Creating a community - Calgary Rangeview
As I've mentioned in a past blog post, last fall, I was contracted to facilitate a couple of workshops attended by the people working on the Area Structure Plan (ASP) for Calgary Rangeview.
Rangeview will be a new area of south Calgary, covering almost 2,000 acres near the Seton Hospital complex. Just to put that in perspective, the entire area of the town I live in is 1600 acres. Planning for Rangeview is complex, with several landowners/developers, multiple key stakeholders such as school boards, environmental, social and economic considerations, and, to top it all off, the project is a pilot for a new, streamlined, faster process that Calgary City Council is trying out.
Last fall, the workshops I facilitated were developing concepts for how the area could be laid out. At that time, I was hired by the planning company that is working with the landowners/developers. Much more recently, in June, I was hired by the City to help with a process and facilitate a meeting to iron out some points in the actual draft of the ASP.
Which brings me to the point of the title of this post. The process that Calgary is working on is not only intended to be faster and more streamlined, it is also intended to be more collaborative. The idea is that the landowners/developers, the city planners, affected city departments and the stakeholders bring their issues, concerns and solutions to the table constantly, working together from the earliest conceptual stages right through to the wording of the document that will go to senior management and the Planning Commission. All the people connected with Rangeview are working to create an exemplary community - walkable, transit-oriented, with sunlight, views, accessible green space, nearby jobs and neighbourhood shops and schools. In the course of working on this plan, they have also created a smaller but very important community -- a team of talented people from all sides of the project who really hear each other's differing comments and work honestly and transparently to find the right solutions. Getting to work with them in the fall and now in June has let me see how their sense of community has grown. I love my job!
You can read about the Rangeview project at this link: