The video is up! Many thanks to @markiemoose.ca for directing, recording & editing 🙏🏼 If you're in Edmonton, join us October 18th. Bring your favourite old bike, wear your best tweed www.instagram.com/reel/DPZH8_C...
"A 2024 study of Edmonton showed a 25-per-cent drop in collisions between pedestrians and cars and a 31-per-cent drop in pedestrian injuries and fatalities after speed limits on residential streets were lowered to 40 kilometres an hour from 50 there in 2021." www.theglobeandmail.com/drive/cultur...
Though communities deeply feel the pain of derelict properties—through fires, crime, squatting, and disorder—for years, many cities assumed they had very little real power to confront these properties.
Free • STREETFIGHT • Guest: Janette Sadik-Khan Handbook for an Urban Revolution!
Stories of cities that are transforming themselves, by transforming their streets. Live webinar on Tues. Aug. 5, 2025 11:00am EST / 5:00pm CET Register & share now, before it sells out: bit.ly/3IiVNq3
The government isn’t perfect. But it’s still showing up. Still answering calls from people who won’t answer ballots. Still working late to fix problems they didn’t cause, for residents who don’t want to hear an explanation, only an apology.
accountability without contribution. They want perfection from systems they themselves have neglected.
And it’s not just wrong. It’s corrosive. It breaks down the social contract. It degrades public servants. It breeds mistrust where humility and partnership should live.
performance. That citizenship is responsibility, not just reaction. That the right to be heard comes not just from shouting loud enough, but from showing up when it matters.
Because the truth is, you can’t ghost the process and then rage at the result.
The deeper tragedy isn’t what governments get wrong. It’s how rarely the public acknowledges what they gave up the right to critique by never choosing to engage.
Somewhere along the way, we stopped teaching that democracy is participation, not 5/10
because no one defended it. That the animals kept coming because people keep abandoning them. No one wanted to hear that, because hearing it would mean accepting a deeper truth.
This isn’t just a government problem. It’s a civic one. And it lives in the silence of the uninvolved until
“How could this happen?” “What are we paying for?” “Why don’t you people ever listen?”
It didn’t matter that the issue was caused by the very apathy that preceded the anger. It didn’t matter that the budget was cut because the bond failed. That the staff position was eliminated
But when the problem finally reached them, when the trash wasn’t picked up on time, when the dog barked too long, when the shelter was full, when the streetlight flickered, they came in swinging. With rage. With accusations. With a certainty so unshakable, it no longer resembled anything close 2/10
They didn’t come to the meeting. They didn’t fill out the survey. They didn’t attend the open house or read the long, boring newsletter where we explained the change before it ever happened.
Planners call it “the popsicle test.” Can a child in your neighbourhood safely walk to a store, buy a popsicle and walk home before it melts? Zoning often prohibits small shops in residential areas. We’re proposing to change that. Tell us what u think! Info sessions June 18 & 19 tinyurl.com/4mpv7mhk
Winnipeg, MB - full Council attendance and a couple of dozen presenters in the Gallery for the imminent start of the zoning hearing to "end exclusionary zoning." *If approved* (?) this will mean 4 res units as-of-right on full lots with urban services, and 2-3 units on other classes of property.
In Edmonton with our new zoning the government has stopped standing on the necks of people adding gentle density to their properties. You can take any residential lot and make it multi family now. This removes a lot of the self-inflicted artificial scarcity price pressure.
With the ZBR we’ve done the heavy lifting on getting government and nimbys out of housing choices. We also have more and better access to industrial land.
But Edmonton needs more and better transit and more and better mobility options. And more industry.
