A Calgary university student says the city needs to improve their public engagement strategies with youth and young adults to get them more involved in urban planning.
The city is hosting two engagement sessions as part of its “Building Calgary’s Future Together” event, which aims to teach young adults and youth about local area plans (LAPs). LAPs are policy documents that provide guidance and best practices on how to integrate new development into existing urban communities.
The first session, scheduled for Aug. 13, is for youth aged 12 to 17. The second session, scheduled for Aug. 20, is for young adults aged 18 to 30.
City staff said the event is an opportunity for young people to chat with city planners and provide ideas to help shape future growth and change in Calgary.
“Local area plans create a vision for the next 30 years, so it is important to gather ideas and perspectives from different age groups, particularly youth and young adults that may be impacted by decisions made now and into the future,” said Calvin Chan, a senior planner with the city’s local area planning program.
Chan added that the city wanted to target younger kids because they are often missing from conversations about local area planning. The city first started with kids aged five to 12 years old, and administration wanted to expand that age group.
“We focus on three points: strengths, weaknesses and opportunities for engaging with youth. What changes can we make to better reach and engage with youth? These are the questions we ask participants,” he told LWC.
Meet young people where they are at, student says
One Calgary student says the city needs to ramp up efforts to encourage youth to be more informed about their communities.
Julia Law, a 19-year-old University of Calgary student, said a lot of public hearings are held during times when most students are either in class, working or studying.
“I’m aware that the city tries to do a lot of community engagement, but the times usually aren’t very accessible to the general public,” she told LWC.
Law said she tries her best to submit her thoughts on certain projects online if she cannot attend an in-person public hearing or engagement session.
However, she said she often has to dig through the city’s website to find the needed information. Posters and signs advertising public hearings and engagement sessions are also not placed in highly visible areas.
“You have to do so much digging into different databases for certain information. It feels like they’re almost trying to hide what they’re doing,” Law said.
“Lately, I’ve noticed with [information] about the Green Line, there seems to be a lot more engagement and posts on social media, which would be the primary way I get a lot of my information and the primary way a lot of people my age get information.”
Law said the city needs to hold public engagement sessions on school campuses to make them accessible to youth.
She said she wants to be able to voice her opinion on urban sprawl and affordable housing, but city staff and councillors don’t often visit the University of Calgary campus where she spends most of her time.
“They don’t really come to campus. If they are able to present more on campus about community developments, local area plans and stuff like that, then you can get more students to attend planning sessions rather than go down to a community association that is far away,” Law said.
“The older generation will always say things like, ‘We need to protect the planet for our younger generations because they’re going to be the next ones…’ But then when it comes to things like that, they choose to absorb voices.
“I think they need to start realizing that the environment is going to be a major part of our future, but so is the urban environment. We deserve a say in what’s going to happen because it’s going to be the future and the way that generations even after us start to live.”
Chan said the city is trying to target university students in their engagement programs and staff are planning to do more with upcoming LAPs.
“Calgary’s youth and young adults represent a significant portion of the city’s population, but their voices are often missing in our planning processes, so our goal is to get them involved and participate and hopefully contribute. They can gain valuable skills and empowerment and become invested in their communities,” he said.
“If [university students] haven’t seen us yet, they will definitely see us more often. We just started the targeted university engagement in one of our current projects, and we are expanding that for other projects.”
