Achieving my MCIP or Professional Planner Status

This week I received my certificate from the Canadian Institute of Planners http://www.cip-icu.ca/web/la/en/default.asp indicating that I had been granted membership in the institute. The MCIP (Member of the Canadian Institute of Planners) is a professional designation, the planning equivalent of a CA in accounting or a PEng in engineering. Planning is one of the most challenging and exciting of all professions, in that there is a need to integrate many concepts and disciplines in order to effectively carry out projects. Planning for a more sustainable city or even a single real estate development should encompass a number of disciplines, including but not limited to: ecology, hydrology, geo-engineering, civil engineering, transport planning, sociology, architecture, structural engineering, landscape architecture, etc. Planning for transport, recreation, wildlife areas, etc, is easily as complex. You can see that effective planning integrates a myriad of disciplines in order to produce a viable place where people live, work, travel along, visit, and that places where something that has been built but which is poorly used or even avoided - is often a symptom of poor planning. I look forward to future work and being able to tap into the resources of the Canadian Institute of Planners and working with my planning colleagues. Cheers Paul