Now-closed methadone clinic in Braeside (CTV.ca)
We don’t just live in our community — we live in the whole city. Every time we take the bus, go shopping, see a movie, take the kids to their hockey game, we step out of our protected zone and wade into the dark morass of the infected, the perverse, the poor, the addicted. Them.
The Tsuu T’ina Nation have voted to reject an offer from the province to build the southwestern portion of the city’s ring road through their territory. These negotiations have been ongoing for nearly half a century, but after seemingly reaching an understanding, the members of the nation shut it down with a majority vote.
Now the city is scrambling to come up with viable alternatives that still strive to maintain automobile connectivity; many of these plans will revist the controversial idea of bridging or tunnelling under the Weaselhead Flats on the Elbow River. (Read more about possible “Plan B’s” via The Calgary Herald)
But some aren’t sure that it’s even necessary to build more roads. The following link will take you do a documentary hosted by CNN’s Miles O’Brien while he examines the way various mobility options have dictated the form of Denver, Portland, and New York. It’s an excellent film, and one that presents compelling evidence for smart growth from several different viewpoints.
Click here to watch PBS’ “Blueprint America: Road to the Future”.
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.
What do you think? Could this work in Calgary? And if so, where should be implemented?
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
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.
Jeffrey Simpson’s editorial for the Globe and Mail.
A decision will be made in the chambers of Ottawa City Council that speaks to whether tomorrow’s city will look like yesterday’s. Cities across Canada make decisions like this all the time. Too many have made the wrong one, as Ottawa might do tomorrow.
At issue is urban sprawl, or the spreading suburbia of single-family housing.
Cities of yesterday planned for and encouraged sprawl.
Developers liked sprawl, because they made more money on single-family dwellings. Families liked sprawl, because it provided space for kids.
Municipal councils liked sprawl, because councillors believed in letting market forces prevail and market forces (developers and consumers) wanted sprawl.
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.
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
New York City, NY – On Sunday, the Bloomberg administration put a plan, “Green Light for Midtown” into effect to reduce traffic congestion in Midtown by closing two sections of Broadway to vehicles, from 47th to 42nd Streets and 35th to 33rd Streets. The idea is to eliminate the crosscurrents Broadway traffic creates on nearby avenues.
You can read about it here as well.
The past week has been fairly eventful with regards to city council taking action (or at least postponing it only slightly) and the voices of citizens lobbying them to go further. First, a motion opposing the closure of two of Memorial Drive’s four lanes on Sundays in August was defeated. This expansion of the pedestrian realm onto our city’s riverfront parkway should provide an interesting experiment that will hopefully spur further pedestrian-friendly zones.
Also, the date for Plan It Calgary to go before council was pushed back a week to June 23. This gives all citizens of Calgary additional time to prepare to speak before council, and we encourage everybody to send in their written comments to the City Clerk’s office by 10 am on June 11 and to prepare a few words for the public hearing on the 23rd. The City Clerks office can be reached at Mail Code #8007, P.O. Box 2100, Station M, Calgary, AB T2P 2M5. We’ll keep you updated about Plan It!
One of the most driving forces in support of Plan It and a new direction for the city in general is the newly formed Civic Camp. What is it, and what is the organization’s stance on Plan It?
“Plan It Calgary,” Calgary’s new municipal development and transportation plan, has finally arrived. As most of you involved in imagineCalgary already know, PlanIt is the direct outcome of the imagineCalgary process and reflects a great many of the wishes Calgarians have expressed for our city. Foremost, PlanIt seeks to guide the growth of the city in a way that is sustainable. As infrastructure, maintenance and service costs rise, peak oil approaches, the population ages, and housing affordability becomes an ever-bigger issue, it is clear that we need to chart a new and better course for Calgary. The new municipal planning documents that will shape how the city grows for the next 50 years will go to Council for approval in late June, but that approval is not assured. Getting City Council to listen to the voices of its citizens is now more important than ever. Please consider taking part in the public discussions around PlanIt. If you would like to join a group of concerned citizens concerned with PlanIt and other civic issues, consider joining CivicCamp Calgary, a non-partisan citizens’ organization asking Council to support a more fiscally, environmentally, socially responsible city when it votes on Plan It this June.
If you still have questions or would like to get involved, check out the Civic Camp website, join the mailing list at Google Groups, or follow them on Twitter. The time for action is NOW.
Tomorrow night is the 3rd annual Earth Hour, where those of us who advocate lower energy use can put our money where our mouths are and turn the lights out for one hour starting at 8:30 pm.
Buy some candles, read a book, go for a walk, spend some quality face time with someone… there are so many ways to spend a mere one hour that don’t involve the use of electricity.
Vote to save the planet with your light switch!
For more information, check out EarthHour.org
The Canadian Home Builder’s Association of Calgary and the UDI have used their collective heaps of money to un-ironically plan the arrival of Randal O’Toole in town today. Mr. O’Toole is a long-time anti-planner who touts the supremacy of the free market (an inherently unstable system that, according to pure capitalists, has the ability to not only meet our needs for today but provide unlimited growth and prosperity for the future without any regulation or coordination whatsoever) and a key part of the CHBA & UDI’s war against Plan It.
Since he’s in town, the Herald’s opinion section has come up with a new piece to offend the common sense in us all. Before I detract it too much, I should note that they do make one good point in that the city’s approval process for the medium to high-density developments proposed in Plan It need to be seriously overhauled to give priority to the new forms of building.
That doesn’t make up for the completely contradictory argument you’ll see in the following article; notably that they complain that the future is ethereal and unknowable, yet definite policies and concise direction are needed. I guess it doesn’t matter where we go as long as we do so with boldness and decisiveness.
Forgive me for not having faith that those with vested interests in greenfield, low-density, suburban development will somehow magically create a city I want to live in.
-Derek
If you hadn’t noticed, that banner up at the top of our site contains a few buildings that haven’t actually been built yet. It’s an image created by Devin Henry, who works as a graphic artist for Buss Marketing. They have a pretty cool flash presentation showing the locations and heights of buildings that will be added to the skyline by 2012. Check it out at BussMarketing.ca.
Devin has done a bunch of work in his free time to visualize what the skyline could potentially look like in 2030. Some of the buildings added to the pictures have been put on hold due to the recent financial “incident”, but it’s pretty interesting getting to see images of our city’s future. The images can be found at SkyscraperPage.com, a busy message board with plenty of information on current local construction projects, and pictures of the work sites every few days.
Also, links in the right column to BikeCalgary and CentreCity Talk have been added. CentreCity has a really interesting story about urban agriculture from the Toronto Star; I’ll add it to the links section in the next update.
Earlier this week, Alberta Energy Minister Mel Knight announced the government would reduce royalty rates and introduce royalty credits for oil companies embarking on new drilling projects over the next year.
The total cost of this move to the provincial treasury, based on current drilling projections, is estimated to be in the neighbourhood of $1.51 billion.
This, of course, is in addition to the royalty breaks announced last November to encourage new drilling. Those breaks, according to the government’s own projections, carry a price tag of $1.8 billion over the next five years.
When you take these two royalty holidays and add them to the $2 billion the provincial government has set aside for the oil industry to invest in carbon capture and storage, you get a total of over $5 billion in incentives and subsidies announced for the industry in just the last six months.
Continue reading ‘Oil and Gas Incentives Deliver Poor Return’
Calgary’s new long-range growth blueprint recommends quadrupling the transit network but no new major roads as the city fits 1.3 million more people within its current boundaries over the next 60 years.
It’s already being decried as an undesirable concrete utopia, but Plan It Calgary’s project manager said it will save taxpayers about$ 8 billion over the sprawling alternative.
“The further you push your roads out, the further you push your pipes out, the more it costs you,” Pat Gordon said Monday after releasing the draft Plan It report.
The plan says the city doesn’t need to annex any further rural land if it accommodates one-third of its population growth in the next 30 years, and half over the next 50. It envisions that more frequent transit with more crosstown routes, a better cycling system and a full Calgary ring road will help get that supersized Calgary moving.
To continue reading click here
After much deliberation, we’ve finalized the design of our Urban CSA hoodie! This badass bunny hug will keep you warm and sexy, urban studies style. If you want to order one, submit your information to: Hoodies Order Form. We’ll need your name, e-mail address, phone number, and size (S/M/L/XL).
Check these bad boys out!
It looks like what I’ve hearing about the Regional Transit Symposium last Friday was accurate, and the province is indeed dropping the ball on giving a regional transit service any priority. The plan was to begin forming a transit network between Calgary and 7 of the outlying towns in order to allow people to commute without driving their cars, but apparently the province decided that sounds like a bad idea.
Leaders in the region are fine-tuning their vision for a seven-town transit system, even though the province is warning it will deliver only a tiny sliver of its promised $2-billion fund.
Cochrane Mayor Truper McBride said express commuter buses could roll from communities such as Airdrie and Okotoks into Calgary as early as next year, if the province provides enough upfront cash. Train links could follow in 10 to 15 years, he said.
Continue reading “Budget cuts hit Calgary regional transit” at the Calgary Herald.
February 28th, 2009. Calgary Herald.
From the Canadian Architectural Archives
Close your eyes and lean forward. You’re on the 66th and top floor of McIntyre Plaza in downtown Calgary.
To the west, tombstones at Shaganappi cemetery look like grey pebbles, and the monorail zooms above both Louise Bridges.
To the north, there’s the Prince’s Island Museum, just beyond the downtown penetrator freeway. East of City Hall, a canal traverses Mount Royal College.
Welcome to the Calgary that Could Have Been.
Continue reading the article at the Calgary Herald’s Website: Calgary, as the dreamers saw it.
Remember that big tour we were going to go on back in December? Remember how we cancelled it because it was -30 out? Well this time it’s back, and better than ever.
The poster for the event, along with some fantastic pictures of your exec, can be downloaded here. We’re also going to the Unicorn later that night, so even if you can’t make the tour, I’m sure you can make time for a few pints with the rest of the club.
Vehicle taillights poke through the mist and icy fog rising off the Bow River under the lower deck of the Centre Street bridge. City planners are calling for two new bridges over Calgary area rivers - neither of which intended for general vehicle traffic.Photograph by: Ted Rhodes, Calgary Herald
By Jason Markusoff, Calgary Herald,
A major Calgary blueprint will revive calls for river crossings at 50th Avenue S. W. and Shaganappi Trail — only this time, they won’t be for cars.
The draft version of Plan It Calgary, to be released next month, envisions the bridges to allow only mass transit, pedestrians, cyclists and emergency vehicles. It’s one of many recommendations the city’s new master plan and transportation plan will include to give preference to transit over the automobile.
It comes 15 years after environmental and community groups forced car-friendly Bow and Elbow River crossings out of initial drafts of the Go Plan — Plan It’s predecessor — and those parties are mixed on whether the new proposal helps mute their concerns about the old one.
“I don’t think a cyclist would be more pleased it was a bus instead of a car going 30 kilometres per hour up the coulee trail as he was going downhill,” said Fred Fenwick, president of the Edworthy Park Heritage Society.
The draft plan envisions that in the next 15 years or more, the crossing will be needed to link Shaganappi Trail with the south shore of the Bow River, cutting through Edworthy Park. The 50th Avenue link would connect Altadore and Windsor Park in the east to Mount Royal College in the west, cutting across Sandy Beach and the Elbow River.
In both cases, the bridges would help create crosstown bus routes that get people to and from MRC and University of Calgary without filing them through downtown.
Continue reading ‘Calgary plans two bridges – but not for cars’
