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

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The town official in Portland, Ore., couldn’t conceal his disdain relating to this unusual Canadian metropolis referred to 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 chopping along with his remarks — U.S. people being not so totally different relating to politeness than their northern neighbours, although usually a bit louder in expressing such good manners.

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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 through which George Bush would finally win a second time period.

Our closing cease was Portland, the place we have 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 reside — 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 imagine 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 primarily 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 turned 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 reality in these harsh phrases.

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That was then. That is now. Portland immediately is a metropolis underneath siege: gone are these pristine walks alongside the riverbank and that carefree, youthful atmosphere of downtown. As a substitute are camps of homeless drug addicts who make passersby targets for countless 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 seems more and more like some city oasis by comparability; one the place folks reside comfortably amongst neighbours not consistently 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, broadly unfold to make the most of the encircling empty northern prairie.

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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 decreasing our carbon footprint to that of a hamster’s paw.

This environmental campaign is now joined with a deemed want to supply 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 a giant 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 might be constructed the place. It’s revolutionary and will have an effect on each neighborhood. And it’s shifting forward with alacrity.

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

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.

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