On June 23, Calgary city council will meet to discuss and debate the most important issue it has yet to face.
The meeting will be the first true public hearing about Plan It Calgary, a vision from city planners of how they see the city growing over the next 70 years.
There are upsides to Plan It Calgary: Targeting higher levels of sustainability; sensitivity to environmental issues, and; increasing inner city densities with residential and commercial development, resulting in an improved environment for walking and cycling.
However, the flaws in Plan It are obvious and onerous.
It is based on smart growth principles, which have been implemented in other North American cities, where they have been proven to have little, if any, positive effect and in some cases have been detrimental to local economies.
The proof is in a study called Smart Growth Policies — An Evaluation of Programs and Outcomes conducted by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, which compared eight U.S. states, four with enforced smart growth policies and four without.
The study is thorough and, much like the Plan It document, quite long and at times complicated, but the bottom line is smart growth policies seldom accomplish their original goals.
Plan It is the integration of the Municipal Development Plan and the Calgary Transportation Plan, with transportation needs and directions for mobility used as the canvas on which the vision of future growth is painted.
Plan It’s vision of transportation in the future in Calgary is to reduce the percentage of vehicular traffic on our roadways, while increasing the percentage of public transit use, walking and cycling.
The key word is percentage, because in reality, reducing the percentage of people who drive their vehicles in the future does not mean fewer vehicles on the roads, because more people will live here, which Plan It acknowledges.
And yet Plan It’s directions for transportation budgets are to maintain and repair the current road system, but limit the construction of new roads, even though more vehicles will use the roads.
This is clearly designed to create more congestion on Calgary’s streets in the future, with the potential of adding to pollution, because those vehicles will be on the roads longer.
So much for sustainability and the environment.
Is the thinking Calgarians will be so frustrated they will turn to public transit, walking and cycling to get to where they’re going?
This despite the fact Calgary is a winter city and walking and cycling are activities that can be comfortable modes of transportation for about four months a year.
That is social engineering.
Plan It says it has the support of 75% of Calgarians who want better access to public transit, which is impressive, depending on how that support was solicited.
If the question was simply “Do you want better access to public transit?” the result has to be called into question, because that is the wrong question.
The correct question is “Do you want better access because you will take public transit, or because you hope everyone else will take public transit so your drive to work is less frustrating?”
Despite claims to the contrary, Plan It’s directions for land development will eventually restrict the number of new single-family homes that can be built in Calgary — the very type of home more than 70% of Calgarians prefer to live in.
As of today, there is a sufficient supply of land zoned for single-family homes in new communities, but as that land is developed, there are no guarantees new lands will not have higher zoning requirements for multi-family at the expense of single-family housing.
Plan It, in so many words, says people will learn to accept multi-family as the primary home of choice, and there’s another key word — choice.
If there are more multi-family homes available than single-family homes, what choice do people have?
That is social engineering.
There’s also the argument multi-family homes are less expensive to buy, which is true. Even though multi-family homes cost more per square foot to build than single-family homes, they are less expensive because they are smaller and most are not suitable for a growing family with three kids.
Those families want a single-family home, in the suburbs, where there are parks, schools and churches — not unfortunate homeless people, wandering the streets looking for handouts. (As a reference point, take a stroll through the Beltline at 11 o’clock tonight).
There are other things in the document that need further study, if not outright revision, and the only logical decision council can make is to send Plan It back to administration with directions to incorporate market realities and in-depth consultation with Calgary’s corporate community to ensure the Calgary of the future is what all Calgarians want and not just the utopian ideal of a few, small special interest groups.
By MYKE THOMAS, Sunmedia
Last Updated: 12th June 2009, 7:56pm