City planning director moving to China

City planning director Jeffrey Humble, who has resigned, is moving to China in February.

Humble said he’s moving to Shenzhen, a city known as a hub for technology and innovation – it’s been referred to recently in The Guardian and other media as the Silicon Valley of China.

Humble said he’s going on a year-long work visa.

He wouldn’t say where exactly he’ll be working or what he’ll be doing, except that a “specific company” will be retaining him.

“I’m basically taking a break from municipal government,” he said.

Humble was the planning director for the city for about two years. He had been director of planning and development for the City of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories for a decade, before he got the job here in Peterborough replacing Malcolm Hunt (who retired from the job).

Humble isn’t going to be replaced after he leaves his job at the city; his last day is Jan. 21. City council is looking to hire two more city planners in the 2019 city budget.

He was the last remaining director after a recent reorganization of city staff that merged the five city departments that report to the city CAO into three.

Under the reorganization, a commissioner was put in charge of each of those three departments instead of a director.

It meant that the planning department was reborn as infrastructure and planning services and its head was Wayne Jackson.

Although Jackson retired at the end of December as commissioner of infrastructure and planning, Humble didn’t apply for the job.

“I determined the commissioner’s role was not what I wanted to do at this point,” Humble said in an interview this week.

Instead he’ll move to Shenzheng, a city that ranks second on Lonely Planet’s list of Top 10 cities to visit in 2019 (Copenhagen, Denmark was first).

Lonely Planet says the city of 12.9 million people is “worth visiting for its “indie music scene, cool cafes ... and whole new arts district risen from the remains of former warehouses.”