Munch! Meet Ups on Social Research and Urban Planning

Join the regular Munch! event series taking place from 5:30pm - 7:30pm at our Voor Urban Labs offices.

What are the Munch! Sessions?

The team at Voor Urban Labs is opening it's doors to support knowledge sharing and professional development and networking amongst community members, academic community members and professionals in areas such as urban research, policy development and analysis, and decolonizing city planning.

As a private community planning and research company, with decades of experience working in these spaces, we seek the opportunity to promote critical urbanism amongst our peers and host difficult planning questions. Munch! also allows relationship building through our speaker series, networking, and platforming participants' ideas.

These events are scheduled mutiple times a month after work hours from our Chinatown studio at 475 Main Street (above Pizza Coming Soon). Munch! starts with food and beverages before a conversation starter by our invited guests. The key theme is critical urbanism, and examples include decolonial and redress practices, community engagement, urban Indigenous policy, food security, settler / First Nations protocols, active transportation, social inclusion, and women's leadership in cities.

Munch! is ideal for planning students to meet other peers and professional colleagues from various disciplines and sectors and share food, beverages and conversations as we share what 'critical urbanism' is and how to centre this in our collective work and our professional careers. This is a space where you can share knowledge with others, share your research and hear from others. We welcome all voices, community members, academic professionals, junior and senior professionals from all walks of life looking to continue learning and expanding their social circle with like-minded folks.

The values and protocols of these events are based on reciprocity, respect of diverse opinions and voices, and mutual respect is the objective. Come in as you are, be respectful of others and enjoy the company. Your participation is free and voluntary.

2025 Scheduled Munch!

• [Date change] December 11, 5:30pm - "Redressing the Vancouver Art Gallery Beatty Site". Join us for the final Munch! of 2025 as we focus on arts policy and redress infrastructure at the proposed new Vancouver Art Gallery site. Through archival photographs, Irwin Oostindie (Voor Director), shows images of the military occupation of a new Vancouver from the 1800s and asks questions how the new VAG site should address its dark past moving forward. The future location being considered for a landmark cultural institution for British Columbia is bounded by Dunsmuir, Cambie, Georgia, and Beatty, and has played a central role in Vancouver’s evolution. Bring your curiosity and enjoy food drinks and conversation with our wonderful Munch format!
• December 4, 5:30pm - "Climate Inequality in Vancouver". This session focuses on how good climate policy -with community ownership, by impacted communities- can produce effective climate action. Hear from five speaker with five lightning pitches on their work for climate equity in Vancouver's inner city and beyond.
• November 13, 5:30pm - "What is Critical Urbanism?". Join a conversation that unpacks the Voor Urban Labs theory of practice. Both the Dutch polder model (consensus-based negotiation among partners) and First Nations decision-making (often centered on long-term intergenerational and ecological stewardship) offer alternative logics to capitalist-driven urban development. Critical urbanism uses these frameworks to challenge top-down planning. It highlights how these collaborative, participatory models prioritize social cohesion and environmental responsibility over pure profit, redefining the "right to the city" around collective well-being and decolonized relationships with urban space.
• October 30, 5:30pm - "Relating to Place: Decolonizing pedagogy through place-based plant knowledge". This event is about Indigenous perspectives on public gardens with Chelsey Schmidtke (Landscape Designer), Cease Wyss (Ethnobotanist), Malcolm Key (Vancouver School Board). The event is produced as part of the Sustenance Festival.
• October 15, 5:30pm - Bold active transportation planning with Tony Valente, Councillor, City of North Vancouver. With introductory words from Isabela Ortiz and the Voor team.
• October 9, 5:30pm - "Women Changing Cities: Global stories of urban transformation" Dialogue and Book Launch event at SFU Harbour Centre. Tickets can be purchased at this link. Voor Urban Labs is co-producing this event as part of A Week of Learning with the Bruntletts event series.

More dates to come!