Quote:
Originally Posted by Fuzz
I think it's more a case of getting lied to and screwed over by developers for decades, and having absolutely no say in how their community evolves. Eventually you just get sick of it, and don't care about the nuances of discussion, it's just all bad. Human nature. Do you think these people are somehow unique? You get kicked enough times and all the reasons you came to a place get eroded away.
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I hear you, but I'm also skeptical. You actually have a decent opportunity to influence things in a small town. I suspect the current state of Canmore is largely a result of classic NIMBYism as much as anything else. From what I've seen, the arguments still largely boil down to: traffic. parking. longer line to get my latté. fighting density in the 'wrong' places.
And of course the wildlife corridor stuff. I'm normally not a big fan of the 'yet you participate in society too' argument, but I find it hard to fully discount in this case. Entire lifestyles are built around driving on the highway (often way more than most people) to use ski resorts (not exactly innocent in terms of wildlife impact) and/or venture into the wilderness, which also impacts wildlife. But nobody else should add any more drops to the wildlife disruption bucket.
North America is slowly coming to its senses in terms of urban design. Canmore could and should have been at the forefront of it (those folks are pretty enlightened, afterall), but instead they fought for the same stupid concessions like more parking and wider roads, and now they have to try to undo those impacts.
I'd certainly prefer Canmore to be less developed, but then again it is bounded on the south and west by two different protected parks. And to the east by a bunch of mining and cement factories. I don't actually think it would be
that bad if a bunch more got developed like a lot of places in the Alps (that are still pretty magical).