Mapping Possibilities for Conviviality: Inclusive Dialogues to Revitalize Calgary's Heart

Abstract

This thesis serves as a framework for the re-imagination of urban infrastructure. Calgary’s Canadian Pacific rail corridor is the study site, bisecting the downtown and creating exclusionary space in the city’s heart. The exploration of unconventional mapping methods reveals the space’s latent potential, allowing the conviviality of a broader variety of inhabitants, particularly those marginalized or voiceless in current municipal planning processes.

The thesis investigates the origins of Calgary’s exclusionary approach to urban planning and proposes alternative methodologies that give agency to the disempowered—particularly ‘design by improvisation’—a rehearsal of engagement processes inclusive of human, animal, and environmental inhabitants. This method is employed through the speculative design of three projects along the corridor: a landscaped park accommodating wildlife and children, a commercial-to-residential adaptive reuse providing housing for the elderly and those experiencing houselessness, and schematic design reinterpreting the Fort Calgary site, from the perspective of Indigenous communities and rivers.