Challenger Cities Calgary Salon: The Costume Test

​A night to explore the new identities of cowtown, and what it would take to wear them on a street with no event on.

​I've called Calgary the worst city in Canada, and I've said it to people in Calgary. Ask anyone here what the best thing about the city is and they'll often tell you the mountains are an hour away. If the best thing about your city is the ability to leave it, you don't have a good city.

​But Calgary is changing, mostly for good. It is becoming a globally respected and desired destination, not just a stop on the way to Banff. It is building cultural institutions, making downtown not suck, people are choosing to live downtown in converted office buildings and the hockey team might even wake up in the shiny new arena next year. With that come the growing pains of a city built around cars and single family lots, which won't keep scaling.

​Calgary though, might be Canada's biggest Challenger City with an attitude to growth, a new culture emerging, energy in both senses, a design scene, and, some tell me, a little deviancy if you know where to look ;)

​In the past, Calgary has played dress up for ten days in July as a bit of a costume. Stampede is still cool. But tonight we want to unearth the new identities of cowtown that make the place more interesting, attractive, entertaining, and comfortable as somewhere to live, play, move and work.

​So what could be tried here? What already exists that we need to make more of. In a rowdy night of beers, conversation, some agreeable disagreement ... can we create an experiment somebody in the room takes away and runs?

​You might be a bit of an urbanist, you might just care about place, come out for something we promise will be fun and a little different.