School of Urban and Regional Planning
Research Areas
Urban parks + waterfronts; post-industrial landscapes; urban ecologies; landscape + ecological design; landscape urbanism; edible landscapes + food security; biodiversity conservation; adaptive planning for complex systems.
Teaching Areas
planning studio, landscape + physical planning, research methods, ecological design, landscape urbanism
Scholarly Research + Creative Practice
Nina-Marie Lister is Associate Professor of Urban + Regional Planning at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada. A Registered Professional Planner (MCIP, RPP) with a background in resource management, field ecology and environmental science, Lister is the founding principal of plandform, a creative studio practice exploring the relationship between landscape, ecology, and urbanism. Her research, teaching and practice focus on the confluence of landscape infrastructure and ecological processes within contemporary metropolitan regions. In this context, she has developed three specialised areas of research: adaptive ecological design for ecosystem complexity and biodiversity conservation; parklands and waterfronts in post-industrial landscapes; and urban food systems and productive/edible landscapes. Professor Lister’s research appears in a variety of scholarly and professional practice journals as well as academic collections published by UBC Press, MIT Press, and Princeton Architectural Press—most recently in Large Parks (edited by Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves, winner of the 2008 J.B. Jackson Book Prize). Together with David Waltner-Toews and the late James Kay, she is co-editor of The Ecosystem Approach: Complexity, Uncertainty, and Managing for Sustainability (Columbia University Press, 2008). In her professional practice, she is a frequent collaborator with various international design firms in juried competitions and exhibitions involving both built and speculative works in metropolitan landscapes. Her work has been featured in several notable exhibitions shown at the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Montréal, the Chicago Architecture Foundation, the Toronto Design Exchange and the Van Alen Institute in New York. Noteworthy projects on which she has collaborated include the Lower Donlands International Design Competition, Toronto (Finalist and Winner of the 2008 EDRA/Places + Metropolis Planning Award), Lake Ontario Park (Toronto), Toledo ArtNET ‘Glass City’ (Design Competition Winner, Toledo), North Lincoln Park (Chicago), Sustainable Living (Toronto), and Downsview Park International Design Competition, Toronto, (Finalist). Nina-Marie has lectured widely in ecological design and landscape planning, including at the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Toronto, the University of Texas (Austin), Leibniz Universität Hannover (Germany), University of Göteburg (Sweden), Griffith University (Brisbane, AUS) and RMIT (Melbourne, AUS). At Ryerson University, Professor Lister teaches landscape and planning studios, research methods, ecological design, and landscape urbanism. She is a founding faculty member of the School’s graduate programme in Planning (Urban Development). In 2004, Prof. Lister received a Canada Mortgage + Housing Corporation Excellence in Education Award for outstanding educational contribution to sustainable practices.
For links to courses taught and papers written please visit: http://ryerson.academia.edu/NinaMarieLister
