With property tax increases dominating headlines and kitchen table conversations, there is a risk that another far more consequential issue slips quietly off the public radar. That issue is ‘the Calgary Plan’, a long-term policy framework that will shape the city’s growth direction and commit billions of taxpayer dollars over the next three decades.
Calgary has seen this movie before. Different title, similar script.
The Calgary Plan is being presented as bold and necessary. In reality, it rests on a familiar assumption that has quietly shaped city planning for more than a decade: that we can predict how people will live, move, and choose housing far enough into the future to justify committing Calgary to a single dominant growth model today.
Long-term planning matters, but projections are not guarantees. Calgary learned that with Plan It Calgary and Imagine Calgary around 2010, an ambitious blueprint was created that promised smarter growth and stronger transit outcomes. Instead, transit use stagnated, infrastructure costs climbed, and despite efforts to redirect growth inward, the city continued expanding outward, often delivering complete communities at densities that rival or exceed many established inner-city neighbourhoods.
Read my full opinion column in the Western Standard
