imagineCALGARY in the Classroom

While The ImagineCALGARY Plan for Long Range Urban Sustainability is being used in new and creative ways in many imagineCALGARY Partner organizations, students are also putting the Plan’s vision of sustainability to good use.

One example is Urban Studies 451, “Planning the Canadian City” at The University of Calgary. This course is designed to give students an overview and understanding of issues that affect city planning. In the Winter 2008 term, student teams were tasked with developing term projects that included providing in-depth analyses of existing locations in Calgary. Many of these teams used The imagineCALGARY Plan to provide the background rationale for their work and to create a sense of direction for their recommendations.

The students were introduced to imagineCALGARY and sustainability as part of the course curriculum. “We really felt it was important to ensure that imagineCALGARY was incorporated into the design of the course,” says John Lewis, co-director of the course (along with Chris Elkey) and Coordinator of the imagineCALGARY Communications and Awareness Committee. “The overarching theme of this course was ‘complexity’, and imagineCALGARY is one of the best examples out there for looking at all the diverse elements of a community and providing direction for integrated action.”

UniverCITY
UniverCITY, one of the projects influenced by imagineCALGARY, examined how the existing University of Calgary campus could develop over the next 40 years. “imagineCALGARY is the product of thousands of citizens gathering together and speaking their mind. A resource like that is priceless,” says Cody Weiss, a project team member (along with Connor Smith, Janel Smith, Barbara Holash and Megan Emter). “We knew that for our project to properly succeed we would have to fully understand imagineCALGARY and what it aimed to accomplish for the future.”

The UniverCITY project looked at the history of the University, the contextual trends that are occurring and then laid out a decade-by-decade phased plan for the desired development of the campus. “The University is typically viewed as a place for education and that’s it. We wanted to demonstrate to the city that the University posses unparalleled opportunity to become an urban centre of activity, not just for students but for anybody,” Cody says.

The end result of the team’s work was a 40-year campus plan that considers a wide array of issues such as energy, education, affordable housing, transportation and sense of community.

In creating an action plan for future development, the UniverCITY team found natural alignment with imagineCALGARY. “imagineCALGARY helped us really focus on planning for the long term,” says team member Connor Smith. “As long as you are able to think critically about imagineCALGARY, you will be able to successfully integrate its principles and values into almost any conceivable project. Using imagineCALGARY can help make your policy frameworks more stable, insightful and comprehensive from the outset.”

The entire UniverCITY project can be downloaded as a PDF here.

Aurora Business Park
Like UniverCITY, the Aurora Business Park project team looked at the future development of a particular area of Calgary with a focus on integrated planning. In this case, the team (Toby Bennett, Hilda Chu, Herman Ng, Coral Bliss Taylor, Philip Mullin and Steve Mitsch) focused mainly on transportation. In the process, they were able to demonstrate how this one issue impacts - and is impacted by - a wide variety of other issues like greenhouse gas emissions, energy, wildlife, ecological health and green buildings.

“Our project was trying to create an effective sustainable plan to develop the Aurora Business Park site, and imagineCALGARY was the most relevant plan to do that,” says team member Toby Bennett. “imagineCALGARY was used as the inspiration for our project, and proved to be useful not only in the classroom, but in real life planning situations.”

Since the implementation of plans takes a variety of actors, the project team was able to use The imagineCALGARY Plan to help set the direction and create specific strategy areas for implementation. “imagineCALGARY allowed us to gauge what Calgary’s needs were, what strategies might be possible, and what areas of sustainability the public found to be important. With these in mind from the outset, The imagineCALGARY Plan helped guide us to find solutions for Aurora,” says team member Steve Mitsch. “The target-based design of imagineCALGARY creates a set of strategies that local citizens, builders, developers, and students alike can view to understand all aspects of sustainability. Finding appropriate designs and policies to accomplish these targets was the challenge of our project, but is was also the most rewarding part.”

The entire Aurora project can be downloaded as a PDF here.

Class Gets High Marks
Alderman Brian Pincott was a member of the imagineCALGARY Round Table during the development of The imagineCALGARY Plan, and also served as a guest reviewer for the project presentations. He was impressed by the quality of the work he saw from University students. “The work was well thought out and very holistic,” Alderman Pincott says. “One of the challenges that we face as we move forward is being more holistic in our approach around urban development and renewal. All the projects captured the need for a more comprehensive approach based upon inserting the human element at its core.”

Alderman Pincott was particularly impressed by how the students were able to recognize the challenges in development and find ways to meet them. “imagineCALGARY, at its heart, is about people. It captures that notion of the interdependence of people and their environment, and ensures that we account for that interdependence as we build and grow our city. Once we recognize this and take a more holistic approach, we open ourselves up to discovering wonderful synergies and surprising outcomes.”

For John Lewis, there are many benefits to having students use the imagineCALGARY Plan and Vision. “This provided us with a great opportunity to see the possibilities for the future - these students aren’t mired in all the obstacles and roadblocks that are often the first things that come to mind when looking to act on something like imagineCALGARY,” John says. “It’s important to remember that these students are going to be the decision-makers of the not-too-distant future. Ensuring that they are comfortable with complexity and understand sustainability is crucial to creating the future that Calgarians said they want through the imagineCALGARY process.”