Nelson: Ready or not, Calgary’s housing revolution is upon us

Article content material

The town official in Portland, Ore., couldn’t conceal his disdain concerning this unusual Canadian metropolis known as Calgary, from which he’d just lately returned following some fact-finding mission.

He didn’t know this was my hometown or he might need been much less reducing together with his remarks — U.S. people being not so completely different in relation to politeness than their northern neighbours, although usually somewhat louder in expressing such good manners.

Article content material

Article content material

This was within the fall of 2004, whereas amongst a gaggle of Canadian journalists invited by the State Division to go to key U.S. presidential battlegrounds within the run-up to the election during which George Bush would finally win a second time period.

Our ultimate cease was Portland, the place we had been briefed, amongst different issues, on that metropolis’s profitable drive to extend residential density by making transit a precedence and bringing folks downtown to stay — famously ripping up a serious freeway that ran via town core to kick-start this thrilling experiment in city planning.

Then Calgary was talked about. The man giving the presentation couldn’t consider what he’d seen on his tour north of the border. “It simply goes on and on and on. It by no means appears to cease,” is how I recall his description.

Our metropolis was basically branded the mirror reverse of saintly Portland, a considerably dreary place the place wide-reaching suburban sprawl was accompanied by a essential large roadway system, whereas the downtown grew to become a veritable ghost city as soon as the working day was carried out.

As a lot as that description stung, there appeared greater than a grain of fact in these harsh phrases.

Article content material

Article content material

That was then. That is now. Portland at present is a metropolis below siege: gone are these pristine walks alongside the riverbank and that carefree, youthful atmosphere of downtown. As an alternative are camps of homeless drug addicts who make passersby targets for infinite harassment and intimidation.

Certainly, downtown teems with folks. The issue is town needs lots of them would pack up and transfer on. They gained’t, as a result of there’s nowhere else to go.

In the meantime, the once-maligned, sprawling suburbia of Calgary now appears to be like more and more like some city oasis by comparability; one the place folks stay comfortably amongst neighbours not continuously harassing them.

However let’s not pat ourselves on the again too rapidly. Our metropolis council appears intent on following Portland’s preliminary strikes that helped push it into an city hell, by ditching guidelines that allowed Calgary to evolve into a big assortment of moderately content material communities, extensively unfold to benefit from the encircling empty northern prairie.

Article content material

Our present mannequin isn’t one which appeals to these climate-forward councillors who seemingly make up the bulk on council. Some appear decided to have us embrace the sardine as our civic emblem: merrily relocating to a prescribed downtown tower block and thereby lowering our carbon footprint to that of a hamster’s paw.

This environmental campaign is now joined with a deemed want to offer extra inexpensive housing, as hovering lodging prices and restricted provide crash up in opposition to document ranges of immigration from throughout Canada and past.

That, and the promise of an enormous cheque from the Trudeau authorities if housing guidelines are relaxed in a rush, has led to a push to scrap these civic laws which were in place for many years, governing what will be constructed the place. It’s revolutionary and will have an effect on each neighborhood. And it’s transferring forward with alacrity.

Perhaps it’s what’s wanted. However stakes are excessive and the result is way from sure. Pushing folks to stay downtown and ramping up housing density in all places sounds high-quality.

However, as Portland found, issues don’t all the time go as deliberate.

The query is: Do you belief this council to get it proper?

Chris Nelson is a daily Herald columnist.

Article content material