imagineCalgary, Calgary's 100 year plan, is dead.
The iC Plan included 114 targets within 32 goal areas & was developed based on 5 systems:
Built Environment System
Economic System
Governance System
Natural Environment System
Social System
The city referred to iC in almost every single communique for 15 years, then suddenly poof, no more mention. The department disappeared. No more interaction. Completely abandoned.
Then suddenly, a new strategy appears out of thin air.
No mention of how #YYC did on 114 targets & 32 goal areas, just the magical appearance of a new strategy initiative. No reference to iC which was heralded by all at & #yyccc as the largest civic engagement of its type in global history.
iC's been ghosted.
And this is how the bureaucracy functions. Disregard for previous work by citizens/admin because the new bureaucracy needs new projects to justify their existence.
So, what's a bureaucracy to do?
Throw the baby out with the bathwater & start all over.
After 15 years, no one knows what we did, or didn't, achieve. That's mismanagement & a waste of resources & time. Citizens were deceived, believing that a long term vision was being implemented & that a map/strategy existed for the objective of a better Calgary.
Without independent monitoring, there is no trusted accountability mechanism in place.
But holy fuck, did the city ever milk the shit out of iC.
And we believed them. Again.
The real losers? Our youth, whose future the city routinely abandons.
This blog post highlights the frivolous approach to such an important plan. It's embarrassingly childlike in its execution. This was not the engagement stage, which would have been appropriate, this is implementation.
With yet another plan in the works, why are we now going to believe this one is "The Plan" when the previous one, The Mother of All Plans, failed so epically?
