[Bunk]

Originally Posted by calculoso

Very interesting presentation, but if someone wanted to fact-check his presentation I bet they could find some pretty interesting omissions which skew his story.

Simple one that I found and know about all-too-well. The Arena map he showed, how they are all below the Red Line.

In his map, he only shows 'City Of Calgary' owned and operated arenas. He doesn't seem to consider the vast number of 'Community' owned and operated arenas in his presentation.

Perhaps he thinks that the City should own and control everything (very socialist ideal) and forgo any community or corporate support (such as Cardel Place in Coventry Hills).

Perhaps he thinks the City is lacking in investment in this area (which I totally agree with), with the only recent spending being done to renovate 20+ year old rinks.

Perhaps he merely doesn't know and didn't take the time to find out.

I don't know. All that I know is this - if the rest of his presentation had the same level of obvious omission, then reality is very different from how he was presenting it. (comparing megacity Los Angeles, pop 3.8M w/12.9M-17.8M in the area, to unknown Curitiba, pop 1.8M w/3.2M in the area, is also an obvious skew)

I think his point may have been, all things being equal, if the City is investing in recreational facilities, it should do so equitably. In fact, poorer neighbourhoods probably have less a chance to develop facilities on their own relative to wealthier neighbourhoods with greater resources. Also keep in mind that the presentation is edited down, so some of the nuances of his argument may be lost.

Edit: Something Nenshi said on facebook with regard to the rec centres stuff in this presentation:

I'm not very happy with the final image on rec centres -- it's kind of stitched together with the best data I had at the time. A more productive line of questioning would have been to look at all areas of civic investment (rec centres, parks, libraries, arts facilities, and so on) and see if my hypothesis about chronic underinvestment in some areas holds up.

Not sure the population difference between Curitiba and LA is relevant in the way he was comparing them. Both made very conscious decisions about mobility investment - a choice Calgary also has to make as it emerges as a large city.