GEN Y READY TO PUT ITS STAMP ON CALGARY'S FUTURE?

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GEN Y READY TO PUT ITS STAMP ON CALGARY'S FUTURE?

Posted on 03 November 2009 by Markham Hislop.

By Markham Hislop, Editor

There’s a rumble in Calgary municipal politics. It’s faint now, you have to listen hard to hear it, but it’s there nonetheless. That rumble is the sound of a younger generation demanding attention, insisting that their issues be put on the table. And it’s going to get louder and louder as the 2010 civic election draws near.

Today’s feature story covers a topic that may well become the central focus for that younger generation: Plan It and land development in Calgary.

Plan It is all about what the city will look like in a generation. For Baby Boomers, like myself, that isn’t a pressing issue. We mostly own our homes, we’re settled into communities we like, and as long as we can get up and down the Deerfoot without encountering LA freeway-style gridlock, life is pretty good.

But my children, the Gen Y kids, view life differently. They worry about the environment and terms like sustainability crop up in their conversations more often. Sure, they want to own a home and have a family, but the nuclear family stuck out in the ‘burbs isn’t necessarily their dream. They’re flexible and pragmatic, and on board with “alternative” lifestyles their parents wouldn’t have considered.

Plan It is mostly about them. And to a point City Hall has done a pretty good including them, and citizens in general, in the planning process. The City spent three years engaging Calgarians in a discussion about what people wanted their city to look like a generation or two hence. The last minute compromising by Council that marked the passage of Plan It shouldn’t obscure the fact that our elected officials and the bureaucrats tried really hard to fashion a bottom-up process, at least to the extent that any government does anything from the bottom up.

But the passage of Plan It is just the opening salvo in the war between competing visions of Calgary. From what I can tell, there are three sides to this skirmish.

First are the land developers. A name that keeps coming up in interviews is the Urban Development Institute, which is considered by the developers’ critics to be the Karl Rove of Calgary politics. According to Dr. Noel Keough, the UDI and its members have the ear of too many Calgary alderman. They are well-financed and know how to play the political game.

Second are the critics, and Dr. Noel Keough is a spokesman for this group, which is includes many of those Geny Yers mentioned above. Thus far they have been not been very vocal. But that appears about to change. Dr. Keough and his colleague, Bob Morrison, fired a shot across the developers’ bow a few weeks ago by writing in Calgary Herald op-ed piece that lowering the required units per acre in Plan It from 11.3 to nine would cost taxpayers $2 billion. Those are the kinds of numbers that get people’s attention. Especially in Calgary, where low taxes are considered a God-given right and tax increases are one of the few issues that can motivate people to pay attention to civic debate.

Backing up Dr. Keough and his colleagues is a loose-knit coalition called CivicCamp (160 people spent a Saturday not long ago debating how to change Calgary civic society). Members prefer to think of themselves as part of a movement. Their primary issues are sustainable development and transparent, accountable civic government.

You can see the connection to the Plan It debate. CivicCamp folks mostly think Plan It has been neutered and City Council sold out to the development industry. There are mutterings about alderman being bought and paid for by developers, and many pointed comments about the need for election finance reform in Calgary.

The third group in our little civic drama is City Hall. As far as I can tell, City officials are on board with a different vision of Calgary, one with a higher population density, more mixed-used communities, and a more efficient public transportation system. Like most municipal governments trying to change the status quo, they are buffetted by the competing demands and complaints of their political bosses, business and advocates for change.

The wild card in all of this is CivicCamp. Business and government are known players; they’ve been at this game a long time and know all the tricks. But CivicCamp is new. And as far as I can tell it is the first attempt to mobilize Gen Y for political action in civic politics.

Therefore, it has a great deal of potential to be a disruptive force in the 2010 election. And it now has an issue: Plan It, the influence of developers in municipal government and the ultimate vision of Calgary’s future. Political movements have been built on less.

If CivicCamp can organize and focus, the 2010 election could be a formative moment in Calgary’s history, a time when the torch is passed to a younger generation with different ideals and ambitions. We’ve seen these kinds of transitions before. For Boomers it was the Sixties, a period of political upheaval and change.

Will 2010 represent a similar time for Calgary? Will Gen Y use CivicCamp as a political vehicle to put its stamp this city’s future?

Right now it’s a toss up, at best. But it will be very entertaining to watch the next 11 months unfold.