Tag: tuscany

a good day for soccer

it was dry, cloudy enough to keep the UV down, and breezy. great soccer weather… I’m coaching, so can’t take pictures during the practice/game this year (probably not ideal to be lugging a 300mm lens on a DSLR while running the field with a bunch of 5- and 6-year-olds…). I have to settle for scenery shots after the game 🙂

The Blog @ Calgary on Suburban Sprawl

Ted posted a great piece on suburban sprawl in Calgary, with references to the Sierra Club’s research. I agree that Calgarians are afflicted with the “Don’t fence me in” syndrome. A city with the geographical area of Orange County, but a population of only 1 million people. Calgary has approximately 10% the population density of New York City. About 20% the density of San Francisco. About a quarter the density of Vancouver. (comparison of various population densities)

Calgary has approximately the same population density as Boise, Idaho. That just doesn’t scale. Nobody wants to turn Calgary into New York City – that density would drive most Canadians insane – but approaching Vancouver’s density wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, if done properly.

As a SUV-driving suburban dweller, I’m as much a part of the problem as anyone. My footprint is much smaller than many others, though (my SUV is really just a big station wagon, built on the Camry chassis rather than a Big Heavy Truck frame, and my suburban home is a decidedly modest one, with 1,400 square feet and a lot that is only ~36 feet wide).

But, the design of my suburban community could be much better. The commercial services are all aggregated in the exact centre of the community, meaning those living toward the edges are much more likely to drive to the corner store (it’s a 15 minute walk from my house – one we don’t take often enough).

One thing in our favour is the public transportation system. Although it’s far from perfect, I do get almost door-to-door service between my house and the University via bus. And the LRT is coming closer, meaning the schlubs that have to commute downtown will have an easier time leaving their H2s at home.

Update: The comparison between Calgary and Orange County was unbelievably inaccurate. Calgary is much smaller than Orange County, and actually has a higher population density, according to Wikipedia.

Ted posted a great piece on suburban sprawl in Calgary, with references to the Sierra Club’s research. I agree that Calgarians are afflicted with the “Don’t fence me in” syndrome. A city with the geographical area of Orange County, but a population of only 1 million people. Calgary has approximately 10% the population density of New York City. About 20% the density of San Francisco. About a quarter the density of Vancouver. (comparison of various population densities)

Calgary has approximately the same population density as Boise, Idaho. That just doesn’t scale. Nobody wants to turn Calgary into New York City – that density would drive most Canadians insane – but approaching Vancouver’s density wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, if done properly.

As a SUV-driving suburban dweller, I’m as much a part of the problem as anyone. My footprint is much smaller than many others, though (my SUV is really just a big station wagon, built on the Camry chassis rather than a Big Heavy Truck frame, and my suburban home is a decidedly modest one, with 1,400 square feet and a lot that is only ~36 feet wide).

But, the design of my suburban community could be much better. The commercial services are all aggregated in the exact centre of the community, meaning those living toward the edges are much more likely to drive to the corner store (it’s a 15 minute walk from my house – one we don’t take often enough).

One thing in our favour is the public transportation system. Although it’s far from perfect, I do get almost door-to-door service between my house and the University via bus. And the LRT is coming closer, meaning the schlubs that have to commute downtown will have an easier time leaving their H2s at home.

Update: The comparison between Calgary and Orange County was unbelievably inaccurate. Calgary is much smaller than Orange County, and actually has a higher population density, according to Wikipedia.

Tuscany Residents Association 2005 AGM

Just got back from the AGM at the Tuscany Club. One of the less eventful AGMs we’ve had (which is a Good Thing™), especially with Carma nearly done with planning the rest of their development.

  • New member of the board of directors
    Kelly Taylor also represents the Tuscany Community Association, so there will be some nice connections there. All of the board members should be more active in the TCA as well…
    The existing 7 board members were re-elected, with Kelly added as a new one.
  • We’re going to have a really hard time meeting quorum in the next year or two. Carma still holds over 500 votes, so we were able to make the ~500 required voting member quorum this time. But, as Carma sells off their lots, the number of votes they hold drops. In the next year or two, that will drop us below the automatically-meeting-quorum waterline. We had 30 proxies mailed in from members, and maybe a dozen (perhaps as high as 20? I don’t have the roll call handy) voting members turned up at the meeting. Which means, after Carma is done, we would have had 50 votes tops, leaving us 450 short. We’ll have to do some thinking about this. There are ways to handle missed quorum, but it just becomes a pain (scheduling two meetings, one week apart, and holding the “real” meeting on the later one because nobody showed up to the first one…)
  • “official” meeting ended in record time – 14:59 after the meeting opened. Bob thankfully rushed through the official legal business. Wah wah wawawah wah blah blah 🙂
  • Unofficial meeting/discussion begins
  • Home Depot to build a store on the northwest corner of the Tuscany Hill Drive and Nose Hill Drive intersection
    It’s going to be modelled after the 16th Ave. store, perhaps with some influence from the West Vancouver store
  • TRA to take over management of the Tuscany-Connect website in 2006. Karen’s already in training to handle the day-to-day management of the site. I’ve got some really mixed feelings on this one. We need to be taking responsibility for our services, so it makes sense to take over from Carma on this. But, we had no say in which solution was deployed for Tuscany-Connect (we approved the Carma-recommended BuildACommunity software), and no say in the technologies used on the back end. Now, we’re saddled with something that I was just told is powered by MS Access on the back end. MS Access? WTF? Netcraft reports that it’s currently served via Verio Inc., so maybe it’s just a matter of us paying the invoices for hosting rather than Carma…
    Update: Just checked the specs for BuildACommunity, and it looks like it’s all Perl and MySQL, running on Linux and Apache. Might not be too bad after all – wonder why Karen is taking Access training though. Still, I get the feeling we could have rolled something in Drupal for next to nothing, and be able to extend the system ourselves…
  • We need to run another survey of the TRA members to see what they want/need from their association, and what kinds of programming they want to see run at the Tuscany Club. The last one we ran was through Tuscany-Connect – an online service – and it generated a small forest’s worth of dead trees for reports. Perhaps we should use a simpler online survey tool this time…

Just got back from the AGM at the Tuscany Club. One of the less eventful AGMs we’ve had (which is a Good Thing™), especially with Carma nearly done with planning the rest of their development.

  • New member of the board of directors
    Kelly Taylor also represents the Tuscany Community Association, so there will be some nice connections there. All of the board members should be more active in the TCA as well…
    The existing 7 board members were re-elected, with Kelly added as a new one.
  • We’re going to have a really hard time meeting quorum in the next year or two. Carma still holds over 500 votes, so we were able to make the ~500 required voting member quorum this time. But, as Carma sells off their lots, the number of votes they hold drops. In the next year or two, that will drop us below the automatically-meeting-quorum waterline. We had 30 proxies mailed in from members, and maybe a dozen (perhaps as high as 20? I don’t have the roll call handy) voting members turned up at the meeting. Which means, after Carma is done, we would have had 50 votes tops, leaving us 450 short. We’ll have to do some thinking about this. There are ways to handle missed quorum, but it just becomes a pain (scheduling two meetings, one week apart, and holding the “real” meeting on the later one because nobody showed up to the first one…)
  • “official” meeting ended in record time – 14:59 after the meeting opened. Bob thankfully rushed through the official legal business. Wah wah wawawah wah blah blah 🙂
  • Unofficial meeting/discussion begins
  • Home Depot to build a store on the northwest corner of the Tuscany Hill Drive and Nose Hill Drive intersection
    It’s going to be modelled after the 16th Ave. store, perhaps with some influence from the West Vancouver store
  • TRA to take over management of the Tuscany-Connect website in 2006. Karen’s already in training to handle the day-to-day management of the site. I’ve got some really mixed feelings on this one. We need to be taking responsibility for our services, so it makes sense to take over from Carma on this. But, we had no say in which solution was deployed for Tuscany-Connect (we approved the Carma-recommended BuildACommunity software), and no say in the technologies used on the back end. Now, we’re saddled with something that I was just told is powered by MS Access on the back end. MS Access? WTF? Netcraft reports that it’s currently served via Verio Inc., so maybe it’s just a matter of us paying the invoices for hosting rather than Carma…
    Update: Just checked the specs for BuildACommunity, and it looks like it’s all Perl and MySQL, running on Linux and Apache. Might not be too bad after all – wonder why Karen is taking Access training though. Still, I get the feeling we could have rolled something in Drupal for next to nothing, and be able to extend the system ourselves…
  • We need to run another survey of the TRA members to see what they want/need from their association, and what kinds of programming they want to see run at the Tuscany Club. The last one we ran was through Tuscany-Connect – an online service – and it generated a small forest’s worth of dead trees for reports. Perhaps we should use a simpler online survey tool this time…

Tuscany Schools – Herald Photographer

So, we desparately need schools in Tuscany. Multiple schools, not just one. We figure 4 elementary schools could be filled. Easily.

The only problem is that there isn’t any provincial cash to build them. We currently bus about 1000 kids out of the community, which costs a fortune in time and money, but
there’s no capital budget to slap some bricks together.

We’ve been trying to raise awareness of the issue, and have been able to get a lot of community interest and support. The Community Association is pushing hard to get schools
built, and the Resident’s Association is providing whatever support it can.

The press is even starting to get interested. The Herald sent a photographer out to gather some pics for a story on the
issue. Not sure when it’s going to run, but we got a lot of parents and kids out on a cold (COLD) day, waiting for half an hour while the photographer was lost on his way…

Here’s hoping we’re able to shake something loose…

So, we desparately need schools in Tuscany. Multiple schools, not just one. We figure 4 elementary schools could be filled. Easily.

The only problem is that there isn’t any provincial cash to build them. We currently bus about 1000 kids out of the community, which costs a fortune in time and money, but
there’s no capital budget to slap some bricks together.

We’ve been trying to raise awareness of the issue, and have been able to get a lot of community interest and support. The Community Association is pushing hard to get schools
built, and the Resident’s Association is providing whatever support it can.

The press is even starting to get interested. The Herald sent a photographer out to gather some pics for a story on the
issue. Not sure when it’s going to run, but we got a lot of parents and kids out on a cold (COLD) day, waiting for half an hour while the photographer was lost on his way…

Here’s hoping we’re able to shake something loose…

Tuscany Club Groundbreaking Ceremony

Well, no stopping it now…

We had the official groundbreaking ceremony today. Ceremonial shovels and hardhats, to boot! Even got/had to keep the shovel… Might wind up on eBay. or not.

It’s going to be cool watching this thing be built, and knowing that I had a part in it happening. Sure, if it wasn’t me, someone else would have done it, but in the end it was just Leo and me on the loan agreement…

Oh, and the catering was great! Note to self: Savoir Faire rocks at catering.

Well, no stopping it now…

We had the official groundbreaking ceremony today. Ceremonial shovels and hardhats, to boot! Even got/had to keep the shovel… Might wind up on eBay. or not.

It’s going to be cool watching this thing be built, and knowing that I had a part in it happening. Sure, if it wasn’t me, someone else would have done it, but in the end it was just Leo and me on the loan agreement…

Oh, and the catering was great! Note to self: Savoir Faire rocks at catering.