5 key urban development issues Calgary's next city council will face
CBC
This column is an opinion by Richard White, who has served on the Calgary Planning Commission (Citizen at Large), the Calgary Tourism Board, the Calgary Public Art Board and the Tourism Calgary Board. He has also written extensively about urban development. For more information about CBC's Opinion section, please see the FAQ.
Come Monday night, Calgary will have a vastly changed city council, and it comes at a time when our city is at a critical point in its evolution.
As a writer on urban development for a decade, with years of past experience in Calgary city planning offices and with decades spent wandering the neighbourhoods of this city which have undergone so much change, I've tried to sit down and list my hopes for our city.
We must transition from a downtown-centric, corporate-headquarters-office-tower city, to a city that supports multiple employment hubs — concentrated office areas near the airport, the development of more inland port distribution centres where trucks and trains can load and unload. We need to build up the areas around hospitals and post-secondary campuses.
We need a new council that can link vision with current economic reality. No more grand visions which make charming artist renderings. No more endless overlapping visions for small pockets of the city. We need big picture thinkers and doers.
We need council members with a diversity of experiences and expertise that will bring different perspectives and insights into how to manage our city to the benefit of everyone.
We need a council that can work together as a team and not get lost in endless debates and rethinking past decisions; that has happened far too often in the past. It does a disservice to the city and its citizens. It's no way to plan for the future.
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