Urban design

Good design has the power to transform ordinary places into great places. We know that when a great place is loved, it can build brands, attract investment, and empower positive community.

We bring vision with an implementation mindset. We collaborate with you to shape shared visions that are responsive, relevant, and pragmatically innovative. Our designs implement a compelling project vision – pushing boundaries where necessary and building on the best precedent to create places that will enrich people’s lives, respond to emerging markets, and create a point of difference. We can lead the master planning of new communities and cities as well as deliver detailed private and public realm design and controls.

To get more insights, read our blog: Urban Planning with holistic problem solving in mind.

Place and engagement

Placemaking is about more than “just the physical.” It asks, “what will this place do?” It puts people first and underpins social, economic, cultural, and environmental drivers.

We use our “Great Places Process” to deeply understand a place through analysis and engagement. With our clients and stakeholders, we create a collaborative vision that delivers aspirational outcomes. We work across all scales, from revitalized towns and city centers to art and music festivals. Our place work encompasses strategies and frameworks, major activations, tactical urbanism, governance, and resourcing plans through to incredible urban design outcomes for both private and public sector clients.

Learn more about: Our Great Places Process.

To get more insights, read our blogs:

• Keeping places connected (digital in times of covid)
• Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation is an opportunity to reflect on the past and shape the future

Economic planning and strategy

Hatch has a diversified economics practice that helps private and public asset owners do more with their assets using economic analysis and strategy. We work with municipal and regional governments to consider community strengths and weaknesses of competitiveness, and develop strategies to unlock community social and economic potential.

We understand and consider global, regional, and local economic changes and how they impact business, community, and assets. We apply a wide breadth of analysis, research, and other tools to help identify strategies and actions that can unlock value for the benefit of stakeholders, shareholders, and communities.”

Strategic planning

Our integrated planning approach ensures stakeholders have a shared vision that leverages community ambition expectations, government policy objectives, and innovative city making. Our approach adds value by curating and leading best-of-field experts tailored to the technical and contextual needs of a project and its economic, cultural, social, and environmental drivers. We ensure a vision is robust and supported by technical rigor to facilitate statutory approvals, construction delivery and innovative market-oriented project outcomes.

To get more insights, read our blog: World Town Planning Day: Celebrating Professional Planners and Recognizing the Importance of Placemaking

Landscape architecture

Landscape is fundamental to our well-being and frames our relationship to the environment that sustains us. The public realm determines the quality of our cities. It is where we spend our public lives, where culture finds expression, and impacts how we perceive our cities and neighborhoods. Landscape also performs important natural systems and ecologic functions such as water management, biodiversity, and mental health of people.

Our approach begins with engagement and a strong appreciation of how people use and move through space, and how designed spaces support social, commercial, and sustainable outcomes. We ground our work in place, local identity, urban design, and detailed knowledge of delivery. We ensure translation of your vision into robust outcomes, and manageable assets.

Urban mobility and transit

Whether you plan a new build or an expansion, we can help identify effective, implementable solutions to complex urban and corridor-level transportation. We design and deliver all transport modes, with the economic insight to understand better the options and opportunities. We combine fiscal, broader economic, and social impacts to deliver optimized results. We understand new mobility enabled by technology and behaviours.

Our approaches draw from a deep understanding of place, how communities adapt to change, seeing strategic opportunities and delivering solutions that are local, sustainable, and appropriate. We are recognized innovators in street design to support activation and engagement including our complete street, green street, and healthy street projects and guidelines. We also are global experts in future mobility – automated driving, robotic goods delivery, and solutions that make it easier to get around, unlocking significant real estate value.

To get more insights, read our blog: 9 ways to get transportation strategies moving 

Infrastructure financial & economic advisory

Paying for and recognizing the complete value of infrastructure investments has become a critical part of delivery. We offer sound, reliable economic and advisory services that support business planning, acquisitions and divestitures, public-private partnerships, and revenue maximization tools for large-scale development projects. We integrate with Hatch’s deep capabilities in Infrastructure Delivery to transition projects that are soundly visioned, justified, and funded, into delivery and execution.

Related:

• Project Management
• Hatch Advisory Services

Planning strategy, economic, real estate & fiscal analysis

Deciding on the best option for a big investment is easier when you can make considered comparisons. Our experts can provide economic analyses of options, present rate of return and net-present value on real estate and infrastructure investments and deliver fiscal impact and market analyses. We can develop sustainable, triple-bottom-line analyses and build supportive business cases – all leading to maximized utility and an informed, optimal decision.

To get more insights, read our blog: World Town Planning Day: Celebrating Professional Planners and Recognizing the Importance of Placemaking

Water management

Effective water management encompasses a full range of options to mitigate pollution's impact to the overall environment and localized urban areas. Program elements are best selected using sustainable design and lifecycle cost analyses. Addressing fiscal community needs helps promote compliance that is affordable to ratepayers. Sewage collection, stormwater control, and receiving water body quality must integrate to satisfy regulatory requirements.

Related:

• Water Development
• Water & the Natural Environment

Social value

We specialize in proactively managing social risk, benefit, and opportunity to foster sustainable development. Our expertise lies in assisting clients in comprehending and conveying the social impacts of their investments. We devise strategies and implement action plans that align with the local socio-economic environment, ensuring optimal creation of social value. Our team, collaborating with government bodies, local authorities, developers, investors, and asset managers, adopts a cross-cutting perspective and a collaborative approach to bridge the public-private divide. Our mission is to facilitate positive change, showcase your uniqueness and accomplishments, and overcome barriers hindering genuine social value creation.

To get more insights, read our blog: Embedding social value in project planning is more than a nice-to-have

Related:

• Hatch Sustainable Urban Development

Data value

Data is evidence, and as such is the lifeblood of effective and efficient economic, social, and environmental decision-making but requires considerable investment by governments, corporations, and cities.

Our team can support your evaluation of value for money from digital and data investments. We know how to identify and focus on the outcomes you wish to achieve and the critical path to realizing them. We support your team to connect the desired outcomes with the decisions and investments, using specific data assets and analytical techniques, including your need for data storage, assessment, and hiring the skillsets to unlock this critical and impactful and sustainable value from your data.