Tsuu T’ina Reject SW Ring Road

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”.

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.

West LRT Animation Released

Now that Brentwood’s been put on the backburner for the next little while, we can turn our attention to other pressing issues, such as the west leg of the CTrain. The official site has put a 4.5 minute video up which shows the LRT’s route all the way from 11th St. downtown, over the science centre, over Crowchild Trail, and up Bow Trail, all the way out to 69th St. SW. 

Check the post for the video!

Council orders further study in Brentwood

It would appear that the Brentwood residents’ concerns were successful in convincing City Council to hold off on fully approving the new Station Area Redevelopment Plan. It’s being reported that instead, council members have commissioned more studies about the present status of the community and the required upgrades to the surrounding infrastructure to handle the strain of 6,000 new people.

Hopefully the 6-month delay before the plan goes to Council for approval will give the city more time to continue dialogue with the residents, incorporating their priorities into the plan and making it the best it can be for all affected citizens.

From CalgaryHerald.com:

Council orders study before deciding on Brentwood development
By Jason Markusoff (jmarkusoff@theherald.canwest.com)

City council said too many questions linger to rubber-stamp plans for a cluster of office towers, condo towers and lowrises that would create an urban-style core next to the Brentwood suburb.

Aldermen today ordered months of further study of the project’s potential impacts on traffic and transit after hearing Monday from dozens of passionate fans and opponents of the 30-year project that could bring up to 8,500 new workers and residents around Brentood’s C-Train station.

Dr. Kesik discusses Solar Ready Housing: video

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