The Potato Plan Collection, a new book edited by Mirjam Züger and Kees Christiaanse, both celebrates Patrick Abercrombie's 1943 colourful diagram of London's many districts and explores its "potential as an analytical tool for contemporary metropolitan territories."  Mark Sterling, director of the Daniels Faculty's Master of Urban Design program, contributed an essay to the book as well as drawings, including a "Potato Plan" of Toronto, which he prepared collaboratively with Sabrina Yuen (HBA, Architectural Studies, 2016).

From the Potato Plan Collection's press release:

Originally drawn in 1943 as part of the County of London Plan, Abercrombie’s ‘Social and Functional Analysis’ poetically illustrates the city as an agglomeration of distinct communities, clusters, and centralities. The Potato Plan Collection comprises 40 Potato Plans from all around the globe, each being a reinterpretation of the original by local architects, urban designers and scholars. As a whole, the collection offers a new perspective on the structure of regional configurations in the urban age.

The recent publication is one of a number of projects that has kept Sterling busy lately. In May, he hosted a delegation of 19 planning and urban design officials from Helsinki, Finland for a talk on the history and current state of urban design and planning policy in the City of Toronto. The group included the Deputy Mayor of Helsinki, 12 members of the Finnish Parliament, and a number of members of the Helsinki City Executive Office. He also participated in a conference held in Milan in which he spoke via Skype about the Greater Toronto Area.

A Principal of Acronym Urban Design and Planning, Sterling is an award-winning architect, urban designer and professional planner. He is a leading thinker on new approaches to compact urban form and an innovator in exploring intelligent development scenarios through a variety of approaches to digital visualization. Visit the Daniels Faculty's 'people' page to learn more about Mark's professional activities and research.