This week’s FFWD features an excellent multipart package on what Plan It means for Calgary and where every alderman at City Hall stands on the plan right now.
The story is highly recommended for a number of reasons, not least of which is that its author, Jeremy Klaszus, attended the inaugural CivicCamp. Beyond that, he’s also, in my opinion, probably the most thorough and thoughtful local/regional reporter working in this city right now. With a mere fraction of the resources of the Heralds, Suns and broadcast-newscasts out there, he regularly embarasses them with the clarity and depth of his reporting on civic affairs, regional environmental issues and provincial politics.
And beyond that, he cites yours truly and CivicCamp by name in his main story, beneath the subhed “FUTURE OF OUR CITY.” (That’s us, CivicCampers – the future of our city!). Here’s the key passage:
How do we build the kind of city we want for ourselves and our children? More than 160 citizens, politicians and developers recently gathered at Knox United Church downtown for CivicCamp to discuss that question at length. Standing beside a PowerPoint slide of gridlocked Deerfoot Trail, local author Chris Turner listed a myriad of threats to Calgary’s current urban form: climate change, energy scarcity, affordability, accessibility. “This doesn’t work for much longer,” warned Turner, who’s researched examples of sustainability in cities around the world. “This is not the luxury of building a better city because we want it to look pretty on postcards. This is the necessity of building a city that will be durable enough for our future, for the futures of our children.”
After Turner’s talk, people in the group stuck a flurry of fluorescent-coloured papers onto a wall. Each sticky contained an idea to make the city better. “Let’s build an inner city streetcar system.” “Make my city more walkable.” “Make great public gathering spots.” These ideas have been tossed around in Calgary for years, most recently in the city’s imagineCalgary consultation, and yet the city has struggled to lift the ideas off of paper and put them into practice. “It’s time that we got on with it,” says Ald. Brian Pincott. “It’s time that we started putting this stuff in place and realizing the savings that are inherent in this.”
If I were to come up with a rough draft of CivicCamp’s mission statement, it’d be pretty close to that: Let’s lift the ideas off of paper and put them into practice. And I’d add: Now!
So a reminder to those of you who haven’t done so yet to get over to Google Groups pronto and join. It’s now the official clubhouse and mailing list for CivicCamp. The place, if you will, where we will draft the blueprints of the future of our city, and lift those ideas off the page and put them into practice ASAP.
