Civic Commons Catalyst: Supporting Transformative Revitalization of Underutilized Spatial Assets in Albertan Cities

In 2020, the Center for Civilization at the University of Calgary School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape (SAPL), Evergreen (a national non-profit) and Future Cities Canada, laid the foundations of the Civic Commons Catalyst (CCC) Initiative (ie. “the Catalyst”)—an interdisciplinary research and innovation platform embedded with SAPL’s City Building Design Lab (CBDLab).

By strategic design, the Catalyst has been incubated and embedded within the University due to its intellectual capacity and substantive local and regional partnership assets. With the CBDLab and its partner faculties leading an inter- and trans-disciplinary city-building research agenda—and its growing list of civil society and government partners—the Catalyst is consciously designed as vehicle for transformational and long-term change for the real estate and other city-building industries, organizations and sectors. Aimed at taking underutilized spatial assets in Albertan cities and catalyzing them into positive assets for their communities that can revitalize their downtowns, the Catalyst is identifying zones of opportunity so that assets can be networked together and help focus strategies for economic development and impact investment.

The Catalyst is developing and deploying a comprehensive set of methods through produced catalogs of underutilized spatial assets.  This initiative complements the work being done by municipalities and industry, and therefore is maximizing the impact and transformational long-term change for both partner municipalities and the Province of Alberta. The Catalyst is currently focused on the extreme levels of commercial vacancy in Greater Downtown Calgary while branching out to additional Albertan communities—deploying the research methods and findings to a rural setting and opening up opportunities and strategies for replicability across the rest of the Province. With catalogs, ideation methodologies, detailed design briefs and partnerships to advance them, the Catalyst is providing clear and innovative roadmaps to engage in economic development and impact investment in downtown cores—providing lasting impact to municipalities and the real estate industry.

The Civic Commons Catalyst has been made possible through funding and support from a variety of organizations—most notably through two grants from the Alberta Real Estate Foundation [1] (AREF). As such, the Catalyst addresses all three of AREF’s primary mandates: education of the public and professionals, research on policy and law reform, and advancement of activities that improve the real estate industry. Through its employment of graduate researchers across the disciplines of architecture, landscape architecture, planning, public policy and business, the Catalyst is also contributing to the training of future real estate industry professionals—helping promote a pipeline of young talent with developed core competencies that can advance the sector. This is inline with the Alberta 2030 long-term strategic plan for Alberta’s post-secondary system.

1. The Alberta Real Estate Foundation invests in real estate policy, research, practices, and education that strengthen Alberta’s communities. The Foundation’s revenues come from the interest earned on public money deposited in real estate brokers’ pooled trust accounts. Learn more at www.aref.ab.ca.