What is the Southeast Planning Area?

This area represents the greatest corridor of growth in the city of Calgary.  As it stands today, the land is used for agricultural purposes.  The study area is approximately 6 000 acres and is expected to become home to over 80 000 people by the year 2023.  Just to illustrate the magnitude of this development, if it were to develop as a town of it's own, it would be the 3rd largest municipality in Alberta.

The City of Calgary's Planning Department has been recently developing an Employment Centre Strategy to help manage the large growth that Calgary has been experiencing and likely will experience in the future.  They are working with the land owners and developers in the area and are trying to come up with plans, policies, and designs that respond to this Strategy.

What is this Design Charrette all about?
 
 

The Planning Department approached the planning faculty at Environmental Design to assist them in developing new ideas and concepts for this area.  Professors Sasha Tsenkova and Ken Johnson put together a project for the first year planning class to (a) conduct background research on employment; public facilities; housing; and policies and (b) create two design concepts that acknowledge the Employment Centres Strategy and the background research conducted.  The resulting charrette was a 1 day, 11 hour event where the class divided into two teams and arrived at their respective design concepts.

The Process

Starting out in the morning, the groups were to establish their principles that would direct them throughout the day.  Areas of consideration included: - social environment - natural environment - economic factors - built form Once these were established for each group, the most important items were chosen and agreed upon as the guiding values for each group over the remainder of the day.

With the conceptual framework in place, the groups then set out to create a general spatial layout of the elements of the new community.  Residential, office, light industrial, retail, public facilities, and green space were the major land uses that were considered.  The layout of these uses was put against the factors of transportation (the major highways of Deerfoot Trail and Highway 22x are the west and north boundaries of the area), natural boundaries (such as the Bow River), and compatible neighbouring uses.

After this stage, the group received comments from a panel that included planning and architecture faculty members from Environmental Design, development consultants, and practicing planners.  As the ideas presented were still very conceptual, the reviewers provided some insights on how to take these concepts and create more tangible, detailed plans.

After a short lunch break, the groups were back at work.  The teams began to divide the work into different subject areas (transportation, land estimates, land use mapping, etc.).  The goal for the afternoon session was to create a better defined idea of where we would put various land uses and a logical reasoning into why we would take such measures.  During this session, group members further discussed ideas and used feeback from the panel.  Another key component of this session was the background research that the students conducted the in the previous weeks.  One of the components of this assignment was to arrive at various land estimate scenarios for a particular land use.  This greatly helped the students in establishing the appropriate scales for such a massive planning area.

The final hour was frantic in both the charrette room and the planning studio.  A strict 5pm deadline was set by Professors Tsenkova and Johnson and all presentation materials were to be completed by that time.  Each design consideration was to have a sound explanation and each land use was to have a total acreage that it would require in each team's proposal. The deadline arrived and so did the final review panel.  Again, there were Environmental Design faculty members, private sector consultants, and two planners with the City of Calgary: Monica Pohlman and Kevin Frose - the two key figures in the development of this area and the Employment Centres Strategy.  Both groups presented their concepts and tried to show why their ideas made sense.  The review panel were extremely positive about both concepts and felt that given more time, the students would be able to create very detailed and comprehensive plans and policies for the new area.

Was the charrette a success? According to everyone involved, it was.  The students felt they gained a valuable experience by working through a one-day pressure cooker.  The faculty gave a great deal of positive feedback.  Included in this feedback was the fact that our group really helped to open the City planner's eyes to a number of posibilities, including location of land uses and increasing employment projections for the area.