I’m a professional communicator and writer, a reasonably informed citizen, and active in my community and local politics.

So…why can’t I understand the nuts and bolts of the conversation Calgary’s having about proposed citywide rezoning?

I recently joined my community association’s volunteer Planning and Development Committee, but I didn’t expect that “won’t understand what we’re talking about” would be on my bingo card. Even though my new role follows on the heels of Calgary media’s blanket coverage of the City’s blanket rezoning proposal, I struggle to make sense of the development industry’s impenetrable lexicon. Density, indeed.

The housing crisis has forced us all to talk openly and widely about how, why and where we build housing. To do that, we need to change the hermetic jargon that, er, obfuscates every area of this important subject. Let’s punt the industry’s legacy lexicon because just like exclusionary zoning keeps certain people out of certain communities, exclusionary language keeps almost everyone out of the conversation.

“Residential – Grade-Oriented Infill District,” “Contextual Single Detached Dwelling,” “Development Permit Set” and even the no-help abbreviations like R-CG, R-G, H-GO. I have no more eyes to roll.

This lingo is a barrier to a normal person’s ability to understand and participate in a subject that has a massive impact on our city’s vibrancy, sustainability, lives and livelihoods.

Language complexity keeps people out of the conversation

The conspiracy theorist in me suspects this language was created precisely to keep the public out of the playground that has been reserved for planning bureaucrats and the influential cadre of well-heeled developers and architects who have long set the terms of Calgary’s growth (and that growth has been outward, in all directions). It’s one that’s helped fund the election campaigns of city councillors who trusted the wisdom of this private sector’s players.

The catatonia-inducing complexity of this language obscures the work (both good and bad) of those who slink around the Byzantine layers of development-related acts, plans and bylaws that begin up high with the province’s Municipal Government Act and spiral down to the rules around things like community gardens, “massing” and “floor area ratios.”

The Federation of Calgary Communities has produced an ambitious piece of communications collateral (“The Community Guide to the Planning Process“) that’s a heroic attempt to use bright colours, illustrations and approachable text to put some life into the deadening bureaucratese of the planning world.

In its 55 pages, you can dive through the development layers of lexicon hell that make Dante’s 9 circles feel as light as a bowl of blancmange. FCC also does workshops on urban planning for citizens who want to learn about this stuff. Sign up for some, because now that the development genie is out of the bottle forever, we all need to figure out how to talk intelligently about it.

Isn’t there a decade-old plain-language policy?

From Calgary’s online Development Map to the communications my committee gets from the good people in the City’s Planning Services team, everything is so…murky. The City has its own communicators who are my professional peers, so I’ll bet they long for permission to activate the City’s Plain Language Policy passed by council in 2013. We should let them.

At the public hearing scheduled for April 22, administration will present its citywide rezoning recommendations to council and Calgarians. As a resident who cannot afford any of the million-dollars-or-more infills being built in my community, I hope the recommendations will be approved. As a communications practitioner, I hope that council’s feedback will include a directive to administration to purge the vernacular that cloaks this industry.

We need clear terminology from top to bottom on all communications and platforms, from on-site property zoning notices to the online Development Map, web pages to emails and perhaps most importantly, the language spoken on the floor of council and in the offices of the city’s administration.

This housing crisis has started a conversation about Calgarians’ right to diversify and strengthen our communities by building more options and (hopefully) more affordability. It’s given many of us our first voice about an important industry few understood. I would wager that even the anger and nimbyism that some people are experiencing is partly due to language that creates confusion and fear.

The crisis has thrust development from being an almost clandestine pursuit that is by, for, and about powerful developers, to being one that is about community, democracy, affordability, sustainability and accessibility.

As the City’s own Plain Language Policy promises to “…make sure citizens have the information they need to be involved in decision-making that impacts their lives” and developers boast that their communities are a great place to raise kids, then our language should be – like the readability score of any effective web page – understandable by a child in Grade 5.

Or, at least by a middle-aged professional communicator.

• Blair Cosgrove is a politically omnivorous inner-city Calgarian, sporadic activist, cycling advocate and a professional communications consultant.