Think! A New Idea of Alberta welcomes guest blogger DJ Kelly, a Calgary based blogger and arts administrator. DJ joins the Think! blogger roster for a two-part series on the City of Calgary’s Plan It project.

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As a marketer I find myself often telling clients “if you want to be seen as something, then just be that something.” You don’t need to spend a large amount of money to tell people what they should think of your company if you’ve got a good product. On the other hand, if your product is terrible, it doesn’t matter how much money you throw at the problem – people won’t buy it.

This appears to be exactly the kind of problem the City of Calgary may be facing in Plan It.

For those who are unfamiliar, Plan It is perhaps the most important policy document the City of Calgary has created in many years. It consists of two documents, the Calgary Transportation Plan and the Municipal Development Plan, that set out the vision for how the city will grow over the next 60 years and 1.3 million residents.

Housing developers and their lobby organizations are coming out of the woodwork to denounce Plan It’s goal of increasing housing density and generally not allowing them to build the kinds of suburban developments they have gotten so good at producing for over half a century. And who can blame them?

Nobody likes to be forced to fundamentally change their business model when their current one is so profitable and highly sought after. Assuming Plan It is approved, its success or failure will be based on its ability to change the public attitude toward these kinds of developments. If the public winds up preferring to live in smaller homes or closer to their place of work, more walkable communities or near transit, the homebuilders that adapt to this change will be the ones that succeed the most.

I have no doubt public attitudes will shift in this direction eventually. This is not the hill Plan It could die on however – despite the development industry’s request that it does. The good news – or bad news as the case may be – is that the success of Plan It will fall directly on the shoulders of the City of Calgary and how the plan is implemented.

Calgary City Council has done a very good job over the years looking down the road and helping set a vision for the city’s future in motion. Plan after policy after plan have been enacted, but clearly the citizens of Calgary feel unaffected for the most part by these plans and policies: urban sprawl has continued, there are constant complaints about transit usefulness, and despite a great pathway system biking to work has not caught on in a big way.

Why?

The answer is simple: you can’t just say you are something, you have to be that something.
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Check back tomorrow for part two, where DJ explores the City of Calgary’s track record

MORE ABOUT DJ:
DJ Kelly is a Calgary based marketing and communications professional specializing in the arts industry and brand redevelopment. He has overseen the re-branding of Theatre Junction and Lunchbox Theatre after relocations and has worked with the University of Calgary Faculty of Fine Arts, GlobalFest and Alberta Theatre Projects. DJ is a blogger and an advocate for the arts and civic issues. He currently sits on the board of the Calgary Professional Arts Alliance where he is the chair of the communications committee; he also is the President of the Winston Heights/Mountview Community Association, and an active member of Civic Camp.