Calgary and its NIMBYs

National Post
Feb. 29, 2016
By Jen Gerson

Study municipal squabbles for long enough, and trends begin to emerge. Bike lines, Chinese signs, apartment blocks - these sorts of proposals can inspire paroxysms of rage that tell you a lot about the culture of a place and its pathologies. Calgary, for example, my hometown, has developed a suspicion of medium-density housing, road projects and public transit.

Even by that standard, the rapid transit project proposed for a busy southwest city corridor has to be one of the most benign plans to ever inspire a death threat. According to Mayor Naheed Nenshi, city staff were pushed, shoved and sworn at during a recent public meeting to discuss the Southwest Bus Rapid Transit Plan. A city councillor even admitted he felt unsafe at the event.

Inventing death threats and assaults would be a pretty elaborate way to avoid town-hall meetings.

It’s “inappropriate, it’s wrong, it’s unCalgarian,” Nenshi said, justifying the city’s decision to shut down future public events and rely instead on online consultation.

“It’s a classic smokescreen,” Rick Donkers, a spokesman for the group opposed to the plan (and a former colleague of mine), told the CBC. “This is a diversionary tactic: ‘We won’t talk about the weaknesses of this plan. Instead, we’ll talk about the bad people.’ And yes, because we’ve been vocal, Ready to Engage has been the centre of their attack.”

If this is, indeed, a smokescreen, it is the first time I’ve ever heard of the city attempting anything like it. This is hardly a uniquely contentious proposal, and inventing death threats and assaults would be a pretty elaborate way to avoid town-hall meetings.

In fact, the details of the actual transit route seem, frankly, unambitious. The most controversial point seems to involve widening a major roadway and installing two bus-only lines, with no reduction in the existing road for traffic. Residents in most cities would be utterly baffled by this level of opposition. It’s not even a light rail line, God forbid. Just a bus route.

But then, to focus on the details would be to ignore the fundamental nature of Calgary’s unique flavour of NIMBYism. All cities have their own variety, and Calgary is terrified of other kinds of people - and poor people, in particular.

This is a segregated city in which social classes divvy themselves up by quadrant, albeit imperfectly. A depressing amount of information can be gleaned about a Calgarian by whether she puts a SW or an NE in her address.

Sometimes, this contract is explicit. In 2013, Urban Development Institute, an advocacy group for developers, posted an article expressing skepticism with the city’s new, radical, higher-density approach to city building by pointing out that homosexuals, visible minorities and people with tattoos just might not feel comfortable in a world of “heterosexual suburbanites.” “Research suggests residency location choice is strongly linked to how comfortable a person feels in a place where no one is like them,” it said.

The institute later apologized for the piece, but the attitude is pervasive: proper people live in detached suburban homes and drive to work. Everyone else is unfortunate or suspect.

Ready to Engage’s own website makes ready use of this code. In between concerns about increased noise, construction over utility lines and poor air quality resulting from increased bus use, it states: “LRT-style bus platforms replacing our green spaces...will attract the same illicit activities that frequently occur in our city’s LRT stations.”

Indeed, the CBC managed to capture a telling clip from a protester at the aforementioned public meeting. “If you’re driving a Mercedes Benz and you can afford a Mercedes Benz, you’re not going to take public transit to goddamn downtown Calgary or Mount Royal College,” he said.

A city staffer responded: “We’re not building bus lanes for people who are driving Jaguars and Mercedes. We’re building bus lanes who folks who can’t afford it.”

The protester responded: “Take a look at the people who live west of 14th street. Take a good hard look at them and then tell me those people are going to take public transit? My great aunt’s a-.”

It’s worth noting, here, that the rapid transit service does, indeed, seek to serve Mount Royal University, a school with a population of 35,000 - 23,000 of which are continuing education students. It will also connect a major hospital. In other words, many of its riders will be students and health-care workers.

But never mind. The people of west of 14th Street prefer to be seen as wealthy. And wealthy people don’t ride the bus.

There are, of course, some legitimate concerns about the city’s rapid transit plan. Donkers has raised valid concerns about its cost for value - $40 million is an awful lot and the city doesn’t seem to be particularly forthcoming about its ridership projections. He also has questions about construction times and bottlenecks.