Tag: edmonton

Jasper Avenue New Vision – November 2009 Update

Back in May I attended the first open house for the Jasper Avenue New Vision project, an initiative that seeks to re-establish Jasper Avenue as the main street of Edmonton. Tonight another open house was held at Enterprise Square downtown, to provide an update on the project and a lot more detail on the plans and designs. Like last time, there were large posters, a 3D foam model, and a presentation. This time however, the presentation was much more in-depth.

Jasper Avenue New VisionJasper Avenue New Vision

Mark Reid of Urban Strategies hosted once again, and began by stressing that the New Vision project is about more than just the streetscape. It takes into consideration the adjacent streets, and is really about targeting re-investment to strengthen downtown’s economic advantage. Much of the presentation focused on the six “big moves”:

  1. Re-vision Jasper Avenue: A catalyst for downtown investment
  2. Civic and Cultural Riverfront Centre
  3. Veterans Park Intensification Area
  4. Capitol District Intensification
  5. Warehouse Community
  6. Railtown Centre

The first big move is to make Jasper Avenue the signature street in Edmonton, reflecting the vibrancy and diversity of the city. Some of the key principles the team has used include: Place Making, The Streetscape, Prioritize Transit/Pedestrian Use, Built Form, Winter City, Activate Ground Floors, Residential Focus, Sustainability, Leadership & Commitment.

The key recommendation for Jasper Avenue is related to space. Currently the street is 30m wide, 21.8m of which is devoted to paved lanes, and 8.2m of which is devoted to sidewalks (4.1m on either side). Essentially 75% of Jasper Avenue is for cars and buses – 4 thru lanes, 2 parking/transit lanes, and 1 turn lane. The plan is to reduce that to 60% – 2 thru lanes, 2 thru/transit/parking lanes, and 1 turn lane, resulting in 17.6m for paved lanes and 6.2m of sidewalk on either side. There would be no parking during rush hour, and only two lay-bys would remain (the space for buses to park on the side). Additionally, the curb lane would be wider to help facilitate transit and cyclists. Traffic volume statistics show that the roadways that run parallel to Jasper Avenue are very underutilized, so there appears to be capacity for this reconfiguration to work.

Jasper Avenue New Vision
Jasper Avenue and 106th Street, facing northwest

Another set of recommendations are related to the streetscape. I noted a few main ideas:

  • Larger trees, by increasing the amount of soil available for each tree by 5 times. In addition to playing a visual role, the trees are an important part of storm water removal.
  • A “grander” looking sidewalk, with steel-faced curbs to reduce the damage caused by winter snow removal, among other things.
  • Heated sidewalks, powered by a glycol system that would pipe waste heat from buildings through the sidewalks. The idea is that Jasper Avenue sidewalks would never need to be shoveled, sanded, or salted ever again!
  • Four scramble intersections, tentatively located at 99th Street, 100th Street, 105th Street, and 108th Street.
  • Newspaper boxes, seating, and other “clutter” would largely move to side streets, keeping Jasper Avenue clean looking. With the removal of lay-bys, you would have a mostly clear, straight sight-line down the Avenue.

There are also recommendations for the appearance of buildings along Jasper Avenue. The team has identified four main categories:

  1. 13% of the facades are heritage buildings or contribute positively.
  2. 18% require some sort of major retrofit.
  3. 32% of the facades are candidates for redevelopment.
  4. 37% require some sort of minor retrofit.

These are all part of the Urban Design Framework, a document that itself will form part of the Capital City Downtown Plan.

Jasper Avenue New Vision
Jasper Avenue & 105th Street, facing northeast

Less time was spent on the other “big moves”, I think because the presenters were running out of time! In the study area today, there are just 2.6 hectares of municipally-owned park space, which is about 3% of the total space. A key target is to increase that to 8%, which is what the Veterans Park Intensification and the Civic and Cultural Riverfront Centre moves are aimed at. Some of the key ideas include:

  • The creation of “MacDonald Central Park” in front of Hotel MacDonald (Mark cited Bryant Park in New York as an example). The park would link up to the “Riverfront Heritage Trail” behind the hotel, which in turn would connect with Veterans Park.
  • The introduction of “mews” throughout downtown – pedestrian-only streets, essentially.
  • Expanding and improving Beaver Hills House Park, as part of the proposed Warehouse Community.

Overall the ideas presented are quite exciting, and when Mark asked for a show of hands indicating support, nearly everyone raised their arm.

In total, the plans call for an increase of:

  • 8,300,793 GSF of residential space
  • 1,173,454 GSF of office space
  • 656,487 GSF of retail space

Which if implemented today, would result in a $19 million increase in tax revenues.

The big question, of course, is how much this will cost and when it’ll happen. Mark said costing information will come in the next phase (winter 2010), which also includes preliminary streetscape and engineering designs, and a finalized urban design framework. Some of the work will happen anyway, though. The trolley wires are scheduled to be removed, and Central LRT station is in need of renovations due to water leaks, work that is tentatively scheduled for 2012. Beyond that, no details were provided.

A lot of information was presented this evening, and I’m not sure I’ve done it justice here. It’s one thing to read about the recommendations, and quite another to see the detailed diagrams and other artwork. I really wish they’d update the website with more information and visuals!

State of the Edmonton Twittersphere – October 2009

Welcome to the tenth State of the Edmonton Twittersphere, my look at the intersection of Twitter and Edmonton. You can see last month’s stats here.

The source of the data this month is the same as last, primarily Twitter Search but also from Twitter directly. If a user has his or her location set to Edmonton, St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Nisku, Stony Plain, Fort Saskatchewan, Beaumont, Spruce Grove, or matching lat/long coordinates, they are considered an Edmontonian.

For October 2009:

# of local users: 5631 (an increase of 184 from September)

To clarify, that means there were 5631 users who posted at least one tweet in October 2009 with their location set to something that makes them an Edmontonian as described above. This number should be treated as a minimum – there are probably many more Edmonton users without their location set.

Here are the rest of the stats for October 2009:

# of tweets by local users: 270044
# of tweets by local users containing #yeg: 18021 (6.7%)
# of tweets by local users that were replies: 98011 (36.3%)
# of tweets by local users containing links: 58448 (21.6%)
# of tweets by local users that were retweets: 13764 (5.1%)
# of tweets by local users that were twooshes: 7973 (3.0%)

Here are the numbers above in graphic form:

Here are the top clients used by local users for posting updates:

Here are the number of local users by community (besides Edmonton itself) for October:

Keep in mind that is based entirely on the text inside the location field of the user’s profile, and is definitely a minimum. Still, gives you an idea of the breakdown.

Some other interesting stats for the month:

Final Thoughts

I was hoping to have stats on Lists in this month’s post, but the API isn’t quite ready yet, so stay tuned for that next month! The increase in users this month was more than double last month’s increase, which is good. The number of tweets being posted by local users continues to rise also – there were three days this month with over 10,000 tweets posted.

Since January, I have identified nearly 12,500 local users. The number above, 5631, is how many of them were active in October.

Calgary stats are up next!

2009 Edmonton Citizen Satisfaction Survey Results

The results of the 2009 Citizen Satisfaction Survey are being presented to City Council today. The survey was once again conducted by Banister Research & Consulting Inc. Some quick facts:

  • The total cost of the survey was $13,650.
  • A total of 800 telephone interviews with Edmonton residents aged 18 or older were completed between June 2 and June 14, 2009.
  • A total of 7989 calls were attempted, 2328 of which resulted in refusals.
  • 50% of respondents were male, 50% were female.
  • 79% of respondents have lived in Edmonton for more than 10 years.
  • 69% of respondents were aged 45 or older.
  • 76% of respondents reported average household income of less than $150,000
  • City-wide results provide a margin of error no greater than +/- 3.5% at the 95% confidence level, 19 times out of 20.

There’s lots of great information in the report, which you can download in PDF here. Or if you prefer, you can just download the highlights, also in PDF.

One of the survey questions is the following:

Now, taking into consideration all City of Edmonton services and programs, overall, how satisfied are you with the services and programs provided by the City of Edmonton to residents?

And here are the results:

In the report, Banister explains:

It is important to note that in 2007, 2008 and 2009 this overall satisfaction question was asked following the satisfaction ratings for specific City services. This was done in order to allow respondents to think of all facets of the service provided by the City of Edmonton, thereby providing a cumulative and overall rating.

I thought it would be interesting to check how effective that is. Unfortunately, the results of the survey are in PDF, not the easiest format to work with. Fortunately for you, that didn’t stop me!

Download the Satisfaction Results by Area in XLS

(I recognize that Excel isn’t the ideal open format, but it was quicker than creating 18 different CSV files. And hopefully this data will be made available as part of the open data initiative anyway.)

Citizens were asked how satisfied they were with 18 different service areas (one, environmental programs, was new this year so I ignored it). The data is available for each area for 2009, 2008, 2007, and 2003. I added up the “very satisfied” and “somewhat satisfied” percentages for each and compared it with previous years. Here is the percentage change in satisfaction for each area from last year:

And here is the percentage change in satisfaction for each area from 2003 (affordable housing was not scored in 2003):

Now we can compare the reported and actual change:

Respondents reported a 1% decrease in overall satisfaction from 2008, and the average change of all the services was the same. Compared with 2003 however, respondents reported a 13% decrease in overall satisfaction, but the average change of all services was a decrease of just 5%.

See how much fun you can have with open data? Now imagine combining this dataset with other datasets! I’d love to compare the results of the satisfaction survey with 311 call volumes, for instance.

The City of Edmonton’s Social Media Advisory Committee

In the grand scheme of things, the City of Edmonton could be considered an early adopter of social media tools. They’ve been on Twitter since February 5, 2009 and have established a presence on Facebook, YouTube, and other sites. While most organizations are still unsure about how to get started with social media, the City of Edmonton is slowly but surely gaining expertise.

Recently I learned that the City established a Social Media Advisory Committee (SMAC) in the spring of this year. I asked Jason Darrah, Communications Business Partner at the City of Edmonton, to tell me more about it. He started by explaining how the committee came to be. I’m paraphrasing here:

In the early days, the City was a fairly simple system. The roads people worried about roads, and the sewer people looked after the sewer system. These were silos, but it worked fine. When a new way of dealing with the world appeared, each silo handled the changes on its own. So at some point in the City’s history, Transportation handled all media related to Transportation, and Waste Management handled all media related to Waste Management. Eventually, it became clear that economies of scale and a unified voice could be achieved by creating the Communications department. More importantly, the Communications department could use its experience to help each of the silos be more effective than they could be individually.

The SMAC followed a similar trajectory. The difference is that today, the City is a complex system. We still have silos, but a change in one area quite often has an impact in another. I think that’s the reason that the SMAC was created so quickly. Jason and his colleagues in Communications recognized some of the advantages:

  • The committee can act as a resource for each of the silos. So when a department wants to get started, they know where to go to learn.
  • They can also provide operational support, actually doing some of the social media work.
  • It’s a way of managing risk, by establishing a competency.
  • The committee is a way of distributing knowledge. They gather information about all of the different social media projects taking place, and can offer advice based on experience.

That last point is particularly important. The SMAC is an advisory committee. Unlike many City committees, whose members are designated by senior managers, the SMAC is comprised of 26 individuals with social media experience (as you can imagine, many of them are young). It has grown fairly organically by attracting people who are using the tools. At their first meeting in May, the SMAC members simply talked about what they knew and had experience with (and they have since recognized a few gaps, Legal for instance).

The key for SMAC is to avoid becoming the social media police. If a department or group wants to do something with social media, they might have a representative on the SMAC, or they would reach out to one. They’d make a pitch to the committee not for approval, but for knowledge. The SMAC might share information about similar projects, or it might make recommendations for tools to use, but it doesn’t say no. The other characteristic that’s interesting is the pull model – SMAC waits for people or groups to come to it, rather than proactively preaching. Obviously some projects will happen without SMAC’s knowledge, but that’s okay.

I really love the SMAC approach. I talk with a number of local organizations about using social media, and I often wonder why they want to learn from me. Obviously I think I have something to offer, and I usually do it for free, but I have always felt that most organizations have untapped knowledge and experience within. By getting all of the individuals with social media experience together, the City has recognized that and has created a fantastic resource for all other employees. I’m particularly intrigued by the fact that although SMAC was started by Communications, it exists outside of it. Kudos to Jason and his colleagues for embracing the notion than social media is something different.

There’s no doubt in my mind that the Social Media Advisory Committee will play an integral role in helping the City of Edmonton use social media effectively, and I believe it’s a model that other organizations should look at adopting also.

Somewhat related…

While social media is different than other communications tools, some of the same rules still apply. The City of Edmonton (and SMAC) is currently drafting a set of Social Media Guidelines, to help employees use the tools effectively. Note this is not a policy, because there are three policies already in place that cover employee conduct with social media tools and everything else: the Employee Code of Conduct, the Media Relations Policy, and the Conduct and Acceptable use of Telecommunication Technology policy. The other advantage to having guidelines rather than a policy is that guidelines are easier to update, which is important when you’re dealing with something that changes as quickly as social media.

Edmonton Notes for 11/7/2009

Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Update on Open Data in Edmonton

I’m encouraged by the progress that is being made on making open data a reality here in Edmonton. I think the open data sessions at ChangeCamp had an impact, as did Councillor Iveson’s formal inquiry. There’s still a lot of work to do, however!

A few brief updates:

  • Just a reminder – we’re using #yegdata on Twitter.
  • The Edmonton Public Library has created an Open Data portal, and is hosting a CSV file of all EPL branch locations, complete with latitude and longitude. It also shows recent tweets!
  • I updated the open data page on the ChangeCamp wiki with some more notes. If you have notes to add, please do so!
  • Chris Moore, CIO for the City of Edmonton, is really embracing the concept of open. He’s charged with delivering a report to City Council by the end of the year, and has decided to open up the creation of that report anyone interested. You can see the document on Google Docs here, just ping Chris and he’ll give you access.

We’ve also started having open data chats with beer! Our next one takes place tomorrow evening:

#yegdata conversation
November 4, 2009 at 4:30pm (come whenever)
Rose & Crown Pub, 10235 101 Street

RSVP on Facebook
See the event on ShareEdmonton

Feel free to drop after work. Our last discussion was really great. One of the things we talked about was the approach we should take. In general, I think the preferred approach is something like the following:

  1. Low-hanging fruit (stuff that is already on the website, just in a closed format, etc)
  2. Data that doesn’t have FOIP implications but that isn’t already available
  3. Everything else
  4. APIs for real-time data?

We’ve got more than enough with the first two to keep everyone involved busy for quite some time.

One of the things we discussed was identifying and prioritizing the first two. What kinds of data does the community want? Which data is already up on the website in a closed format? To help facilitate that, I’ve created a UserVoice site for #yegdata, and have seeded it with 18 types of data that I’d like to see the City of Edmonton make available. Here’s where I need your help!

  • Add other types of data that you’d like to see/use, or that you’ve identified as already available in some format on the City of Edmonton’s website.
  • Everyone gets 10 votes – please vote on the data you’d most like to see/use.
  • Spread the word and get others to add/vote as well!

There are no guarantees that the data and priority identified through the UserVoice site will be what actually happens, but it’ll definitely help the City move forward. Thanks in advance!

Help us identify and prioritize open data here!

Recap: Start Me Up at ICE 2009

Tonight at the ICE Technology Conference, six local software startups demoed their wares to about 50 other technology professionals at Start Me Up. The event was designed to help bridge the gap between the CIPS (old school) and startup (new school) communities, and I think it achieved that to a certain extent. The demos tonight included:

Start Me UpStart Me Up

The format of the evening would have been familiar to anyone who has attended DemoCamp in the past, but for many in the room it was brand new. Much to my delight, everyone seemed to enjoy it, and there was definitely no lack of questions, comments, and feedback for the demoers. For someone like myself, who has seen all of these demos in the past, it was still very interesting because each one had something new to show. I also found the audience remarks quite intriguing (they asked different things than the typical DemoCamp crowd, as you can imagine).

I think the attendance tonight could have been a bit better, but it was still quite good for a first-time event. One of the people in the audience suggested that the event be moved to lunchtime next year, so that more of the conference-goers could attend. It’s a good idea, and shows that there’s both the potential and the desire for Start Me Up to grow.

Thank you to our demoers for the evening, and to Erin and her organizing team for recognizing the value of connecting with Edmonton’s startup community and making this event happen!

Edmonton Notes for 10/31/2009

Happy Halloween! Here are my weekly Edmonton notes:

Avenue Edmonton’s Top 40 Under 40 for 2009

Avenue Edmonton’s first annual Top 40 Under 40 will appear in the November issue of the magazine, available at various locations around the city. Here’s what it’s all about:

When trying to imagine the future of Edmonton, one has to picture the future faces that will shape it. These faces are of urban planners mapping the new city, community workers enhancing our quality of life, entrepreneurs enriching the local economy and artists sending our brand out to the world. In Avenue’s inaugural Top 40 Under 40, we seek to honour the brightest and most talented individuals under the age of 40 who are excelling in their careers, giving back to the community and raising the city’s profile. They are the generation of today making a better future for the people of tomorrow.

I’m truly honored to be part of such a fantastic group of Edmontonians. Last night’s event (at Sabor Divino) was lots of fun, and I met some great people. It was a little cramped though, and a little loud. That means next year’s will be even better! Here are some photos:

This is the image that appears for my page online. The one in the magazine is different, but I really like both. I think 3TEN Photography did an amazing job with all the photos!

Avenue Top 40 Under 40 Edmonton

Major congrats to Cary Williams, who is featured on the cover of the issue. Such a great choice, and it’s a great photo too! You can read his article here.

Avenue Top 40 Under 40 EdmontonAvenue Top 40 Under 40 Edmonton

Thanks to Sharon for taking photos last night!

Avenue Top 40 Under 40 EdmontonAvenue Top 40 Under 40 Edmonton

The Top 40 Under 40 list is important, not because the people on the list are looking for recognition, but because it helps to remind us that there are lots of incredibly passionate people working to make Edmonton a better place to live.

The issue comes out November 1st (it’ll likely start appearing around the city this weekend). You can follow Avenue Edmonton on Twitter.

I also want to pass along my congratulations to the Top 40 Under 40 for Calgary!

Reporting live in a world with Twitter

As you are undoubtedly aware, a gunman held eight people hostage at the WCB in downtown Edmonton last week. I happened to be on Breakfast Television that morning, so I was on the Citytv set as news was trickling in. I had the opportunity to tweet about the news live on the air:

Unconfirmed via @CitytvEdmonton: armed man holed up in the WCB building downtown. #yeg

It all happened very quickly and if the news wasn’t so terrible, I’d have said it was exciting. Certainly it was a good illustration of one aspect of the social media tools I was scheduled to talk about that morning.

A couple of hours later, I setup a live page on ShareEdmonton to cover the story (the feature is a work-in-progress, so it should be time-boxed but isn’t currently). That enabled anyone to quickly look at the stream of updates coming from Edmontonians related to the hostage situation. I used it throughout the day, and the feedback I received was mostly positive. I think what was most powerful about it was that you simultaneously got updates from the local media (in particular, @lyndasteele) and regular citizens, some discussing the event, others simply trying to find out what was going on. I’m sure many more people were just monitoring the #yeg hashtag in Twitter Search, TweetDeck, or some other app.

I think most found Twitter to be a useful resource that day, but not everyone was happy. Can you guess who complained about the Twitter coverage? Some members of the local media, of course. I heard from a number of journalists throughout the day that they were concerned about posting news on Twitter. Esther Enkin from CBC even wrote about it:

The task is complicated further by the sheer volume of communication. Facebook and Twitter were working overtime. At one point, there was a rumour that someone holed up in the building was updating the situation on Facebook.

The level of speculation and misinformation on Twitter was an object lesson on the need to verify and sift the facts.

Late in the day, someone from CBC tweeted that some hostages had contacted us. We weren’t reporting the fact that we had become involved for a bunch of reasons.

But here is a really important principle. We should not tweet what we wouldn’t put on the air.

I’m not going to deny that verifying the facts is important, but I will disagree that the level of “speculation and misinformation” on Twitter was higher than normal. I think it was the opposite actually – I think Twitter enabled citizens to get the facts faster. Faster than walking around talking to neighbours or coworkers, which is where speculation truly thrives, and certainly faster than waiting for the six o’clock news.

Esther takes care in her article to deny that they were withholding information for competitive reasons:

One reason we didn’t let on is because we didn’t want every other news organization jumping in. Not for competitive reasons, but because the chaos could be dangerous.

Really? Chaos would ensue from other media organizations knowing that CBC had talked to the hostage taker? I’m not so sure.

If there’s one thing I’ve learned about the media over the last year it’s that they are incredibly competitive. That was the primary concern when Twitter hit the scene in Edmonton back in Februrary – “we can’t tweet that or our competitors will find out.” Maybe Esther is telling the truth, but I don’t believe it.

Her other reason for withholding the information was based on CBC’s Journalistic Standards and Practices, last amended in 2004 (before Twitter, you’ll note).

Of course, the primary danger of live reporting and detailed descriptions of what is going on outside in a situation like this is that the hostage taker can be listening, watching and logging on.

That makes sense at first, but think about it a little more. That statement implicitly suggests that reporters can collectively control the information the hostage taker is receiving. Really?

Trying to control the information is impossible. You have to assume the hostage taker is going to be looking for information. These days, that probably means he or she is carrying a device with Internet capabilities. You also have to assume that regular people are going to be posting information, people who never went to journalism school and who don’t work for a media organization. Some of those people are going to be merely observers, looking at the situation from the outside. Others will be part of the event.

All the signs point to more information, from more people, faster than ever before. Most of us walk around with phones or other Internet connected devices, and in a couple years you probably won’t be able to buy a device without Internet connectivity. I think that’s the reality, and that’s the world the media need to visualize themselves in.

Stop complaining about the misinformation on social networks, and start preempting it. Stop trying to control the flow of information, and start figuring out how to effectively contribute the facts.