James Parakh

About

James Parakh is a Fellow of CVU and an award-winning architect serving as Urban Design Manager for the Toronto & East York District of the City of Toronto's Planning Division.

A globally respected leader in tall building urban design, James has chaired the CVU Urban Habitat/Urban Design Assembly since 2014. In that role he has authored research papers on tall building urbanism and was a principal author of two CVU books, The Space Between and The Space Within Tall Buildings. He has spoken at CVU conferences since 2014, including opening keynote panels in Dubai (2018), Chicago (2021) and London (2024), and took part in the 2024 City Advocacy Forums in London and Miami. He also organizes the Assembly's annual global walking tours, each exploring a specific urban theme (#CTBUHwalks).

No city in North America has seen more tall building construction than Toronto over the past two decades. James leads the urban design studio guiding development review across Downtown and Midtown Toronto and surrounding areas, a portfolio of well over 300 tall buildings ranging from 15 to more than 105 storeys.

He is Vice-Chair of Ottawa's Urban Design Review Panel and serves on National Capital Commission design panels, and is frequently invited to chair international tall building design juries for CVU and the WAN Awards.

Prior to joining the City, James was a lead designer at WZMH Architects in Toronto, overseeing projects in Canada, China and the U.A.E., including the ING Bank headquarters in Toronto, Parc Island in Dubai Marina, Etisalat headquarters in Sharjah and Fujairah, the Shanghai Pudong Development Bank Tower, and the Infield Master Plan for Toronto Pearson International Airport.

James is a member of the Ontario Association of Architects and holds a B.Tech in Architecture from Toronto Metropolitan University, an M.Arch from the University of Houston's Gerald D. Hines College of Architecture, and an M.S. in Urban Design from Columbia University.