The future of Calgary hangs in the balance as City Council gears up to decide how our neighbourhoods, roads and transit will be built. Will they choose affordable, convenient, healthy and environmentally friendly, or will we be left with the status quo?
Traditional development in Calgary has focused on single-family houses, large commercial centres and highly auto-dependent lifestyles. Many people do not see the problems with this type of development, but experience has shown us that these communities are expensive (for both residents and government), lead to traffic problems, increase obesity and asthma, and play a significant role in climate change.
By changing the way we develop our existing and new communities, we can address some of the city's and the world's most pressing issues. Affordable housing and poverty, rising taxes, lack of schools and recreation facilities, traffic congestion, childhood obesity, urban air quality, climate change and even our sense-of-community are fundamentally impacted by community design. Improvement in all of these areas can be achieved by building compact, transit friendly and walkable neighbourhoods.
Neighbourhoods with many different housing types (from apartments and condos to townhouses and houses) mixed with a variety of retail and employment make it less expensive to provide high speed transit, schools, recreation, high-quality open spaces and other services within every community. People in these communities spend more time enjoying their neighbourhood and less time stuck in their cars. Don't believe me? Just check out Garrison Woods or the Bridges to see just part of what is possible.
Unfortunately, making the transition from traditional auto-dependent development will not be easy; but, to our benefit, we have a number of important pieces already in place. We have a strong, positive vision for the future that is being wholeheartedly embraced within City Hall. We have developers that want to create more compact, transit friendly and walkable neighbourhoods. We have an increasingly active number of civil society groups in the city working on issues from poverty to recreation to the environment. And we have an incredible amount of construction and renewal that provides the perfect opportunity to do things right the first time.
On the other side of the coin, we're missing a willingness to make the big changes that seem so right, but can be a bit scary. Take secondary suites as an example. One hundred thousand people in Calgary currently live below the poverty line, and a recent poll has shown that 80 per cent of Calgarians are in favour of expanding the use of secondary suites to help make housing more affordable. With appropriate policies in place, the likely incremental impact of adding a basement suite to a neighbourhood seems small compared with our inability to provide basic necessities to both new and long-time residents. Sometimes, despite the merits of a new idea, there is a fear of doing things differently.
Even faced with this fear and resistance to change, we can't lose sight of the pressing issues facing our community, and the mounting sense of urgency to deal with them. Whether it's affordability, traffic congestion or climate change, incremental improvements (or decline) are no longer acceptable. We know the steps that are needed to overcome these challenges: energy efficiency saves money and protects the environment; transit-oriented development is cheaper and reduces traffic congestion and protects the environment and reduces poverty and can lead to more vibrant communities. We should be implementing these solutions as fast as possible, while still listening to people's concerns and designing the solutions with these concerns in mind.
So how do we do it? How do we help council to make the big decisions? I believe it starts with a conversation. And not just a conversation with your Alderman or the Mayor, but a conversation with your neighbour and people from across the city. The more people get engaged in the conversation, the more support builds for new ideas. And that's what we need to build a better city together.
One place to engage in this conversation is CreatingCalgary.ca. This website was designed to encourage Calgarians from all walks of life to share their perspectives on development issues in the city, and have their voices heard by council and other key decision makers.
Jesse Row is the Director of the Sustainable Communities Group at the Pembina Institute. For more information on development issues in Calgary visit CreatingCalgary.ca.
