City looking at ways to keep Calgarians engaged

When Dave McCarrel moved to the northwest community of Valley Ridge, he became involved in the local community association to meet people.

That was 20 years ago, and McCarrel has been active ever since.

He helped lead efforts in 2008 to build an outdoor ice rink now recognized as one of the best in the city, and also a recent project to construct an outdoor fitness park equipped with a variety of exercise stations that opened in September.

Fifth annual Doors Open Calgary event returns Sept. 24

Being a tourist in your own town: That's how Alyssa Berry describes Doors Open Calgary.

"You get to re-discover, or newly learn, parts of the city you may pass by but don't know anything about," said the president of this year's citywide event, taking place Saturday Sept. 24.

University District touted as 'once-in-a-lifetime opportunity'

It is the urban employment hub of northwest Calgary. And now, with a projected influx of 6,000 new residences over the next 15 years, the new University District community is slated to become the quadrant's residential core.

The first two housing developments just launched in the District — Ivy by Brookfield Residential and Noble by Truman Homes — will be uniquely positioned in the 81-hectare project between two hospitals (Foothills Medical Centre and Alberta Children's Hospital) and the University of Calgary, for potential buyers.

Calgary's aging sandwich communities seek their place in shifting housing landscape

What's old is new again. It's an apt description of homebuyers' newfound interest in Calgary's sandwich communities – those not-quite-inner-city neighbourhoods that long outgrown their suburban roots.

Built along what was then the city's outskirts starting in the late 1950s, these detached-heavy communities such as Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills, Ogden, Winston Heights, Albert Park, Fairview and Kingsland represented optimism and prosperity synonymous with the post-Second World War era.

Fast-forward several generations later and upwardly mobile generation-Xers and millennials are returning to their birth places, attracted by location, ample amenities and familiarity.

City's evolving arts scene a good news story for real estate

Recent high-profile additions to Calgary's cultural scene stand to benefit the city's real estate market in a big way, say experts.

New facilities such as Studio Bell's National Music Centre and the Calgary Film Centre will go a long way toward helping the city shake off its stodgy Cowtown image, said Tom Keenan, a professor at the University of Calgary's Faculty of Environmental Design.

"Interesting people, things to do, cultural amenities like the opera – these all play a role in making a city appealing to live in," he said.

Urban planning experts offer tips on how to shop for your next neighbourhood

Is it a neighbourhood with a lake so you don't need a vacation cottage?

Or an upgraded, older neighbourhood with lots of housing choices?

Perhaps a community with a main street so "you don't have to jump in your car to get a quart of milk?"

When urban commentators weigh in on what homebuyers, first-time or otherwise, should be looking for when they chose a place to live the emphasis is on community amenities – or as Greg Morrow puts it, looking "outside the four walls" of the home, to the DNA of the neighbourhood.

Seniors' groups welcome potential option to aging in place

Seniors' advocates in Calgary are cautiously praising a city council decision to look at a University of Calgary pilot project that's studying laneway housing as an option to aging in place.

In mid-May, council agreed to support a motion by Coun. Gian-Carlo Cara that would have City administration work with the university as it embarks on the next phase of its Aging-In-Place Laneway Housing project.

Kerby Centre CEO Luanne Whitmarsh called the idea, "a really interesting concept," but added more study needs to be done, such as ensuring that, "it isn't just going to make more isolation.

"Also, what does it look like? If (seniors) still need support and there are people entering the home instead of a grassy front yard, it's a back alley. We have to look at quality of life," she said.

Laneway homes could soon turn Calgary's back alleys into thriving mini-communities

Paul and Jill Robert have big plans for the little home they're building on their back lane.

Only the dwelling isn't for them. The Roberts already live in the wartime house in the northwest neighbourhood of West Hillhurst on the same lot where Paul, a professor at the Alberta College of Art and Design, grew up.

Instead, the diminutive back-lane house is for Jill's parents who are selling their home in Edmonton and moving to Calgary to be closer to family.

Local researchers applaud study that links urban design to obesity rates

Are you overweight and out of shape? It could be because of where you live.

Local researchers are pointing to a new international study that has found a connection between obesity and urban geography – in particular as it relates to living in high-rise apartments.

"The literature out there is pretty clear — there's a strong relationship between the walkability of your environment and your health," said Calgary architect John Brown, a professor in the Faculty of Environmental Design at the University of Calgary.

New Public Interest Law Clinic to challenge landlord-tenant law in Alberta

As a child, Sophie Purnell lived in Burundi before her family fled due to the country's increasing violence.

Now, as a third-year law student at the University of Calgary, she is hoping to make life better for others by working with a group of students to change landlord-tenant law in Alberta, one issue at a time.

The students — all second- and third-year law students — are taking a new course offered through the school's new Public Interest Law Clinic. Supervised by university professors, as well as local public interest lawyers, the students will take on cases from the clinic that fall under the public interest banner as part of their course load.

This term, students will be learning about residential tenancy law, human rights and potential constitutional challenges in the way tenants are treated.