CivicCamp Calgary to Help Shape Future of Community
By Dr. Byron Miller
The question an awful lot of Calgarians have been asking is: How do we build the kind of Calgary we want for ourselves and our children? On April 18, about 165 Calgarians spent a lively day discussing this question at Knox United Church. At the end of the day a new citizens’ organization was born: CivicCamp Calgary. CivicCamp Calgary was founded to provide a strong non-partisan citizens’ voice in the political and civic affairs of the city.
As Cheri MacAulay writes in her recent CivicCamp blog, “There is a real appetite to connect at a grassroots level and to work for real change in Calgary. It is no longer enough to look to our elected leaders to move us forward. We want our civic leaders to have the courage to do the right thing for Calgary, but each of us must also be willing to lead ourselves, through our words and through our actions.” The topics CivicCamp will take on will change with the times and its members’ desires, but for right now the big topic is Plan It Calgary.
As most of you involved in imagineCALGARY already know, Plan It Calgary is the city's new municipal development and transportation plan for the next 50 years. It is the direct outcome of the imagineCALGARY process and reflects the wishes of the more than 18,000 Calgarians who participated in the imagineCALGARY process, as well as the wishes of many, many more. First and foremost, Plan It seeks to guide Calgary’s growth in a way that is sustainable and improves our quality of life. As infrastructure, maintenance and service costs rise, peak oil approaches, the population ages, and housing becomes increasingly unaffordable, it is clear that we need to chart a new and better course for Calgary.
The new municipal planning documents that will shape how the city grows go to City Council for approval on June 23, but that approval is not assured. Helping City Council hear the voices of Calgary’s citizens is now more important than ever.
Please consider taking part in the public discussions about Plan It. Better yet, get involved in CivicCamp’s efforts to persuade Council to support a more fiscally, environmentally, socially responsible city when it votes on Plan It on June 23.
You can learn more about the activities of CivicCamp online, read the CivicCamp blog, and join CivicCamp by sending a quick email to: civiccamp@gmail.com. Please mention that you would like to participate and that you learned about CivicCamp in the imagineCALGARY e-newsletter.
imagineCALGARY is, above all, about citizens taking charge of their destiny. CivicCamp provides one powerful avenue for doing that. As City Council’s decision on Plan It approaches, the tens of thousands of hours that have been collectively invested in imagineCALGARY are now ready to bear fruit. Let’s finish what we started when imagineCALGARY began six years ago.
Dr. Byron Miller is Associate Professor and Associate Head, Department of Geography, at The University of Calgary. He is Director of the Urban Studies Program, an Adjunct Associate Professor of Planning, and a Fellow with the Institute for Advanced Policy Research.
