Environment committee  I'll start even though I'm not at one end or the other. No, this is an important topic. This has been a significant piece of my professional career. People need to live in great places. This is about making cities great places to live.

Environment committee  Yes, and actually Michael's very right. In downtown situations we, too, are experimenting with Silva Cells, but as he mentioned they are a very expensive technology and are only appropriate in the places where you have that kind of money. What we've been doing is under the resid

Environment committee  At the municipal level, when we deal with federal funding, it's often a tri-party agreement. The infrastructure Canada program, the national infrastructure program from 15 years ago, was leveraged dollars, which is always of interest to a municipality no matter how big or small i

Environment committee  We have done some very interesting projects, because leveraged money goes a long way. If the federal government believes that urban conservation and green infrastructure truly are essential to a city, then it should expand the definitions. You don't even necessarily have to put a

Environment committee  I have one comment on the prairie city, which loves trees but has a hard time growing them. We have just enacted—it's not quite through council yet, but it has passed through committee—the amount of soil volume that has to be at the bottom of a tree in streets. It's extremely im

Environment committee  It would be to look at parts of Canada. You have to look at it regionally. You have to look at soil profiles, but make sure that the tree can live its whole life.

Environment committee  I’ll add that I dabble a little in the municipal politics level because of my interface with the aldermen, and frankly, political direction is huge. The ability to understand that, even if you are very interested in transit, transit is about livability. People walk to transit. Yo

Environment committee  Yes, partially. We do a significant amount of research. It tends to be more qualitative in talking to Calgarians. We've been doing some research on customer segmentation. We work with Tourism Calgary. Some of our larger sites....many of you may have been to the Calgary Stamped

Environment committee  We have a standard in our development process that puts a 450-metre corridor around where you live to the nearest park. With the exception of maybe two or three communities that are older and were built in a different planning structure, we have been able to attain that. We also

Environment committee  Good afternoon. I am Anne Charlton. I am the director of parks for the City of Calgary. With me today is Chris Manderson, who is the portfolio lead of natural areas and biodiversity within our business unit. We're delighted to be here this afternoon. We hope what we have to say