Baconfest - Planning film festival

[halifaxboyns]

The Baconfest urban planning film festival returns Wednesday, January 14 for night 1 of what will be 4 nights of Urban Planning films, discussion and food for thought.

The other nights are January 21, 28 and February 11.
This event is free and takes place at the Dutton Theatre (doors open at 5:30 - event lasts from 6-8pm), with light refreshments (and bacon snacks) provided. For a list of this year's movies please visit www.calgary.ca/baconfest. We are also using the twitter hashtag #baconfestyyc.

[halifaxboyns]

We return with Baconfest 3 - starting tonight at 5:30pm at the Dutton Theatre. Film list and information at www.calgary.ca/baconfest.

The festival is free - all are welcome!

[DizzyEdge]

Just watched The Pruitt-Igoe Myth, good documentary
For anyone who was unable to go to Baconfest tonight, it's on youtube.

[DizzyEdge]

Might find this informative as well
http://www.pruitt-igoe.com/temp/1991...t-igoemyth.pdf

[youngregina]

I had to write about the Pruitt Igoe myth for an urban studies class last semester. We watched it and I was really amazed at how it started out and just went to shit for so many reasons. It was never just because everyone was low income, or race issues within the complex itself. There were so many outside factors that lead to the demise of Pruitt Igoe's success. For some reason, I had never thought about the lower tax base and the reduced social funding because of white flight. Systemic funding issues were at the root of so many problems. And why would a government lobbied by the housing agencies and bank lenders want to allow people to live at reduced off-market rates. Really eye opening.

[UofC.engineer]

Originally Posted by youngregina

I had to write about the Pruitt Igoe myth for an urban studies class last semester. We watched it and I was really amazed at how it started out and just went to shit for so many reasons. It was never just because everyone was low income, or race issues within the complex itself. There were so many outside factors that lead to the demise of Pruitt Igoe's success. For some reason, I had never thought about the lower tax base and the reduced social funding because of white flight. Systemic funding issues were at the root of so many problems. And why would a government lobbied by the housing agencies and bank lenders want to allow people to live at reduced off-market rates. Really eye opening.

It's a pretty decent film!

I can't help but feel that post WW2 Calgary also fell victim to urban decay. Everytime I see the seniors complexes in East Village I think of the Pruitt-Igoe documentary. However; I think the city was luckily spared from freeways that were planned to gut our downtown. Could the planners of Calgary have stopped urban decay if they wanted to? To me it seems the mantra at the time was to build freeways and master planned neighborhoods with little thought to non-auto transportation.

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

It's a pretty decent film!

I can't help but feel that post WW2 Calgary also fell victim to urban decay. Everytime I see the seniors complexes in East Village I think of the Pruitt-Igoe documentary. However; I think the city was luckily spared from freeways that were planned to gut our downtown. Could the planners of Calgary have stopped urban decay if they wanted to? To me it seems the mantra at the time was to build freeways and master planned neighbourhoods with little thought to non-auto transportation.

We avoided some issues, but warmly endorsed others. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

Victoria Park used to have as many people as Mission or Sunnyside does currently. Originally a whole neighbourhood of pre-war houses, it was transitioning similarly to other city centre neighbourhoods until the mid-1960s when the Stampede began expansion ideas.

This expansion had dramatic effect. In 1968, the City gave the Stampede $4 million for expansion plans of the grounds which at the time stopped at 17th Avenue. The funding would only be granted to purchase properties up to $400,000 a year, meaning that the stampede would slowly purchase properties as they came up. The result was a weird, fragmented lot by lot destruction of the neighbourhood, prolonged over a long time.

Due to the uncertainty of the final boundary and the long, consistent funding given to stampede expansion, the neighbourhood became a difficult place to get mortgages, in a environment where random houses were being bulldozed over 10 years. Property values decreased as a result and the area became more transient, with lower-quality housing due to lack of incentive to reinvest by property owners.

The result: we destroyed a neighbourhood that had more in common with Mission, Sunnyside or Bridgeland to replace with parking lots 345 days a year. Victoria Park is doing a bit better now, but is hardly a neighbourhood. Imagine another 3-5,000 inner city residents and another few acres of pre-WWII housing? I would prefer that over a neighbourhood of Guardian Towers any day. Plus there are many, many examples of underdeveloped lots for towers in the Beltline and Downtown that may have seen redevelopment of condo towers if the Victoria Park Lots didn't get so much attention in the past 15 years. Pure speculation of course

For more info and a great read, see the paper on Victoria Park East by Harry Hiller, a prof at U of C. Read it here.

[DizzyEdge]

Originally Posted by MasterG

We avoided some issues, but warmly endorsed others. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

Victoria Park used to have as many people as Mission or Sunnyside does currently. Originally a whole neighbourhood of pre-war houses, it was transitioning similarly to other city centre neighbourhoods until the mid-1960s when the Stampede began expansion ideas.

This expansion had dramatic effect. In 1968, the City gave the Stampede $4 million for expansion plans of the grounds which at the time stopped at 17th Avenue. The funding would only be granted to purchase properties up to $400,000 a year, meaning that the stampede would slowly purchase properties as they came up. The result was a weird, fragmented lot by lot destruction of the neighbourhood, prolonged over a long time.

Due to the uncertainty of the final boundary and the long, consistent funding given to stampede expansion, the neighbourhood became a difficult place to get mortgages, in a environment where random houses were being bulldozed over 10 years. Property values decreased as a result and the area became more transient, with lower-quality housing due to lack of incentive to reinvest by property owners.

The result: we destroyed a neighbourhood that had more in common with Mission, Sunnyside or Bridgeland to replace with parking lots 345 days a year. Victoria Park is doing a bit better now, but is hardly a neighbourhood. Imagine another 3-5,000 inner city residents and another few acres of pre-WWII housing? I would prefer that over a neighbourhood of Guardian Towers any day. Plus there are many, many examples of underdeveloped lots for towers in the Beltline and Downtown that may have seen redevelopment of condo towers if the Victoria Park Lots didn't get so much attention in the past 15 years. Pure speculation of course

For more info and a great read, see the paper on Victoria Park East by Harry Hiller, a prof at U of C. Read it here.

a visual from the 1970s

[UofC.engineer]

Originally Posted by MasterG

We avoided some issues, but warmly endorsed others. Of course, hindsight is 20/20.

Victoria Park used to have as many people as Mission or Sunnyside does currently. Originally a whole neighbourhood of pre-war houses, it was transitioning similarly to other city centre neighbourhoods until the mid-1960s when the Stampede began expansion ideas.

This expansion had dramatic effect. In 1968, the City gave the Stampede $4 million for expansion plans of the grounds which at the time stopped at 17th Avenue. The funding would only be granted to purchase properties up to $400,000 a year, meaning that the stampede would slowly purchase properties as they came up. The result was a weird, fragmented lot by lot destruction of the neighbourhood, prolonged over a long time.

Due to the uncertainty of the final boundary and the long, consistent funding given to stampede expansion, the neighbourhood became a difficult place to get mortgages, in a environment where random houses were being bulldozed over 10 years. Property values decreased as a result and the area became more transient, with lower-quality housing due to lack of incentive to reinvest by property owners.

The result: we destroyed a neighbourhood that had more in common with Mission, Sunnyside or Bridgeland to replace with parking lots 345 days a year. Victoria Park is doing a bit better now, but is hardly a neighbourhood. Imagine another 3-5,000 inner city residents and another few acres of pre-WWII housing? I would prefer that over a neighbourhood of Guardian Towers any day. Plus there are many, many examples of underdeveloped lots for towers in the Beltline and Downtown that may have seen redevelopment of condo towers if the Victoria Park Lots didn't get so much attention in the past 15 years. Pure speculation of course

For more info and a great read, see the paper on Victoria Park East by Harry Hiller, a prof at U of C. Read it here.

Great post!

Although the loss of Victoria Park is tragic it wasn't the only inner city neighborhood to fall into decay. Large swaths of houses in the Beltline and Eau-claire were cleared for parking lots. And the stampede had nothing to do with those areas. So did the city willing let those areas fall into decay?

Today:
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Cal...6d3bb1b652b63a

1955:
http://contentdm.ucalgary.ca/cdm/ref...otos2/id/51158

Today:
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Cal...6d3bb1b652b63a

1955:
http://contentdm.ucalgary.ca/cdm/ref...otos2/id/51157


Also, at one time(according to my parents and grandma) Sunnyside and Inglewood were seedy neighborhoods in the 70's and 80's. Prostitution was rampant in Inglewood and Sunnyside had one of the cheapest rental rate in the city.

[CalgaryAlex]

Originally Posted by MasterG

For more info and a great read, see the paper on Victoria Park East by Harry Hiller, a prof at U of C. Read it here.

I believe Max Foran has also written extensively on the subject of Vic Park vs. Stampede.

Interesting that the Stampede continues to blight the inner city by throwing a wrench in the process for the Dominion Bridge development, thus harming Ramsay's prospects of becoming a more vibrant community.

There are decades of work to be done to reverse the damage the Stampede has done to the area around its grounds.

[MasterG]

Originally Posted by UofC.engineer

Great post!

Although the loss of Victoria Park is tragic it wasn't the only inner city neighborhood to fall into decay. Large swaths of houses in the Beltline and Eau-claire were cleared for parking lots. And the stampede had nothing to do with those areas. So did the city willing let those areas fall into decay?

Today:
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Cal...6d3bb1b652b63a

1955:
http://contentdm.ucalgary.ca/cdm/ref...otos2/id/51158

Today:
https://www.google.ca/maps/place/Cal...6d3bb1b652b63a

1955:
http://contentdm.ucalgary.ca/cdm/ref...otos2/id/51157


Also, at one time(according to my parents and grandma) Sunnyside and Inglewood were seedy neighborhoods in the 70's and 80's. Prostitution was rampant in Inglewood and Sunnyside had one of the cheapest rental rate in the city.

The city tacitly allowed parking lots to be the preferred land-use by doing nothing to support. Even if they did not openly endorse it, they didn't seem to create any policies to the contrary. I would love to see a bit more history in the decisions and planning ideas of Calgary during that time to see if the rationale of the day lines up with my assumptions.

Calgary should be both commended and ridiculed for it's road transportation policy. It avoided clear mistakes (i.e. Downtown penetrator urban freeway) that would have decimated any inner city life. Many other cities fell for the urban downtown highways and irreparably destroyed their urban areas.

However, in the great art of compromise, instead of high-speed freeways we received the 4, 5 and 6 lane one way avenues that bisected the inner city and create barriers of heavy car-dominance that oppress pedestrian life in the city centre. Certainly better than freeways, but by no means a solution that promotes anything but a car-dominated inner city.

The city is now pivoting back, but the damage of easy-driving inner city left scars that will take decades to erase.

• West Village remains disconnected by wide arterials that kill any street-life or connection to more pedestrian areas to the North and South.
• Bridgeland is isolated by Memorial Drive freeway and is handicapped by the over-built Edmonton Trail couplet
• Kensington turned it's back on the river because Memorial is an arterial that severs the community from the River and the neighbourhoods beyond.
• Beltline struggles with the 11th and 12th avenue arterials that hurt the pedestrian experience and create a barrier to north-south traffic.
• Elsewhere, most potential main streets suffer from being dedicated to entirely commuter traffic that reduce the attractiveness of the street as a place, not just a thoroughfare. 33rd Avenue SW is a mini-barrier of free-flow traffic cutting two otherwise successful inner neighbourhoods in two. Countless examples of this exist on all scales across this city.

All these complaints I have of the design of the city today were routed in decisions that were made in that era. Would be interesting to see the intentions behind those decisions and how much recognition was given to the potential negative consequences.

[youngregina]

Although there are many negatives connected with the decay of many central areas of Calgary, it has left blank slates for amazing redevelopment concepts. It has made it easier for project developers to combine the lots necessary for larger buildings. It has allowed us to conceptualize new neighbourhoods on a level that we would otherwise not have been able to. There has to be some positives that came out of our unnecessary urban decay.

[dazzlingdave88]

Originally Posted by 5seconds

I was going to go to Baconfest tonight, but I just looked at the films, and the one I wanted to see (Sprawling from Grace) isn't on the website anymore. Does anyone know if the current site is correct?

EDIT: Confirmed by City on twitter: "we will be showing some user submitted films instead. We apologize for the inconvenience but hope you still plan to attend! "

Well that just ruined my evening plans.....that was the only one that I really wanted to see. Any reason on the change?

[ByeByeBaby]

Sprawling from Grace looks to be on YouTube, if anyone out there wants to see it.

[dazzlingdave88]

Originally Posted by ByeByeBaby

Sprawling from Grace looks to be on YouTube, if anyone out there wants to see it.

I watched it on there. I can see why they pulled it. It talks a lot about the high cost of oil.

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by dazzlingdave88

I watched it on there. I can see why they pulled it. It talks a lot about the high cost of oil.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Povsoq-28Tk

This trailer focuses entirely on peak oil, rising cost of production etc as an unstoppable inevitability... how much has changed! Many were so confident back then in their predictions which is why I place no faith in predictions made by self proclaimed experts today.

I can see why the film was pulled too, as it would seem ridiculous and probably insulting given the hardship we are facing due to completely the opposite problem they predicted.

[halifaxboyns]

Originally Posted by dazzlingdave88

I watched it on there. I can see why they pulled it. It talks a lot about the high cost of oil.

That's exactly why we pulled it - in light of the oil price collapse it didn't seem as relevant. We are going to make sure that the schedule is locked down as soon as we can for next year so these types of changes don't occur next time! Sorry about that!

[halifaxboyns]

If you didn't make it to the finale - the public submitted short films were very well received and really great quality. If you haven't seen them here is the link to the playlist.

I think many folks wanted to submit a film but were not sure they could do it; or that they would be well received - the reaction on the finale night shows they will always be well received. Since we are planning a Baconfest for next year; think now about what movie you could submit. We may increase the time (possibly 5 minutes?), but the only other rule is it needs to be about urbanism!

[halifaxboyns]

Baconfest returns to Calgary February 1 with 4 evenings of Urban Planning films and thought provoking discussion.

Here is the movie line up and location details (as not all showings are at the Dutton Theatre due to tech requirements).

February 1
Dutton Theatre - Doors open at 5:30; event begins at 6pm
The Nature of Cities and Elevated Thinking - The High Line in New York City

February 8
Dutton Theatre - Doors open at 5:30; event begins at 6pm
Everything Will Be

February 15
Dutton Theatre - Doors open at 5:30; event begins at 6pm
A Convenient Truth: Urban Solutions from Curitiba, Brazil

February 22
Globe Theatre - Doors open at 5:30; event begins at 6pm
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City

Admission is free! Light refreshments will be provided each evening except Feb 22 - theatre concessions will be available. For more information on the movie line up please visit www.calgary.ca/baconfest

[OuttaTheBurbs]

Ooo, thanks for this. I have enjoyed this every year.