People Behind the Plans: Todd Vanadilok, AICP

What do you do when you’re an urban planner who loves comics? If
you’re Todd Vanadilok, AICP, you create your own planning-themed
comic series. The small-business owner launched an online comic
this spring that explores issues of social justice through a
planning lens. His central characters — Emie, an egret, and
Ollie, an ox — come from his firm’s name, Egret+Ox Planning. The
two animals spoke to Todd because of their symbiotic relationship
— one that resembles the ideal planning process, wherein
seemingly disparate groups or individuals work together to
achieve a common goal.


Todd and People Behind the Plans series host Courtney Kashima,
AICP, take a detailed look at Todd’s background: He majored in
engineering at Northwestern University but decided that he wanted
to study urban planning, so he attended graduate school at the
University of Michigan. After 16 years working at Teska
Associates in Evanston, Illinois, he and his family moved to
Colorado, where the communities he plans for are as unique as the
ones he knew in and around Chicago. Courtney and Todd discuss how
planning processes cannot be “one size fits all” but must be
well-tailored to the specific community — urban or rural — a
planner is working in. They talk about giving back to the
profession and even the legacy of Roberto Clemente, the late
baseball legend who also made strides in the realm of social
justice.