Calgary project turns kids into urban planners to improve school commutes

School drop-off can be stressful — but what if kids dictated how the car lineup works, or where crosswalks and other traffic calming measures are put around school grounds? 

Students at four Calgary schools had the opportunity to re-imagine how their school streets would look in a perfect world. And now, their designs will come to life this spring.

It's part of a project called "Stepping Towards a Greener Tomorrow."

Sustainable Calgary, in partnership with Ever Active Schools, the City of Calgary and Spectacle Bureau, launched a series of online and in-person workshops last year.

"We wanted to work with kids to develop safe and inviting routes to school," said Celia Lee, Sustainable Calgary's executive director. "To keep kids safe, to keep them active and to help them reduce their carbon emissions." 

Students from Connaught School, Calgary Islamic Omar Bin Al-Khattab (OBK) Campus, Manmeet Singh Bhullar and École La Mosaïque participated in workshops. 

The kids evaluated their daily travels to school and re-imagined them. 

Students learned about urban planning concepts and ideas to get them thinking about how they can feel safe and have fun walking or pedaling to school.

At Calgary Islamic OBK, fifth grade teacher Rima Alkadry says most of her students don't walk to school — despite living nearby. The school is nestled in the Franklin Industrial Area, where sidewalks are few and far between. 

One of the main entries into the school parking lot is an alleyway. Whether students are walking from the nearby Franklin LRT station or getting a ride from parents, they use the alley to get to and from school. 

That's what her class focused on. 

"The greenery, the benches that are going to be there …  all the colourful and playfulness of this new design — the students are going to feel a little bit more welcomed," Alkadry said. "Walking into their school in the morning or leaving school at the end of the day is going to brighten their day." 

Once complete, the alleyway will be a shared street where pedestrians are the priority, but cars still flow in and out of the space. 

There's hope this project will open up conversations with the city.

"Maybe it will, you know, move this industrial area into a more exciting, playful area for the students so that they feel a little bit more welcomed and engaged," Alkadry said. "I know that we try a lot here inside the school and maybe we can work a little bit on the outside. Why not?"

In the Beltline, kids wanted to take back the street beside Connaught School by closing it to traffic. 

"I think their words were: forever and always," Lee said. "They wanted to tear down the fence between their jungle gym and the streets and turn it into a great place for the community as well."

Through this process, Sustainable Calgary community lead Srimal Ranasinghe learned kids don't see getting to school as a utilitarian exercise. It's a lot more playful. Walking to school should feel safe, and fun.

Students mused about adding a catapult for snowball fights on the way to school, or a long slide to transport them to the school grounds instead of walking all that way. 

"The idea that this space is not just a space for cars … or like an adult space, but it's a space for everyone," Ranasinghe said. "Seeing those lights come on in some ways in seeing how they were like, wow." 

Of course, kids don't know all of Calgary's bylaws and best practices, so their ideas may not follow the rules — which, Ranasinghe said, is a good thing. It makes the adults in the room think outside of the box. 

The grade-school students turned ideas into clay models and drawings, and finally, university architecture students lent a hand to create formal project renderings.

Kids will bring the plans to life this coming spring.