Sean Hertel

Sean Hertel is a land use planner and policy specialist with twenty-eight years of experience across the public and private sectors in Toronto and beyond. He founded Hertel Planning in 2012 to help municipalities and developers plan for, and build around, rapid transit corridors and stations. He is a Registered Professional Planner with the Ontario Professional Planners Institute and a member of the Canadian Institute of Planners, and he holds a Master in Environmental Studies in Planning from York University and a Bachelor of Arts in Urban Studies from the University of Windsor.

He is recognised as an authority on transit corridor planning, affordable housing and social equity, and works as a policy and implementation expert, researcher, facilitator, speaker and writer. Recent assignments illustrate the range of his practice. For Infrastructure Ontario he project-managed an assessment of the development and financial potential of forty-nine sites next to existing and proposed GO Transit regional rail and Metrolinx light rail stations, advising on the land use policy framework, built form and site planning. For the City of Vaughan he led the land use planning work behind the Woodbridge GO Station Land Use Study and drafted the resulting Official Plan amendment. For the City of Richmond Hill he acts as land use policy lead on the development of a single comprehensive zoning by-law that consolidates seventy years of regulation.

He has also provided peer review advisory services for the Town of Grimsby Official Plan comprehensive review and prepared independent highest and best use planning opinions for the York Region District School Board, including evidence supported at the Ontario Land Tribunal.

Alongside his consultancy, Sean lectures in the planning schools of Toronto Metropolitan University, the University of Waterloo and York University, and mentoring and planning education are a central part of his professional life.