NEW: Join our Discord!

We are Strong Towns Calgary, and we believe in a bottom-up approach to urbanism, promoting human dignity in our communities though achievable, citizen-led action.We serve as a pluralistic platform for civic communication, empowering advocacy and innovation toward stronger communities, challenging the problems and structures undermining them.We imagine Calgary as a compassionate, vibrant, interconnected urban landscape where every community flourishes—grounded in sustainable practices, fiscal responsibility, and a spirit of inclusive stewardship.Come join the conversation!

Back

Upcoming

Thursday Throwdown

First Thursday of Each Month
June 6, 2024 @ 6 p.m.

Back

Our Principles

People-First Wealth Creation

People create wealth—transportation systems, infrastructure, growth, and job creation are merely augments or symptoms of wealth, not sustainable replacements. Calgary's job is to nurture talent by providing and enabling enriching services and productive places that serve to create a strong, interdependent, and independent citizenry.

Doing the Math

Calgary should only support initiatives that provide a measurable long-term return on investment to the community. Strength means flexibility, resilience into an unpredictable future. Cities are playing infinite games, we can't just put ourselves up for sale in a downturn—what we build today must sustain prosperity for generations to come.

Bottom-Up Governance

Local government is misunderstood as the lowest level of government in a hierarchy, it’s actually where your voice is loudest! Enabling citizen particiaption and engagement in local governance should be the top priority of a healthy democracy. We believe strong citizens make strong communities, and a strong Calgary—in that direction.

Meeting People Where They Are

We believe in an inclusive, dialectical approach to conflict resolution. Disagreement doesn't imply right or wrong, only a lack of understanding. Cities are necessarily filled with folks of all kinds, so success means listening attentively, and taking holistic action to address complex problems.

Acting Incrementally, Today

Good and great are not enemies, a small step today easily becomes a few more tomorrow, but the wait for perfection is unending. Legalizing small projects lowers the barrier of entry to wealth creation, allowing everyday folks to become active participants in their communities. A resilient, feedback-seeking city ensures that no community suffers radical, sudden change, but no community is exempt from change.

Being for Something

It's easy to find reasons to complain (and admittedly we do), but what's more difficult is to synthesize and advocate toward a constructive solution. When we focus on what we don't want, we fail to define what we do—and if what we want is unclear, we can never achieve it. Strong Towns Calgary is for the right to incremental progress, transparent municipal accounting, and the proliferation of productive, integrated places.

Honouring our Land and Heritage

The confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers, known to the Blackfoot people as Mohkinstsis (translating to Elbow), has long served as a sacred gathering place for sharing stories, resources, and collaborating towards a stronger community. Land is the base resource upon which all prosperity is built and sustained atop—as Calgary radiates across the foothills and prairies from this point, it must ultimately honour the tradition of sustainability, resilience, and cooperation that has always governed it.

Embracing Incompleteness

Strong Towns Calgary will always be a work in progress where all members are welcomed and encouraged to share their ideas and skills. There is no final state in mind; together, we can always achieve stronger.

Back

Join the Conversation

If you have any immediate questions or would like to reach out to us directly, please fill out the below contact box and one of our team of volunteers will be happy to get back to you within 3 business days.

Home

Back

Rezoning for Housing

Make your voice heard on April 22nd!

The City of Calgary has proposed an end to exclusionary zoning citywide, meaning that properties that would previously only allow for only one, or two units on a lot would have the freedom to develop secondary suites, basement suites, duplexes, rowhousing, cottage courts, or just remain the same!At Strong Towns Calgary, we support this and any other zoning reform initiative that seeks to enable incremental development. Allowing greater flexibility with our land ensures that communities can adapt to their needs, and the City can more easily finance services and infrastructure.

Take Action Today!

Our friends at More Neighbours Calgary have released a blog post detailing how to sign up to speak at the Public Hearing on April 22nd. The hearing will likely span several days, and you can always phone-in remotely, or write a letter!It is incredibly important that you voice your support on this issue. Municipal politics is where your voice has the greatest impact in creating the change we want to see. Keep scrolling to learn the facts about R-CG, and why we believe it's so important.Need confidence? — Sign up for event and workshop notifications!

Rezoning for affordability!

It's not a silver bullet, but we can't afford to ignore it.

Prices of newly-built homes in Calgary. The average rowhouse is on par with the land value it replaces at about 580 thousand dollars, whereas a newly-built single-detached home inflates the value from 700 thousand to 1.6 million.

Four is the magic number of units for newly-built infill housing to sell at the same price as what it replaced. Anything less drastically inflates the cost of housing, or renders redevelopment in a community completely infeasible. Allowing this level of density by-right in our neighbourhoods is the bare minimum we can do to ensure our communities are not locked into a cycle of decline, or a cycle of gentrification.While it's not affordable for lower-class Calgarians, this lower price tag is easier to create non-market options with. Also, as explored by a paper published by the Calgary Drop-In Centre, easing housing competition for even upper-class Calgarians has rippling effects on affordability as cheaper housing becomes more available.

Rezoning for flexibility!

Low-scale incrementalism is appropriate everywhere, and it's only the beginning.

One of our friends Alex Williams said "We can handle the growth, but we cannot handle the decline" — Calgary is changing. Not only are communities unable to adapt for their peoples' individual needs; many communities are no longer able to support schools, reliable public transit, local businesses, or infrastructure upgrading.The C in R-CG stands for contextual. Height limits on new development encourage maximum density in redeveloping communities, and smaller, incremental changes elsewhere. This is a long-term change designed to allow communities to adapt to their own needs over time. Creating opportunities for seniors to downsize and live near family, for student rentals near post-secondary, for multi-generational redevelopment.Humans are complex, we can't plan for our communities' needs, so we need to give them the tools to enact change on their own terms.Join the conversation! Make your voice heard!