2/n Regional rail would be a huge first step in that direction. Land uses will follow.

Importantly, a rail connection from Airdrie to Calgary is vastly better than extending the (not-yet-existent) Green Line up there.

https://www.klumpentown.com/article/calgary-regional-rail-vision
3/n Unfortunately, the feedback portal is a complete mess. It's a stark example of how quickly you can make a visitor feel like just a checkbox, like their input is just a formality.

@CalgaryMetroReg needs to to better.
5/n Alas, the FAQ does not make things better. It takes SIX whole questions until they actually start talking about what they're doing.

Weirdly, FAQ 5 presents some modelling results and asks for feedback before the approach is outlined in FAQ 6+
6/n As far as I am able to parse, the proposed approach is the following:
- We want to plan specifically for "places", and to push for variety
- We want to plan for those places to have good transit
- We want to find common ground among municipalities.
7/n So here's the key philosophy of the proposal, halfway down a FAQ page. And instead of starting with *why* a diverse and human-scaled plan is good, they name-drop a consultant.

Isn't engagement about getting *your* feedback? Why would anyone reading this care about Calthorpe?
8/n I've got no problem with citing experts, but now the whole plan is hinged on what HDR|Calthorpe has to say. Why bother having feedback at all?

What follows does not fill me with confidence that they're actually interesting.
9/n Now we get to the meat of the proposal: "Place Type Allocation, Transit-Ready Corridors, and Joint Planning Areas".

Hopefully we can walk away understanding this jargon (see 3 tweets above for an explanation)
10/n Unfortunately, you're out of luck. Because for some reason low-res screenshots of PowerPoints and *very* useless charts are what pass for good materials.
11/n The photos of place types have such great potential. It's too bad they're crammed into a tiny side-graphic. No explanation of what a "Masterplan" place type is appears nearby. If you're not already confused, half of the images in "Masterplan" and "Subdivision" overlap.
12/n So what are you supposed to glean from this? Words like "Masterplan" and "Residential Subdivision" mean nothing to the average reader. If you want to find out more, you have to scroll down to FAQ 8 for your one-paragraph explanation.
13/n Now the chart: Here it is, zoomed in to 200% on my computer to get a decent look.

What are you supposed to get from this chart?
14/n Without a ruler, all you can really do is compare the fraction of Town/City Centre and Office/Commercial use among areas, as no values are provided for each color and bar. And why are there 6 place types in this graph, but only 3 in the image?
15/n Again, no explanation is given on what to glean from this chart. Calgary has more of it's land taken up by industrial than you might think. Okotoks is really behind compared with Cochrane on their Town Centre.

And what are the implications of these areas' size?
16/n Easy fixes would be to add values to the breakdowns and provide two charts, one with bars clustered by land use type (to compare land use across areas) and one clustered by area (to compare distributions across areas).

Graphics like this make me feel like an afterthought.
17/n Now some maps. Here's the most data-heavy visual in the whole FAQ, shrunk down and basically unreadable.
What do the red blobs even mean? Why all this empty space with no data? Why not label the municipalities, at least?
18/n I could go on, but you get the point.

Land use and transport planning is complex, but fascinating. You can choose to teach people about it and ask for their input, or you can put together a half-ass engagement process and leave people confused and annoyed.
19/n Governments and consultants should know better by now than to paste screenshots of PowerPoint text into websites. Graphs and maps with no context or explanation are useless - why even bother?

Instead it just suppresses valuable and useful feedback.
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