We’ve seen our economic growth in the West spawn climate change, resource depletion, social unrest, terrorism and global poverty via our consumption over the last century. It’s now clear that if we are to survive the next 100 years, we need major course correction by 2020, as the East is following our fossil fuel footsteps.

With over half the world’s population now booming in urban areas, the solutions to our global problems will be found and forged locally through smarter land-use and mass transit. The free market cannot address our problems alone, as the answers lay beyond the bottom lines of businesses who profit from the plights they’ve provided us. Broader, bolder leadership from governments is needed worldwide to reduce footprints and conserve energy, which is to say, doing more with less.

It’s in this context that Edmonton’s proposed EXPO 2017 theme, Harmony of Energy and Our Future Planet, while well intentioned, seems vague and slightly off the mark.

By sharpening the focus on sharing solutions, we could issue a five-year challenge in 2012 to nearly five hundred cities with populations of more than one-million, inviting them to bring delegations of engineers, bureaucrats and politicians to showcase their greenest projects and proposals.

Edmonton would then become an energetic nexus of cutting edge urban planning in the summer of 2017, when we would again be a logical host for the ICLEI World Congress, as well as other events like the World Social Forum. It’s against this backdrop that broader discussions of renewable energy, scientific research, technological innovation, as well as progressive provincial and national policy-making should take place.

Interestingly, tourists won’t fly-in from abroad to attend, as figures of potential visitors for events like it are calculated based on a 10-hour drive radius around the host city. People from Vancouver, Winnipeg and Spokane aren’t included in the attendance estimate of 1.9 million unique visitors. Less than half from out of province – which is to say, Saskatchewan.

By sharpening the theme, we could increase the relevance of EXPO 2017 and get a practical edge against other bids. As entourages of architects, planners and decision makers from across the continent exchange examples, best practices and lessons learned, we can inspire the world to change. A more specific theme might influence this, such as Local Solutions for the Global Village, or even The Sustainable Urban Environment, to name two.

Dividing Edmonton in Two?

Although Edmonton is a leading recycler, we’ve got our work cut out for us. Despite being the first to build LRT in North America over thirty years ago, we’ve become Canada’s most car dependent city and one of the most thinly populated in the world.

Our majestic river valley can be forgiven for leaving large tracts of undeveloped land through our core, but shameful is our nascent reflex to build golf courses, big box stores, and cul-de-sacs into the limitless prairie. We know better but, for those who don’t mind the status quo, there are always disproportionate and annually growing taxes, since the wider we grow without increasing density, the more expensive it gets to provide services.

An equitable deal with our neighbours in the Capital Region will alleviate some of the burden, but St. Albert, Sherwood Park and Leduc are sprawling as well.

Plus, it turns out that our prime rural land is useful for things like nature, and food.

Got Ring Road?

Last year, councillors showed real moxie in voting to build up, by phasing the City Centre Airport out, starting later this year. Unfortunately, with the forthcoming Municipal Development Plan (MDP) it’s looking like sprawl-as-usual within the city limits as 75% of the growth is slated to go ahead in new suburban developments.

Whether or not our EXPO 2017 bid is successful, and whatever the theme, we need to change the way we grow in order to be taken seriously on the world stage. We need to start by putting a freeze on all pending developments outside the Anthony Henday ring-road, and guide developers by reviewing those already approved.

The reality is that we need to grow. With a shortage of affordable housing already, and a worsening homeless problem, putting a freeze on new sub-urban single family homes will not help the situation. If a moratorium on sprawl is the Yin, then having firms bid on building mixed-income transit-oriented-developments (TOD) within the ring road is the Yang. One cannot effectively exist without the other.

There are at least 40 potential TOD sites of various sizes throughout Edmonton, land that sits empty or underutilized. Re-developing fairways into walkable urban villages along half of our central golf courses would require some imagination, while compromising for space with rail companies, shopping malls, and car dealerships would be needed elsewhere.

Ignoring the small pockets of downtown parking, some of the largest potential sites are already in the works at The Quarters, Municipal Lands, and West Rossdale. Identifying and prioritizing all potential sites needs to be set in motion with tight design and efficiency standards, and in order to get it right, we need to look to places like Portland and Vancouver that are already doing it well. The only way we can achieve our City Vision for 2040 is if we take ownership of our land by applying smarter standards for density, design and livability on it.

Smart Growth (TOD) Zones

By 2017, the Capital Region is expected to swell to almost 1.3 million – reaching 1.7 million by 2040. We trend towards 2.75 million in 70 years, but unlike Vancouver, we don’t have the sea and mountains blocking horizontal growth. The only barriers preventing us from growing up into a world class city are imaginary boundaries like county lines, and the small town mentality which thinks we can’t attain greatness – or worse yet, that we don’t deserve it, (which is dangerously self-manifesting).

While it will take more than seven years, I think we should go for it and I can’t think of a better first milestone than EXPO 2017.

Next…”World Class (Part 2): Enhancing the Civic & Cultural Context of EXPO 2017.”