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I feel that city density must be a key objective in our efforts to reach sustainable environments. Calgary is very much a sprawl based city, and in my opinion is less ecologically friendly as a result. Oil is required to move us to and from our houses that are built far from where we work, and far from where we go to shop, dine out and to take in other entertainment. Given that oil is a non-renewable resource, it follows that the inefficient use of energy that sprawl cities require cannot be maintained indefinitely. To be sure, dense buildings consume energy as well, but efficiently designed building with many shared walls must take less energy to heat than individual houses. Plus, if more people live within walking distance of their daily destinations, much less energy could be spent on moving those people around.
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I think that cities in Japan are an excellent example of dense areas that take up much less land per capita than a city like Calgary and offer more options to residents within walking distance. Japanese cities also offer efficient transit to move people to locations they cannot easily walk to. I think that Calgary can learn a lot from this model.
Visit the Mass Transit Page
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I think that moving towards dense cities is something that cannot be done overnight. A recent city plan calling for more development around CTrain stations is projecting timelines of thirty years for stations such as Brentwood to fully ramp up. I think it’s important to consider the effect of our actions today. If we continue to build sprawl neighborhoods for the next thirty years instead of starting to build upwards, we’re going to have a more difficult time turning things around as oil gets closer to running out.
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