Liam Vu

Liam Vu

The Urban Planning Influencer · Toronto

Next train 1 min

Liam Vu, the Urban Planning Influencer

The Urban Planning Influencer. Urban and Regional Planning student at TMU, content creator and painter, from Downsview, Toronto.

Next: Social

About Liam

Portrait of Liam VuLiam Vu is an award-winning planning student at TMU and a Council Director at the Ontario Professional Planners Institute.

He found planning in grade 12, when a developer came to his high school in Downsview to ask students what the old airport lands should become. Today he explains city-building to residents in person and to thousands of people online.

Outside work and school you will find him volunteering with advocacy groups, at networking events, painting outdoors, learning K-pop choreography, or playing with his two-year-old brother, Duncan.

Home stop, school stop

Downsview Park station in north Toronto
Downsview Park, near where he grew up.
Line 1 arriving at Dundas, a block from TMU.

Experience

  1. April 2026 to now

    Monumental

    Junior Fellow, Social Media. Short-form video for a social purpose city-building firm, including work with Waterfront Toronto.

  2. 2026 to 2027

    Ontario Professional Planners Institute

    Council Director.

  3. Summer 2026

    Toronto and Region Conservation Authority

    Watershed Planning and Ecosystem Science summer student and media intern.

  4. February 2025 to now

    Northcrest Developments

    YZD Senior Ambassador, Engagement, at the YZD Experience Centre in Downsview.

  5. Summer 2025

    Halton Region

    Environmental and Transportation Planning summer student.

  6. 2025 to now

    plazaPOPS

    Founding Chair of the Youth Committee.

  7. July 2025

    ACTION 2025, CIP and OPPI

    Student volunteer and live painter at the national planning conference.

Conferences

He goes to planning conferences to learn, volunteer, paint and film them for students who can’t be there.

  1. April 2025

    OPPI Connective

    Ontario Professional Planners Institute. He went as a planning student and filmed it for his followers.

    Watch the reel
    Planners talking outside a stone building at OPPI Connective

  2. July 2025, Toronto

    ACTION 2025

    CIP and OPPI national conference, the largest in Canadian history. Student volunteer and live painter.

    See the painting
    Liam beside his live painting of the Toronto skyline

  3. Fall 2025

    OPPI Symposium

    The subject of his first YouTube video: a vlog with tips for aspiring planners.

    Watch the vlog
    Liam in a still from his OPPI Symposium vlog

  4. July 7 to 9, 2026

    Fusion 2026

    Shared his conference secrets before it began, then filmed why it is every planner’s dream.

    Watch the reel
    Liam smiling outside at the Fusion 2026 conference

  5. 2026

    OPPI 2026

    Called on Ontario planners to join the institute’s 2026 conference, as an OPPI Council Director.

    Watch the reel
    Liam smiling beside the Ontario Professional Planners Institute logo

School

Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning, with a minor in Innovation and Zone Learning. 2024 to 2028.

Liam in a still from his urban planning student vlog
From his planning school vlog on YouTube.

Awards

Noah D’Alleva Memorial Award in Urban Planning
TMU School of Urban and Regional Planning, 2025. For a top student in first year.
Ted Rogers Future Leader Scholarship
Rogers, 2024. One of 100 recipients across Canada.
Environmental Stewardship Award
Emery Village BIA, 2024.
A Toronto Rocket subway train waiting at College station on Line 1
Line 1 at College station, one stop from campus.

Liam is The Urban Planning Influencer: short videos that make planning school, zoning and city-building easy to follow.

Next: Case studies

The numbers

50,000+
views on the best-performing reels Liam led for Monumental, a Toronto city-building firm.
2,392
followers across his two Instagram accounts, LinkedIn and YouTube, and growing every week.
3,600
likes on a single reel from October 2026, his most-liked so far.
1,250
LinkedIn followers: planners, students and firms from across Canada.
1,871
views on his first two YouTube videos about studying planning.

Counts as of October 2026. LinkedIn is updated by hand.

Liam Vu smiling at a podium while speaking at a planning event

Follow the line

Latest reels

Straight from Instagram: his own channel and the reels he made with Monumental, TRCA and The Laneway Project.

On YouTube

Since September 2025 Liam has been filming what planning school is really like, on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube under @liamvutoronto. The gap he saw: lots of urbanism content, almost none about studying planning as a student.

Watch on YouTube

How to thrive in urban planning as a student

October 2025 · 1,065 views

Urban planning student vlog: tips for aspiring planners

October 2025 · 806 views

On the mic

Urban Planning Tea

Urban Planning Tea

Host · since April 2026

Liam’s own podcast for planning students and new planners. Episode one: how to land a dream planning job, with Kristy Kilbourne, MCIP, RPP, AICP.

Listen to episode one
Plannerama podcast cover: a Toronto street map with the name in a blue band

Plannerama, episode 18

Guest · February 2026

With host Neil Loewen of TMU’s planning alumni association: how TikTok, Instagram and YouTube are changing the way the public learns about planning.

Listen to episode 18

Case studies

Three places in Toronto Liam has worked on, from the old Downsview airport to a new island on the waterfront.

Next: Projects
Downsview Park subway station, beside the former Downsview airport lands

Community engagement

YZD
Downsview

100 questions a day from neighbours

Northcrest Developments · YZD Senior Ambassador, Engagement · February 2025 to now

The place

The former Downsview airport lands in north Toronto, where Northcrest is planning new neighbourhoods. It is also where Liam grew up: an essay on what the airport site should become, written for a scholarship in grade 12, is what led him to planning.

Liam’s painting of the YZD Experience Centre
He painted the Experience Centre too, in 2025.

The work

  • Explains the YZD redevelopment to residents and visitors at the YZD Experience Centre, answering about 100 questions a day.
  • Organized a guided tour of the Northcrest office and the Experience Centre for TMU planning students.
  • Trained on the Downsview Secondary Plan and the Framework Plan for the Downsview lands.
The Port Lands on Toronto’s waterfront in 2025, where Ookwemin Minising is being built

Short-form video

Ookwemin
Minising

50K+ views on his best posts

Monumental with Waterfront Toronto · Junior Fellow, Social Media · April 2026 to now

The place

A 98-acre island community taking shape at the mouth of the Don River in Toronto’s Port Lands, with new homes, parks and a naturalized river valley.

The work

  • Made educational and promotional short videos about Ookwemin Minising together with Waterfront Toronto.
  • Leads the creation and growth of Monumental’s short-form video on @monumentalprojects.
  • His best-performing posts passed 50,000 views.
Wildflowers under the hydro towers of the Meadoway in Scarborough

Watershed planning

The
Meadoway

16 km of hydro corridor becoming meadow

Toronto and Region Conservation Authority · Watershed Planning and Ecosystem Science, summer student and media intern · Summer 2026

The place

A 16-kilometre hydro corridor in Scarborough being turned into meadow, trail and habitat, linking downtown Toronto with Rouge National Urban Park.

The work

  • Spent four months documenting TRCA’s field teams in photos and short videos for TRCA’s channels.
  • Joined bird monitoring in the Meadoway at 4:30 a.m., spring ephemeral surveys at Guild Park and the Spring Bird Festival at Tommy Thompson Park.
  • TRCA published his summer as the photo story Through the Lens: Liam Vu.

Projects by Liam Vu

Videos, a podcast, a youth committee and a painting made live in front of a national conference.

Next: Art

One Minute Urbanism

His newest series: one city-building idea, explained in sixty seconds. Zoning, transit and public space, without the jargon.

Watch the series on Instagram

All projects

  1. Urban Planning Tea

    Podcast host · 2026

    A podcast that helps planning students and new planners find their way. First guest: Kristy Kilbourne on landing a planning job.

  2. One Minute Urbanism

    Video series · 2026

    A short video series on Instagram that explains one city-building idea in sixty seconds.

  3. Live painting at ACTION 2025

    CIP and OPPI national conference · 2025

    Painted the Toronto skyline live in front of over a thousand planners at the largest national planning conference in Canadian history.

  4. plazaPOPS Youth Committee

    Founding chair · 2025 to now

    Brings youth voices into the design of pop-up plazas in privately owned public spaces, after leading a plazaPOPS urban sketching workshop.

  5. Oh Canada Art Show

    Founder

    A community art show Liam started, including an exhibition on Indigenous allyship in 2025.

  6. OPPI Council

    Council Director · 2026 to 2027

    A seat on the council of the Ontario Professional Planners Institute, the body for planners in Ontario.

The city is the subject

A laneway lined with garages in Roncesvalles, Toronto
Laneways, filmed with The Laneway Project
A streetcar stop on Spadina Avenue
The protected bike lane on Bloor Street
A Toronto Rocket train on Line 1

Laneways, streetcar stops, bike lanes and Line 1: the places his videos explain.

The 509 Harbourfront streetcar on Queens Quay, a short ride from the Port Lands.

Art by Liam Vu

Liam paints outdoors, sketches Toronto’s third spaces and teaches urban sketching. He founded the Oh Canada Art Show.

Next: Contact

Painted live at ACTION 2025

At Canada’s national planning conference in Toronto, Liam pitched himself to the organizers and painted the skyline live in front of over 1,000 planners. It was his first live painting. That evening at Roy Thomson Hall, guests wrote messages on the finished canvas.

“With my paints, brushes, and a huge wooden French easel, I completed a painting of the Toronto skyline.”

Liam, to the Canadian Institute of Planners
Liam beside his finished painting of the Toronto skyline at ACTION 2025
Watch the live painting reel
Liam’s painting of the YZD Experience Centre in Downsview, a blue building beside a rainbow mural
YZD Experience CentreDownsview, Toronto. Painting, 2025.The building where he works as an engagement ambassador.
A painted portrait of a baby in a white frame
My new musePortrait of his brother Duncan. Painting, 2023.
An ink and watercolour sketch of the reading room at the Toronto Reference Library
Toronto Reference LibraryFrom the series Sketching Toronto’s Third Spaces. Sketch, 2026.
A coloured pencil sketch of the inside of Sneaky Dee’s restaurant
Sneaky Dee’sFrom the series Sketching Toronto’s Third Spaces. Sketch, 2026.
More of his work on @liamvuart
Liam sketching in a sketchbook inside a greenhouse

Sketchbook first

He sketches the places planners talk about: libraries, diners, plazas and greenhouses where people spend time outside home and work. The sketches become reels, and the reels start conversations about third spaces.

Poster for Sketching Street Life at Yonge-Dundas, a free workshop at Sankofa Square on May 1, 2026

How he works

Plein air
Painting outside, on location, with a French easel, from parks to the skyline.
Urban sketching
Drawing Toronto’s third spaces, from the Reference Library to Sneaky Dee’s, and teaching it: he led an urban sketching workshop for plazaPOPS.
Workshops
Free sketching workshops in public space, like Sketching Street Life at Yonge-Dundas in Sankofa Square, May 2026.
Shows
Founder of the Oh Canada Art Show. Its free 2025 showcase, Allyship Through Music and Dance, was hosted with the Toronto Catholic District School Board.

Off the clock, in dance class

When he isn’t planning or painting, Liam is in a studio learning choreography. He saves the clips to a dance highlight on his Instagram stories.

Watch the dance highlight
Liam crouched close to the camera in a dance studio, with dancers waiting behind him under pink light
Room full of NicolesChoreography by @jake.ventura. From his Instagram stories.

Contact Liam Vu

Hiring, collaborating or booking a talk? Liam answers his email.

Email Liam

The doors are open

For planning internships and jobs, social media and engagement work, collaborations with firms and agencies, talks for students, and art commissions.

The doors of a TTC subway train
A Toronto Rocket train at a Line 1 platform

Ways to reach Liam

The Toronto skyline at sunset from the Toronto Islands
Mayor Olivia Chow, cast as a bronze medallion

Olivia Chow

Mayor of Toronto · elected 2023 · re-elected 2026

The Olivia Chow Shrine

Nathan Phillips Square, after hours. A tribute to Toronto’s mayor, re-elected on October 26, 2026 with 54 per cent of the vote, from a planning student who told everyone to vote.

What she has done for the city

Olivia Chow was first elected in 1985, as a school trustee. She spent 12 years on city council and represented Trinity–Spadina in Parliament, became mayor in 2023, and won a second term in October 2026 with 532,201 votes. Here is the planning case for her, the way Liam would make it.

Mayor Olivia Chow in 2024

Housing

Homes
for people

65,000 rent-controlled homes in the plan

HousingTO plan, raised September 2023

The plan

Two months into her term, council raised the city’s target from 40,000 affordable homes to 65,000 rent-controlled homes: 6,500 rent-geared-to-income, 41,000 affordable and 17,500 rent-controlled market homes, within the 285,000 new homes Toronto pledged by 2031. Staff named 51 city-owned sites to deliver 16,000 to 17,500 of them.

Why planners care

  • Puts rent-controlled and affordable homes in the city’s own plan, not left to the market.
  • Uses public land for housing near transit.
The protected bike lane on Bloor Street

Streets

Local
streets

19 km of protected bike lanes she fought for

Bloor, Yonge and University, 2024 to 2026

The fight

When a 2024 provincial law ordered the lanes on Bloor Street, Yonge Street and University Avenue removed, she argued that local streets should be decided locally, and negotiated for fixes that bring back a car lane without taking away safe cycling, as on Bloor West in Etobicoke. A court blocked the removal in July 2025; the Court of Appeal reversed that in August 2026, and cyclists have asked the Supreme Court of Canada to hear the case.

Why planners care

  • Safe streets for people on bikes, on the city’s busiest corridors.
  • Local streets decided locally.
A Toronto Rocket subway train at College station

Transit

Riding
the TTC

3 years of frozen TTC fares

City and TTC budgets, 2024 to 2026

The budget

All three of her budgets held fares at 2023 prices while adding service; the 2025 budget added the most service in a decade. From September 2026, fare capping makes every ride after the 47th in a month free, dropping to 40 rides in 2027.

Why planners care

  • Transit people can afford is how a city grows without more traffic.

Her record, for planners

What changed for housing, transit, streets and the city’s ability to pay for them in her first term, checked against the city’s, the province’s and the TTC’s own records.

65,000 rent-controlled homes

In September 2023 council raised the HousingTO target from 40,000 affordable homes to 65,000 rent-controlled ones, including 6,500 rent-geared-to-income homes, as part of the 285,000 new homes the city pledged by 2031.

Federal housing money

On December 21, 2023, she and the prime minister announced $471 million from the Housing Accelerator Fund, for about 11,780 more homes over three years than were already expected.

A public builder

Toronto Builds, adopted in May 2025, keeps city land in public hands on long leases, makes at least 30 per cent of the homes affordable for at least 40 years, and puts one Housing Development Office in charge. City-led projects started 3,606 homes in 2025.

The New Deal with Ontario

Her November 2023 deal with the province brought up to $1.2 billion in operating support over three years, including $330 million to run the Eglinton and Finch West lines, and set the Gardiner Expressway and the Don Valley Parkway to become provincial highways in fall 2027, freeing about $1.9 billion for transit, housing and city facilities over the next decade.

A budget that pays its way

She inherited a $1.8 billion gap. Her 2024 budget found $620 million in savings and raised the residential property tax by 9.5 per cent, including 1.5 per cent for the City Building Fund, rather than cut transit, shelters or programs. By 2026 the increase was down to 2.2 per cent.

TTC fares held

Fares have stayed at 2023 prices through the 2024, 2025 and 2026 budgets, while service went up each year. Monthly fare capping started in September 2026.

Bike lanes defended

She opposed the province’s 2024 law to remove the Bloor, Yonge and University lanes and kept negotiating for options that keep cyclists safe. The Court of Appeal sided with the province in August 2026; cyclists have asked the Supreme Court to hear the case.

Empty homes taxed

With her backing, council voted 21 to 2 in 2023 to triple the Vacant Home Tax, from 1 to 3 per cent of a home’s assessed value from the 2024 tax year, with the money going to housing.

Sources: City of Toronto news releases on the HousingTO target (2023), the Housing Accelerator Fund (December 21, 2023), the 2024 and 2026 budgets and the Vacant Home Tax; Toronto Builds Policy Framework (Council item PH21.4, May 2025) and the 2026 Toronto Builds update; Ontario Newsroom, “Ontario and Toronto Reach a New Deal” (November 27, 2023) and the Gardiner and DVP transfer (June 4, 2026); TTC budget releases (2023 to 2026); Cycle Toronto v. Ontario, 2026 ONCA 582; CBC News, 2024 budget vote and 2026 election results. Figures as of October 27, 2026; election results are unofficial until the City Clerk certifies them.

Liam’s endorsement

On election day, Liam activated the bob and told his followers to vote before 8 p.m. It is his most-liked reel.

Mayor Olivia Chow at the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival
Mayor Olivia Chow at TIFF, 2024.

A tribute from a fan of good city-building. Not affiliated with the City of Toronto or the Office of the Mayor.