Strong Towns Calgary

🚨TACTICAL URBANISM PROJECT ALERT🚨 🔗🧵Let's reclaim a parking space in Kensington together! ActivateYYC have invited us to create an installation for their Park(ing) Day celebration this September. We want your input to create something special for the Strong Towns community!

#yyccc votes this week to increase the road paving budget by 50 to 70 MILLION dollars annually. That's more than we invested into cycling infrastructure across all of last budget cycle. We need a Public Realm and Transportation Infrastructure Strategy now. #Calgary #urbanism

Consider emailing your Councillor TODAY about the need for a sustainable transportation strategy. We cannot continue designing communities to maximize tax input and minimize tax output, all the while refusing to increase capacity in the inner-city. We will bankrupt ourselves.

Why don't politicians ever talk abt zoning reform? American urban design is a health hazard imo. This would immediately open up a lot of real estate that otherwise the dems are talking abt having to spend taxpayer money building to reduce scarcity/ costs. but Also the best city I ever lived in by far was Montreal cuz u can just live on top of shops I used to have my am coffee on the deck and say hi to like 10 friends walking past my balcony b4 I ever even left my house. Living in a commercial area means u can walk to get everything u need. Better for environment. Everyone less isolated. The mental health benefits r palpable. I see a lot of valid lamenting of the loss of "third places" (social gathering points like bars, churches etc) . reducing zoning regulation makes the neighbourhood feel like a third place. A lot cheaper than having to subsidize tons of housing and with added community benefits. I've def been to a lot of cities with commercial areas and office buildings just completely half empty. How is sf real estate so expensive when all the commercial spaces r ghost towns? This seems like a solution dems and republicans can agree on that could be implemented extremely easily? Correct me if I'm missing smthn?

Just a few progress photos of our Park(ing) Day installation. We cut it pretty close, but everything came together in the end! Thanks as always to the folks at ActivateYYC for organizing the main event!

Just a few of the engagements we received from passers-by in Kensington last weekend. Recognize anything that you wrote down? What resonates to you?

Thanks so much to our amazing volunteers for bringing our Park(ing) Day dreams to reality! Where should we take our Open House next? Join our Discord for the most up-to-date information on how to get involved. Help shape the future of Strong Towns activism right here in Calgary!

@LRTontheGreen Let's not repeat the mistakes of the MAX Purple! Centre Street should be a comfortable, productive main street filled with vibrant businesses and public spaces... not a highway running through Crescent Heights. It will serve its purpose perfectly with just 2 travel lanes.

With #greenlineyyc now looking like it will be delayed arriving in the north-central corridor, this concept of moving people, not metal, will be an important one to remember as the evolution of Centre St in the near to medium term is considered.

Come down to the Strong Towns Calgary P.O.P.-up Shack—ideated, constructed, and decorated by our amazing volunteers! Just one parking stall is enough for a medium sized room and a patio. Imagine the opportunity we could create if we set our priorities straight.

Thanks DJ for the facts on this matter! The Green Line budget originally pitched was quickly drawn up to get the ball rolling. Its cost escalation over the years has just been a reversion to reality. We must commit to laying track in 2025, or it will only worsen.

@CWalcottYYC @pootmans What a cool picture of Pootmans!

This year marks 40 years since the establishment of the 17th Avenue Retail & Entertainment District BIA and Marda Loop BIA, the first two BIAs in Calgary. Check out 1983 @pootmans 👀 newsroom.calgary.ca/first-two-busi…

Kudos to the City of Vancouver! Let's try this on for size @cityofcalgary. We've relaxed rezoning on the missing middle of housing density - can we do it for the missing middle of housing prices next?

Great question and concern! A Green Line's worth of taxes are going toward adding NEW pothole-prone lanes to highways over the next 3 years. Now our credibility to invest in sustainable infrastructure is tattered. If the gov't refuses to invest in Calgarians, who will want to?

We hear this all the time from folks who have "made the modal shift" as it were. Efficient bike infrastructure, takes shortcuts, covering an entirely separate realm from private automobiles, and their traffic. Biking in Calgary opens up a world you didn't know existed.

Love this graphic so much. Illustrates clearly why R-CG was just the beginning for ensuring housing affordability in Calgary. We know our need is highest at the 300-500k price range. Let's legalize single-egress, and put them in our new H-2 zone! @cityofcalgary @JasonNixonAB

Upzoning increases the stock of apartment-zoned land, and reduces the stock of single-family-only land. (You can still build SF under apartment zoning.) Intuitively, this makes apartments cheaper, since developers have more options for land to build on. 2/

@SustainableYYC I know you guys have been working hard on this Connaught project - it's gonna be so good!

So glad to hear it! There was a lot of consensus over the need to make this intersection safer. This is a temporary prototype, so we’d love feedback over the coming months on what’s working / what complications arise. ☺️

Bad for landowners' equity - bad for the City's budget - bad for the environment. The decision to build our city through shacks and asphalt hurts everyone and benefits no one. Aside from the tract home industry perhaps.

Huge thanks to our member Noah for volunteering his time to design this, and create the models you see here. If you're interested lending energy to our movement, join the conversation! strongtownscalgary.ca

What's your pick for a Park(ing) Day structure design? Poll and discussion in the thread! Remember to join us this Thursday where we'll pick a final design and start planning our implementation for #ParkingDayYYC

Pick an option!