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Livable streets in Calgary
“It’s okay to have clutter,” says Michael Ronkin of the Complete Streets Coalition. Michael is an expert on bicycling and pedestrian strategies in city planning and suggests that a good street tends to...
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Are you Calgary’s ultimate super commuter?
When Calgarians complain about long drives to work, commuters in other Canadian cities, mostly Toronto and Vancouver, tend to react with a pat on the head, a tut-tut, and a look that says “take your...
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What street hockey can teach us about livable streets
The concept of mixed use design has become common vernacular in contemporary neighbourhood planning. The basic principle is that mixed use, complete communities encourage living, working and playing....
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How to make streets less safe
Two weeks ago Toronto’s Medical Officer of Health recommended reducing speed limits in city neighbourhoods for the health and safety of pedestrians and cyclists.[i] Picking up on this story, CBC...
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New Bike Score shows strengths and weaknesses of Calgary’s pathway network
A new measure of the bike friendliness of Calgary finds pockets of the city that score highly, but a lack of density and amenities hurts some areas of the city. The measure, called Bike Score, was...
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Bicycle Lanes, Seat Belts and Democracy
Should you be able to drive while intoxicated? Should you have to wear a seat belt while operating a vehicle? What about airbags? Should you be able to text and drive? The backgrounds for these, what...
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Walkable neighbourhoods cost $1,500 more per month than ‘burbs, says U.S. study
Last year, the Herald commissioned an opinion poll that found more people would ideally walk to work than drive, ride a bike or catch the bus. It was a bit of surprise, particularly given how few...
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Why bike lanes are not cool
Bicycling isn’t cool, which isn’t to say that it can’t be. It simply doesn’t matter. Sewer pipes and water mains aren’t cool. They’re logical. What does the logic of bicycling and moving human...
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What are the best urban hikes in Calgary?
What’s the best hike within the city limits? Last week, a Twitter conversation about mountain hiking got a little urban when a few chimed in their favourite hikes within the city. We’re lucky that...
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Break our addiction to parking lots
There is a concept used in addiction studies known as “enabling.” It points to a third-party force in one’s life that encourages – enables – negative behaviour. Peer pressure is an obvious example of a...
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Mixed-Use Communities Don’t Matter
There is a push to make mixed-use planning the norm as cities focus on building and encouraging “complete communities”. It’s a move away from the old, segregated planning model where land uses – and...
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Eroding Cities One Big Box At A Time
Big box stores are both built structures within our cities and a representation of our cultural condition. They are a manifestation of our society’s collective consumption trends where convenience,...
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Calgary City Photo Essay: Reader Experiences
A Monday summer evening. Displaying photographs allows an opportunity for others to engage in the environments we encounter. Writing about them can showcase our cultural perceptions. Look at the...
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Calgary City Photo Essay: Reader Experiences 2
This is post #2 in this series. Post #1, here. Ingrid writes of her photo: This one’s from 2010. It’s … right around the corner from the court building, which houses AB Provincial Court, and some...
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Calgary Cityscape Photo Essay: Reader Experiences 3
4th Avenue Flyover by Ryan Displaying photographs allows an opportunity for others to engage in the environments we encounter. Writing about them can showcase our cultural perceptions. Have a look at...
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Your Neighbourhood, a Health Care Provider
Stuck in traffic, Bill Boaden Can the design of a city discourage us from being healthy? The Canadian Heart and Stroke Foundation reports that for every hour each day spent in a car, the risk of...
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The City Ranked Best for a Stroll
Another month passes, another city wins best place to live, most beautiful, happiest. Maybe we’re supposed to internalize all of this, be proud that our city won. Or maybe we’re supposed to try harder...
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Calgary Will Continue to Sprawl
There are numerous reasons why the neighbourhood you live in was built: market pressures, population growth, forms of demand, essentially. Before it was built though, there were rules that the plans...
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We Shouldn’t Do Suburbs
Words matter. We learned that in kindergarten. We should keep that in mind when we’re arguing for how to plan a city. In November an author argued in the Calgary Herald for “smart growth.” The article...
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Questioning the Suburban Urban Divide
Downtown Calgary from Patterson Heights. Wikimedia Commons, photo by Qyd. “Suburb” seems to have become a pejorative word when used by those who call themselves “urban.” The counter dismissive is those...
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