New Plan for Calgary Offers the Best of Both Worlds

"'Right now, we are stuck in a freeway superstructure-based network of segregated land uses that keeps all the houses away from many shops and employment and really forces everybody to own and operate a vehicle,'" says former real estate developer Jim Dewald, now an expert in global management at the Haskayne School of Business.

It may seem a stretch, but you must aim for the stars if you want to hit the moon, says David Watson, a veteran city planning manager who is determined not to let this plan be shelved."

"Ald. Ric McIver, whose ward borders Anderson station, says the city should prepare more modest, five-year growth proposals instead of the radical change of 30-year plans.

'If you take a 4,000-person community and you say to them we're going to put 4,000 more people in, you scare people that their quality of life is going to be ruined, and I can't blame them,' he says.

Developers face no such neighbourhood resistance as they expand on the periphery."