Young People's Vision For A Better City; Forum urges foresight
BY JASON MARKUSOFF, CALGARY HERALD APRIL 3, 2009 7:13 AM
When city officials promote a vision of Calgary's future and developers jeer the long-range blueprint,
they often jokingly admit they probably won't be alive long enough to see that denser city which the
document envisions 60 years from now.
Twenty-something university students are more likely to survive to see that future.
At a University of Calgary campus event Thursday, dozens of them embraced Plan It's new vision for
limits to further sprawl and a quadrupling of the transit system's service levels.
Melinda Turnbull, a 25-year-old mechanical engineering student, grew up with her parents in
Calgary's south suburbs but now lives near campus at Banff Trail.
"I don't think I would want to live any further out -- it's not feasible to commute downtown from there,"
she said after attending a Plan It presentation hosted by City Hall and the Urban Calgary Students
Association.
"I'm a fan of the mass transit idea. Let's get some of the cars off the street and a little less
congestion,"added her friend Melissa Roa, 23.
The students' group had easel-boards showing monotonous subdivisions and giant blocks of parked
cars, to show what they don't want. Greenery-laden train lines and vibrant sidewalk scenes
represented their good way to grow.
"As students, we can't be apathetic anymore. We need to have a voice and help shape our city,"said
Guillermo Guglietti, a civil engineering and urban studies student.
The president of the Urban Calgary group will be 83 by the time Plan It runs its course. He said
students are more open-minded to change than older generations. And although he thinks it's likely
many students will want to settle in single-family houses, they're more likely to want to retire in denser
residential forms, and argued Calgary needs more varied housing choices around town.
Plan It envisions that Calgary can grow by another 1.3 million people without annexing more rural
land, by expanding bus and train service, building condo-style developments around the city and
requiring denser suburban developments on the unplanned city fringes.
Home builders and developers have vocally opposed the plan and its targets, saying it would hinder
their ability to provide the suburban houses Calgarians repeatedly say they prefer to condos or
townhouses.
Today, Plan It promoters will try to justify their "smart growth" plans by releasing a cost analysis. Plan
It manager Pat Gordon has said that future will cost the city$8 billion less than the roads and
infrastructure of the sprawling status quo, but has not yet provided the basis for that estimate.
image:
Archive, Calgary Herald
