In Calgary Downtown Association (CDA) Executive Director Mark Garner’s Edison building office, there’s a map that’s been broken into a handful of downtown zones.
They’re sifting through several different datasets in these areas to compile zone-specific profiles. They’re looking at 311 state of repair calls, Calgary police call data, Plus-15 data, their foot traffic data and more.
They’re hoping to layer the data to get a clearer picture of where challenges exist in downtown Calgary and what resources might be needed to tackle them.
The map highlights buildings, parks, hotels – all areas where Calgarian may be inclined to visit or congregate. Breaking it down into zones allows them to gauge the fluctuations in social disorder and other “elevated behaviour” in very specific areas. They aren’t treating the downtown or Beltline as one homogenous locale.
“We take the data that would have been a dataset this big now it gets a little finer,” Garner said, outlining the
“Then we’ll be able to put our resources into talking about the economic impacts based on geographic locations.”
Garner, who took on the executive director role last May, came into it understanding the challenges Calgary faced. Vacancy rates were at all-time highs, people were working from home leaving the downtown desolate – and with that dealing with a spike in social disorder.
Many officials have said the social disorder is driven by mental health, addictions and homelessness among vulnerable Calgarians.
