Adam Clark brings planning students into Kitchener’s live projects

Adam Clark (BAS ’06, MArch ’09) is an urban designer with the City of Kitchener. As a third-year architecture student at Waterloo, he and his team assembled a model measuring 8 by 60 feet for a studio that reimagined part of Toronto, and the project shifted his focus from buildings to cities.

That experience informed the public engagement he led for Growing Together, Kitchener’s planning framework for accommodating growth near its ION light rail stations. Residents tested ideas with physical models of their neighbourhoods. The project won eight awards, among them Project of the Year from the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and a Congress for the New Urbanism Charter Award.

Clark also acted as the client for Professor Katherine Perrott’s graduate planning studio, inviting students to take on questions the City was still working through. Their research on housing, zoning and how other municipalities handle similar problems sometimes directly informed City policy. His models also led Perrott to bring model-making back into planning courses using the ENV Makerspace.

Clark describes the arrangement as collaboration, not giving back. The Faculty of Environment has named him a 2026 Friend of the Faculty Impact Award recipient.