Education centre

The multipurpose education centre is one of the key projects in Acadia, it will be our
statement that we will change the neighbourhood. Also, the politicians will leave their legacy
to the city. The vision behind it is to create space for the other projects in the
neighbourhood and upgrade the facilities for the eleven schools (currently) in Acadia. The
schools will stay independent, so they can keep their own identity. They can also learn from
each other and increase their quality, due to competition between the schools. This school
centre will be created at the current location of Lord Beaverbrook High School. A result of
bringing all the schools together is that all the students can use the new high-class facilities
and services.
Just think of different kinds of sports facilities, such as a gym, a pool and
sports fields, but also a library, computer classrooms, a theatre stage and
healthy cafeterias. It is also cheaper in the long term for every school,
because all the schools do not have to provide for their own facilities. Most
of these facilities are also open to the inhabitants of Acadia after school
hours, so they can practise their music and computer skills or go to the gym.
This will encourage Acadians to interact socially, to learn skills, and
become healthier.

Let's turn Acadia into an avocado!

The multipurpose school will be designed to become a real

eye catcher for Acadia, just like the new library is for the city.
The school building will be modern and beautiful and will be an
upgrade to the whole neighbourhood. A building that
Acadians can be proud of.

Acadia is like a lemon at the moment, with a thick skin symbolizing

the retail and massive infrastructure surrounding the neighbourhood
and without a heart in the centre where people can meet, build
friendships and release their stress. Don?t get us wrong, a lemon is
a wonderful product, however, you wouldn't eat it on its own.
Therefore, we propose to transform Acadia into an avocado, a
wonderful healthy product that everybody loves and possesses a
big heart. in order to create this change we developed a theory
based development strategy and an implementation plan.

The multipurpose school will be easily

accessible to cyclists and pedestrians
through the water walkway and
surrounding cycle tracks. For cars it
will be accessible from Macload Trail
and 90 Ave with no parking space for
students, only for employees, but with
a kiss and ride facility. The effect of
this measure will be less cutthrough traffic and a safer
neighbourhood.

Education
centre

The theory of conceptual growth

Ambition

Top-Down

Enablers

Standing committee
Advise meetings

Bottom-up

Thompson
Park

Officials and
proposed committee
Advise

Citizens

Construct
facilities to
host the
students from
Thompson
school and
tear down
fences.

1 Mayor
Ele
ct

1 vote at tie

Advise

14 counsellors

Host the
Thompson
school
students and
expand
facilities to
host the
Arlington
students.
Move schools
to the
education
centre, tear
down fences
and
community
sessions.

law
op
vel
e
D

If desirable

Arlington Park

ct
Ele

Strong conviction and fertile soil

Bottom up action

Host the
Arlington
students and
open the
public
facilities.

Hosts pop up
cafes, a social
kitchen and a
bicycle shop
and repair
serves.

Remove fences,
bisect the
school field,
construct
community
garden and start
community
development
session.

Acadia's
infrastructure

Motivators

Thompson park
Thompson Park will become the area that brings Acadians together by means
of food, culture and retail. The old school buildings will serve as an indoor
playground for the neighborhood to build a sense of community. The
surrounding fields will be developed into public space for leisure activities.
People will have the chance to meet each other and strive towards a better
neighborhood together. The first phase marks a period in which the current
students of the Thompson and Acadia School make the transition to the
education centre. During this transition, seeds will be planted by opening half of
the school fields to the public. This new public space will host various
community projects, such as input sessions for the development of Arlington
Park and both school buildings. When the seeds are sprouting, Thompson and
Arlington school will start hosting pop-up cafes and restaurants. Since food
connects people, a good restaurant with an authentic ambiance is a genuine
motivator to visit Thompson Park. One of the former school buildings will also
host the bicycle repair and distribution shop for bicycles. Sprouts become plants
when the surrounding area accepts the lively place as a success and more
entrepreneurs will be attracted to the formal school building and open their
shops. During this phase empty classrooms will be made available to business
owners at a low rent. The public fields will be connected to other projects in the
neighbourhood. With the success of Thompson Park, plants will become trees
as the area will be upgraded to a food centre. At the same time as the
completion of Arlington Park, the two places can work together as an area
where leisure, community gardens and entrepreneurship play a major role.

Complete the
construction
and look for
opportunities
to upscale this
project.

Attract
entrepreneurs
and concept
stores and
connect the
project through
the water
walkway.
Start planting
green and
boscages,
host school
camps and
start chair
bombing.

Start the bike

for a month
program,
launch app,
start the
intersection
repair and
dead-end 90
Ave SE.

Complete the
food centre
that offers an
authentic
experience to
differentiate
from the major
retail.
Move Arlington
school to the
education
centre, host
the second
design session
and connect
with the water
walkway.

Improve
connection
with Heritage
Station and
construct
separated
cycle and bus
lanes at
Fairmount
Drive and
Acadia Drive.

Arlington Park
Complete the
park and look
for up scaling
opportunities
in the
surrounding
areas.

Block off partly

Acadia Drive,
Fairmount
Drive and Fifth
Street and
start the
development
of the water
walkway

Construct a
Acadia wide
segregated
cycle network,
improve
connection to
other wards
and upscale
the project.

Arlington Park will be known as Acadia?s current district park for leisure and social interaction. A place
where people will walk, bike, sit, relax, meet other people, enjoy the trees and flowers, and grow their
own food in the community garden. The first step is to remove the fences and bisect the school field to
get the inhabitants used to the transition to the education school centre. Half of the field will still be
available as school playground with plenty of space left for the children . In the other half, we can start
planting the seeds. One of the seeds is designing the park together with the community to make it a
real community project and encourage ownership for the park. Leading in this design will be the ten
principles of successful places. The other seed is constructing a community garden where neighbours
and students can get to know each other and grow their own food.
The second step is to nurture the planted seeds into sprouts. We start with the hardware measure to
implement the park that the community co-designed by planting trees and boscages. In order to help
the users to bond with this new park, we propose the following software measures. First, the education
center can host school camps at the beginning of the year where students can get to know each other
and create positive memories connected with the place. Another software measure is chair bombing.
At this way, people can sit and discuss guerrilla gardening practices, for example. The plant phase is a
substantial phase. Arlington School can move to the educational centre. We will organise a second
design session with the community to also make this half fit, ensuring unity in the creation of the park.
The old school building will probably be demolished because of its low aesthetic value.. In the tree
phase, the designed park will be fully implemented, containing cycling and pedestrian paths with loads
of green. Arlington Park has become the place in Acadia to enjoy the green nature and to relax in order
to reduce busy city dwellers?stress levels.

Process

Infrastructure
The Ambition
In order to turn Acadia in to an
avocado we have the ambition to
work on two key challenges. The
first challenge is the car
dependency: The Calgarian car
dependency resulted in an
incredible dominance of car
infrastructure in public space.
Troubled by heavy traffic congestion
and cut-through traffic, leaving no
place to meet for the people of the
city. This makes Acadia unsafe,
especially for cyclists and
pedestrians; who have little or no
safe infrastructure to use. This
reinforces the unsustainable car
dominance, which has a negative
influence on the liveability of Acadia
and Calgary.
The second challenge: 17% of the
Calgarians live alone; only 40%
know the name of their nextdoor
neighbour and especially the
growing elderly population is at risk
of isolation. Decreasing living
conditions may result in a poor
mental health status. To reverse this
growing trend, people need a local
place to meet, something to do, and
an incentive to start a conversation.

To reverse this trend of solitude and

car dominance, we need to turn the
pyramid upside down and connect
people.

The Enablers
Changes can be made using the
enablers system, either top-down or
bottom-up. With a top-down
approach, the local government can
use its powers to make changes to
the neighbourhood?s hardware, the
measurements will appeal to the
local councillor?s ambitions, giving
them a chance to remain popular
with the local citizens. If it is an
unpopular measure but it will be
beneficial for the neighbourhood,
the attitude towards the measure
needs to be changed first, you can
see it as creating a fertile soil. This
can be done by means of bottom-up
projects that support changes in
behaviour and changes the attitude
towards the measure.

The Motivators
For this, you need innovators that
motivate other adopters. To support
our vision, we use the widely-used

model of Everett M. Rogers that has

been used for many change
processes including cultural change.
The changes are linked together
with thresholds. Once a threshold is
reached, the next phase will start to
unfold. Providing fertile soil is
essential for the seeds to grow. We
start with small, low-cost, temporary
projects to show residents which
effects might be possible. These
small projects are the seeds we
want to plant in the Acadian soil.
When people respond positively to
these changes, the group of early
adopters will grow, developing into
the critical mass. With a growing
group of supporters, it is easier to
make changes more permanent. On
the other hand, when plans are not
able to attract the critical mass and
are therefore not supported by the
neighbourhood, the decision is
easier to terminate the programme
before huge investments are made.
In this way, all plans will be
self-sustaining. The measurements
focus on changing habits and
getting used to change, because it
appears to be much more effective
than economic or sustainable
arguments for changing behaviour.

The Process
Each adopter?s category requires
different actions to adapt. Therefore,
the four key projects contain a
process of four steps. Our process
model is a minor adjustment of the
?spectrum of intervention model?
that was developed by Mike Lydon
and is used by several organiations
which are linked to his company.
The ideology is to plant several
seeds in a fertile soil as temporary
projects to attract residents to
participate and to change their
habits. If a project is a success, the
intervention grows into a sprout that
holds up for a longer period. This
makes it a bit more or a long-term
intervention. The purpose of the
sprout is to retain the early adopters
and show more Acadians that it is
very likely to happen. If it attracts
the required majority, it grows into a
plant project. These types of
projects are already supported by
half of the population and therefore
have the political backup to turn it
into a plant project. This phase has
long-term effects and will give
temporary projects a more
permanent character. These
projects are aiming to convince the

late majority to be part of it since

half of the population is already
doing so. Once the late majority is
on board too, only the laggards are
left. Unfortunately, it is almost
impossible to get everybody on
board but it is the majority that
makes Acadia safer and smoother.
In this tree phase, the projects are
permanently planted in Acacia?s soil
and supported by the vast majority
of the population and the politicians.
Like every healthy tree, it can
produce new seeds that inspire
other neighbourhoods to plant them
in their neighbourhood, creating a
chain reaction that makes Calgary
as a whole safer and smoother.
The four key projects focus on the
development of a multipurpose
education school centre at the Lord
Beaverbrook High School precinct.
The second project is the
development of a cultural and retail
centre at the Thompson School
area. The third project is located at
the Arlington School precinct that
will be developed into a green
leisure park, and the last focus is on
the main infrastructure from Acadia
to make it safer, smoother and more
social.

Cars currently dominate the physical area and the psychological perception of transportation options, resulting in
an unsafe situations, cut-through traffic and a lack of places to meet. The first step to solve this, is to plant the
seed by getting people on bikes. Half a million dollars is spend on speed bumps that do not help to counter the
problem and that satisfy nobody. If we invest $400,000 on 1,000 bikes and hand out those bikes to the 10,500
Acadians for one month, we would be able to give every Acadian a bike with a bit more than ten months. Another
$100,000 will be committed to this ?Bike for a month? program for a free repair service in Thompson and the
development of an app which keeps a record of the distance traveled, calories burned, the amount of gas, money
and Co2 saved, and the places that can be reached within a certain time. Participants can compare their results
with their neighbours to introduce a competitive serious gaming element.
The software measure is supplemented with the hardware measure that dead-ends 90 Ave Se to create a kiss
and ride area which belongs to the education centre. This has the envisaged effect of stopping cut-through traffic
and promoting the use of bikes. In order to make cycling safer, we start by painting bike lanes on the main roads
with a prominent green colour to make people get used to sharing the road with cyclists. These effective tactics
have been used in New York, London, Amsterdam and Sydney. When the seed sprouts and the critical mass has
embraced cycling, politicians will agree that it is important to take infrastructural measures. To promote public
transport, Heritage station will be supplemented with the eastern connection from the station to Horton road. This
connection will facilitate a faster connection by foot and bicycle and a decreased pressure on Heritage Drive. To
make it safer, separate bike lanes will be constructed from Horton Road through Hull Avenue into Acadia. The
same goes for the main corridors in Acadia. This will also encourage drivers to drive more slowly or take the main
roads around Acadia to decrease cut-through traffic.
When the seed and sprout plans have started to reach the late majority, they can grow into the plant phase.
Bicycles are accepted increasingly as a daily mode of transportation, and since more than 50% of the inhabitants
are using them, then it can count on political support. We propose to block off three streets partially: Acadia Drive
between Fairmount Drive and Sixth Street; Fifth Street and Ancourt between Thompson, and Arlington Park and
Fairmont Drive between Eighty-eight Avenue and Armstrong Crescent. The residents here already have their own
driveways to the back of their houses, leaving space to turn this area into a river walk area - comparable with the
Seoul Cheonggyecheon. This River Walk hosts facilities for bicycles and pedestrian, but also playgrounds. This
walkway is ambitious, but could become the place to be for local residents and tourists alike; a place for leisure
and relaxing. In this way, the area is given character and clearly reflects the relationship that the neighbourhood
used to have with Bow River. It will also feature a one-mile walkway for the elderly, with benches with easy
exercise possibilities. To establish a firm foundation for the future, a central community square will be situated at
the cross point between Fairmount Drive and Acadia Drive connecting the Education Centre, Thompson Park and
Arlington Park. The River Walkway offers the opportunity for the sprout to grow into a three that attracts
pedestrians, cyclists and tourist from the whole of Calgary. This offers the political and community support for a
segregated cycle network throughout the whole ward that connects the surrounding wards and the cycle track at
Bow River. And as is the case with every healthy tree, it produces seeds that can be planted in the surrounding
wards.