcourt’s support to the planning profession and the principles for which we stand has been courageous, strong, and articulate on many fronts. Early on, his community activism fostered a reform of planning policies and practices in Vancouver, ending brutal ‘slum clearance’ and urban freeway construction. Later, his civic leadership in Vancouver helped form a vision for the city leading up to Expo 86, and inspired the transformation of the city thereafter. Then, his provincial leadership sponsored new approaches and legislation to resource management in British Columbia to balance economic needs with the imperatives for environmental responsibility, mandating integrated, sustainable regional development. Harcourt also helped bring recognition of the unceded nature of the province’s land base (the traditional territories of many First Nations), facilitating the formation of British Columbia’s Treaty Commission. Beyond government, Harcourt has taken the key themes of contemporary planning across the nation and internationally as a member of the National Roundtable on the Environment and Economy, chair of the National Advisory Committee on Cities and Communities, honorary Chair of the International Centre for Sustainable Cities, advisor to Canada’s Ecofiscal Commission, and special advisor to the Prime Minister on cities and the environment. Harcourt articulately carries the planning message in his books and other writings, his public speaking, and his teaching across Canada and around the world.
Harcourt’s advocacy and support for planning and his collaboration with planners have been celebrated provincially and nationally. He is an Honorary Member of the Planning Institute of British Columbia and he has received the Jane Jacobs Lifetime Achievement Award from the Canadian Urban Institute. Bringing together all of his contributions to Canadian life, Harcourt is also an Officer of the Order of Canada.