Anyone see this "Recall Calgary's Mayor Petition"?

[tonytiger55]

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The infrastructure is very interconnected, it will need to be upgraded anyway. Have they ever talked about that shit? It's all they ever talk about. Upgrading and building infrastructure for higher density is more cost effective than sprawl. We've known this for decades.

To take the schools as an example, there are inner city school zones that's Junior High and Elementary schools are below 75% capacity, but the high schools are at full, or even excess capacity. That's because they're taking on the excess capacity from the outer neighborhoods (who's zones are at 95%+ capacity across all levels, with high schools over 100% capacity). If there's 10-20% increase in students, them moving into the inner city wouldn't cause a problem for those schools. The issue facing school capacity isn't that the inner city can't handle extra density, it's that the perimeter doesn't have the infrastructure to handle the number of students that live there. Keep expanding out, new schools from K-12 need to be built, while inner city schools continue to go underutilized, and travel distances to the inner city high schools increase and costs to transport students increase. If the student capacity in the inner city neighborhoods sees better utilization of the already built K-9 schools, then the perimeter only needs to see expansion of high school capacity, and the associated cost of busing students all over the city is less.

So the infrastructure needs to be built regardless, but taking advantage of density where possible will make things cheaper. I get the density opponents don't mind the incremental tax increases needed to fund sprawl, but it's not a smart way to build a city. Less bureaucracy and more property rights are better, no?

Its not so much about the density. It is about the planning of it.
In London from my parents home I can walk and grab a pint of milk for my tea in 5-8mins. On the way to the train station and back, I can grab some bread, milk eggs. This infrastructure almost goes back two centuries.
In northern India, I can walk twenty paces and grab some milk, eggs and bread on a development that is less than twenty years old.

In Calgary where I live, there is hardly any residential parking. Walking to a gas station for a pint of milk is a tad far. If a property is rezoned and a four townhouses are built. Where would a additional eight cars park? So this creates a case for the City to introduce a stealth tax through parking called permits. This is called social engineering.

The families that live in the the new housing HAVE to get into a car to grab a pint of milk, eggs and bread. The grocery store is a tad far.
The local train stations here do not have commercial to grab a pint of milk on the way home or to work to make a cup of tea.

Given the fact that there is a Climate Emergency and how do those homeowners do that without using the car? One would think the Mayor would be on top of this.

There is not mention of commercial in the planning aspect.
These are the hard issues Council should be asking. They do not have depth and understanding of this. That is fair enough then the City Planners should be recommending this. If they can't then remove them and recruit better ones. Or that can't be done due to the Collective bargaining agreement by the Unions. The same organizations that funded the Councilors through the PAC system at election time. The same organizations that made donations to the NDP.
Did we forget the Provincial NDP and Federal NDP are one entity? So technically we have Federal interference on a Municipal issue. Technically this is a violation of the Municipality Act as Councilors need to act in the interest of the city.

We have abundant land. There is nothing here between here and Winnipeg. We have abundant resources. We have abundant talent. So what is the issue?
The whole argument about density is not the issue. It is a planning issue. The City is terrible at this and the Mayor and Councilors should be giving direction to address this issue. They are not.

Did anyone forget to mention Trudeau flew in the other week and had a private meeting with Gondek? Where is the 600 million in Federal Funding ACTUALLY going?

Edit: It sounds silly to base how far it is to grab a pint of milk if one runs out while making tea. But truth is stranger than fiction.

[ExtraSlow]

Milk from my house is 900m in one direction, 1100m in the other.

[arcticcat522]

I wouldn't care as .uch about the density if they mandated reasonable parking requirements. No one wants exclusive street parking only for a new 8plex plopped beside them. We live in a northern climate and will continue to drive cars.

[ExtraSlow]

I probably have a different view of this than others since my neighborhood is already zones for this.

[msommers]

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The infrastructure is very interconnected, it will need to be upgraded anyway. Have they ever talked about that shit? It's all they ever talk about. Upgrading and building infrastructure for higher density is more cost effective than sprawl. We've known this for decades.

To take the schools as an example, there are inner city school zones that's Junior High and Elementary schools are below 75% capacity, but the high schools are at full, or even excess capacity. That's because they're taking on the excess capacity from the outer neighborhoods (who's zones are at 95%+ capacity across all levels, with high schools over 100% capacity). If there's 10-20% increase in students, them moving into the inner city wouldn't cause a problem for those schools. The issue facing school capacity isn't that the inner city can't handle extra density, it's that the perimeter doesn't have the infrastructure to handle the number of students that live there. Keep expanding out, new schools from K-12 need to be built, while inner city schools continue to go underutilized, and travel distances to the inner city high schools increase and costs to transport students increase. If the student capacity in the inner city neighborhoods sees better utilization of the already built K-9 schools, then the perimeter only needs to see expansion of high school capacity, and the associated cost of busing students all over the city is less.

So the infrastructure needs to be built regardless, but taking advantage of density where possible will make things cheaper. I get the density opponents don't mind the incremental tax increases needed to fund sprawl, but it's not a smart way to build a city. Less bureaucracy and more property rights are better, no?

What schools specifically are you referring to? Please provide a complete list. Thanks

[pheoxs]

I do wish the parking requirements scaled different for the larger units. A duplex with 2 basement suites having 2 parking slots and enough street parking out front for 2 cars still fits well in most neighbourhoods. But 8 units with only 4 parking stalls puts a lot more problems on the adjacent area. And H-GO going even larger than 8 units is even worse.

Feels like it could’ve been 0.5 stalls up to 4 units then .75 or 1 stalls for higher density than that or something.

Theres an area that’s especially fucked, 78th ave and Fairmount drive which has no parking allowed the entire block because of the school across the street. And it’s all zoned H-GO for much higher density.

[suntan]

No one's having kids, so no schools needed.

[Cagare]

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I look forward to ten years from now, when all these high density supporters suddenly realize the city never provided extra infrastructure for it.

Have they even talked about that shit? Kids are already getting bussed all over the city due to lack of classrooms, it'll be great when there's another 10 or 20% increase in students with nowhere to go because there's no land left in the higher density "inner" city to put new ones. Let alone road capacity, electrical grid, water/sewer, etc. etc. etc.

This was the letter I sent to Council over this. The worst is actually the stormwater infrastructure, the entire inner City is severely deficient and any increase in density will only make it worse and it will be impossible to correct. No one really wants to understand the cost of actually solving this problem in the inner City. If the exercise in Sunnyside has taught us anything it's in the hundreds billions, and Sunnyside isn't even the worst case scenario we have in this City at the moment.

[Swank]

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No one's having kids...

You haven't been on an airplane in a while.

[jwslam]

Did anyone living in "high density" notice street parking improved when Car2Go existed?
It's way more feasible to be a 1car family when there's a not-so-inconvenient, not-too-expensive alternative steps away...
I thought I saw some article about how a good number of households gave up a car to use car share.

I have no idea how communauto in Calgary works... seems way less prevalent than C2G was

[killramos]

It’s a shame car2go operated at a comical loss to make people use it.

Why wouldn’t people love it, the math never came close to going around.

[Sentry]

I don't recall ever driving one sober, and I also saw a lot of balled up smart cars behind the shops that serviced them, so I don't think anyone else drove them sober either. Weirdly not a sustainable business model to let anyone drunk drive your car for ten bucks

[killramos]

Writing them off was probably way more profitable for Mercedes than operating them

[ExtraSlow]

If they make traffic bad enough, you want even want to be a 2 car household.

[vengie]

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I don't recall ever driving one sober, and I also saw a lot of balled up smart cars behind the shops that serviced them, so I don't think anyone else drove them sober either. Weirdly not a sustainable business model to let anyone drunk drive your car for ten bucks

I mean, that's a fairly odd thing to admit to on the internet...
It's not the business model to let drunk people drive, considering well... It's illegal.

[ExtraSlow]

That is an unusual thing to admit to. Do you drunk drive all types of rental cars?

[mr2mike]

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If they make traffic bad enough, you want even want to be a 2 car household.

I did hear 50 Uber drivers a day are moving to Alberta, so...

[Tik-Tok]

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I did hear 50 Uber drivers a day are moving to Alberta, so...

I hope Cactus Club can keep up with them.

[pheoxs]

I really miss car2go, it was so much more convenient to have as an option especially for one way trips. Communauto has just never been the same appeal and rarely see their cars on the streets. Car2go always felt like they were available within a block or two. Wish it'd come back into existence even if they had to downgrade from the mercs.

[bjstare]

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Wish it'd come back into existence even if they had to downgrade from the mercs.

Good news for you - we actually already have a service available with the one of the few things that could be considered a downgrade from a smart car: