Sundays without cars? A rising trend in North America

June 25th, The Toronto’s Star:

New York and San Francisco call it Sunday Streets, and Portland residents know the concept as Sunday Parkways.

Now Vancouver is joining the growing number of North American cities declaring car-free Sundays. Its new Summer Spaces program will close off four neighbourhoods to cars to create 20 car-free routes on Sundays in July and August.

The idea of reinventing street space for pedestrians and bikes is an offshoot of the original Ciclovia, which started in Bogota, Colombia, in the 1980s.

To continue reading, press here.

What do you think? Could this work in Calgary? And if so, where should be implemented?

Proposed Developments – Riverside Video CMLC

Watch the Calgary Municipal Land Corporation video about the Riverside Project

 

We reccomend using Mozilla Firefox, Opera or Google Chrome to watch the video properly. Alternatively, the video can be found at the CMLC website.

Are we facing the Connelly-gate?

Last week, the Calgary Herald published an article regarding the difficulties which Aldermen were facing to fundraise in times of economical crisis. The article focused on Ald. Joe Connelly, who specifically addressed the Urban Development Institute for donations. It is well known that most aldermen accept donations from developers and specific-interest groups. However, limiting the funding sources to a certain lobby group while facing the Plan It Calgary Public Hearing on June 23rd rises some issues. While not being an illegal move, his financial strategy casts a shadow of suspicion on his position towards Plan It:

Will his vote be influenced by the donations received?

Should he recuse himself from the vote to avoid a conflict of interests?

Is it healthy for our City Council to accept donations from the industry?

The Connelly situation finally rises a bigger issue: aldermen funding. A funding system that accepts donations from any source, without a balanced origin and, in some cases, with dubious purposes, will keep casting doubts on the objectivity of our City Council.

Finally, a nice quote from a related article by Naheed Nenshi in the Calgary Herald:

What ruined by mood, though, was the story around Ald. Joe Connelly. As reported in the Herald over the last week, Connelly, like all aldermen (me, too, when I ran for Council in 2004), accepts donations from the development industry. Where he went further is that he asked the umbrella group for the industry–the Urban Development Institute– to advertise a fund-raising event for him.

They did so. Indeed, the head of UDI, Mike Flynn, implied that some of his members would no longer support all aldermen, as they had done in the past.

“It will definitely lead to a larger discussion down the road, whether we want to look at who’s been supportive of our positions and who hasn’t,” he said.

Guillermo Guglietti

 

Planning for a resilient city – Byron Miller’s opinion piece on Plan It

June 18th, 2009. Byron Miller’s opinion piece at the Calgary Herald:

When it comes to planning cities, we frequently act as if the future will simply be “deja vu all over again,” to borrow a phrase from the great social analyst Yogi Berra. In many ways it would be nice if it were so. The future would be clear and we could keep doing the same old things that worked pretty well in the past.

But, as Berra also insightfully observed, “the future ain’t what it used to be.” Turn the clock back 60 years and the future was large families with lots of kids, fuelling the growth of the suburbs.

By contrast, today the average Calgary household has about two-and-a-half people and that number is dropping. Six decades ago marked the beginning of our largest demographic cohort, the baby boom generation. Now baby boomers are nearing retirement and looking to downsize their housing.

Sixty years ago we didn’t think about the environmental effects of our lifestyles. Now we know our greenhouse gas emissions threaten the integrity of the planet’s life-support systems. And sixty years ago we thought cheap fossil fuel would go on forever. Now we know expensive energy is right around the corner. No, the future is not what it used to be.

To continue reading, please click here.

UrbanCSA endorsement to Plan It

The City of Calgary is facing in the next few days one of the most important decisions in the last decade: the Plan It Calgary initiative. UrbanCSA endorses the proposed transportation and development plan, regarding it an important step towards the shaping of a socially, economically and environmentally sustainable city.

We do wish, however, for our tax dollars to subsidize spaces that can accommodate a multiplicity of uses and varying densities. We want higher levels of transit service, and communities where all citizens can walk or ride to the basic services, empowering the public’s ability to subsist through sustainable means. These ideals can exist in healthy, natural environments which stimulate active communities and dynamic public spaces.

It is our opinion that Plan It can steer growth in Calgary towards meeting these objectives. It is also our belief that Plan It is being threatened by the voices of special interest groups who stand to profit from further development on the fringes of the city. These special interest groups do not have our mandate, nor do they represent our interests.

Fragment of the Official UrbanCSA Position

On June 10th, UrbanCSA presented the official endorsement for the consideration of the City Council. The letter can be found in the Opinion Section of the website.

Tour de Nuit – A voice for the commuter cycling in Calgary

Bicycles as viable commuting system in Copenhagen. Calgary counts with one of the most extensive recreational bike paths in North America. However, daily commuting cycling in Calgary remains an utopian ideal. Cities like Portland, Paris, Freiburg and Copenhagen, have developed dedicated infrastructure, allowing their citizens to effectively use their bicycles as their main medium of transportation.

Calgary tour de nuit Society constitutes a newly formed organization in Calgary, which focuses in getting more people cycling more often. As stated in their website:

The Calgary tour de nuit Society is employing a community-based social marketing approach for its program to develop sustainable and active transportation options in Calgary through on-street, closed-road bicycle rides that offer a glimpse of what dedicated bicycle commuting infrastructure can achieve, offering citizens real alternatives to single occupant automobile commuting.

We encourage all those interested in cycling in Calgary to visit their website and, from UrbanCSA, we extend our support to Calgary Tour de Nuit.

Guillermo Guglietti

Drake Landing Solar Community Tour – Photos

Tour to the Drake Landing Solar Community

Join UrbanCSA as we travel to Drake Landing Solar Community. Drake landing features 52 homes, with 90% of spatial heating needs provided by solar thermal energy. Come see how the town of Okotoks overcame challenges to accomplish this North America first.

The tour will take us around the community. We will talk with people from ATCO and the City of Okotoks regarding the infrastructure challenges, the design of the community, and the advantages and challenges that such development introduced.

Click post for more details!

UrbanCSA support for the Brentwood TOD

Tom Howard, VP Academic of UrbanCSA, wrote the a support letter for the Brentwood TOD. His views are widely supported by the executive council of UrbanCSA, and represent our perspective towards urban development and the future form of our City.

This letter will be included in the public hearing to be held on Monday regarding the Brentwood TOD. There has been significant resistance to this project which, it is important to notice, has been widely discussed and consultated with the Community Association and the neighbors.

The Brentwood Transit Oriented Development represents a step forward towards a transit oriented, denser and more human Calgary. Let’s hope that, through involvement and understanding, a concensus is reached in our City on Monday!

Letter sent by Tom Howard to Alderman Farrel:

 

Alderman Farrell,

As an executive member of the Urban Calgary Students Association, an organization currently representing over 50 University of Calgary undergraduates, I would like to formally express our associations support for the Brentwood Station Area Redevelopment. The collective experience of our group in studying sustainable, functional communities informs us that the current proposition is a sound, workable plan that may serve as a catalyst for further such optimal growth patterns.

Drake Landing Solar Community: Review

The Drake Landing Solar Community is a planned neighborhood in Okotoks, Alberta, which succesfully integrates Solar Energy Production, District Heating and Thermal energy storage. Drake Landing Solar Community Website

DLSC Concept

We are prepearing a visit to the site sometime in late November. Please contact us at colin.chapman@urbancsa.org if you are interested in joining us!

Colin Chapman

European Tour: Photos

Dr. Kesik discusses Solar Ready Housing: video

Dr. Ted Kesik, from the University of Toronto, discusses the meaning of Solar Ready.

Solar Ready Housing: Presentation

On October 15th, Andrew Sedor Presented to City of Calgary Council on Solar Ready Housing.

What is a solar ready house?

A solar ready house, in short, is a house that can easily and inexpensively be retrofitted with solar panels or other solar technologies that will maximize the solar efficiency. Solar ready homes do not contain solar panels.

Why do we need solar ready housing?

Because of the relatively expensive price of solar panels, solar power is currently not a viable option for most households. But in a few years, solar power is predicted to be less expensive than other non-renewable forms of energy. When that day comes, households still may have issues converting to solar energy because of roof orientation, shading and the overall construction of their home.

How much does it cost?

Incorporating “solar ready” into a building plan costs around $300. While retrofitting a house for solar can cost thousands of dollars.

Sustainable Suburbs: Presentation

On August 12th 2008, Andrew Sedor presented to City of Calgary staff on sustainable suburbs at the City of Calgary Student conference.

The presentation focuses on sustainable European communities and the policy it took for the communities to exist.  The three communities focused on in the presentation are:

• Vauban, in Freiburg Germany
• Kronsberg, in Hanover Germany
• West Harbor Development, in Malmo Sweden

UrbanCSA – Sustainable Suburbs Presentation – Text

UrbanCSA – Sustainable Suburbs Presentation – Visual

Bicycle Lanes: Presentation

A presentation of the functional application of bicycle lanes throughout Europe was given to the Transportation Department of the City of Calgary on August 12, 2008. The talk was conducted by Justin Pruss, Andrew Sedor and Guillermo Guglietti, and explored the different alternatives for the integration of bicycles in urban centres.

Recently pointed by CBC as one of the most sustainable cities in the world, Copenhagen bases over 40% of its urban transportation in its bicycle network. Separated grade lanes, traffic lights, subsidized bike rentals and a strong educational campaign have turned this capital into a bicycle heaven. Likewise, Paris has successfully implemented the Velib, a bicycle rental scheme that has openly allowed Parisians to access over 26,000 bicycles around the city.

Personal experience using the mentioned systems was constrasted with Calgary’s biking network which, although having an excelent recreational infrastructure, it has significant room for improvement in its functional application. European alternatives and their possible application to Calgary’s reality were further discussed with the Transportation Department.

The meeting, which extended well over the original twenty minutes, was very possitive and we hope we were able to facilitate experience and valuable information to the Transportation Department.

Cycling in Europe (PDF)