My Experience at the 2025 APPI Conference
I was luckily chosen to attend the APPI conference in Banff from a random draw via GAPSS. The conference took place in the Banff Park Lodge Hotel Resort from Sunday, October 19 to Tuesday, October 21. As a third year undergrad majoring in Planning, I was the least qualified person there. I confirmed this by networking. Everyone else had a Planning job or was a grad student. Except for Seamus, but he is a fourth year student so I was still the least qualified.
SUNDAY
I arrived on Sunday at around 5:00 PM. I talked to the woman from APPI who I was supposed to register with. I told her to look for one of the name tags without any fun professional letters on it. She found me quickly after that. After that I checked into my room. It was right by the lobby so I could hear everyone else register by saying name, municipality, RPP/MCIP.
There was a welcome reception for all the attendees. It was held at the Whyte Museum. They even had old Banff town planning documents (specially procured) for us to look at. I thought it was dangerous to let us touch the maps; this crowd might pull a marker and start colouring in things.
There was food, but there were no tables to eat at. When I told people I was a student from the University of Alberta, half of them said, “Oh, I know Neal!”
MONDAY
It began with a video from Shane Communities called “The Joy of Planning”. It had a man in a bad Bob Ross get-up painting a plan and then messing it up: “Don’t worry, these aren’t mistakes, it’s just new innovative land use”, said Planner Bob Ross, after painting a road directly into a stormwater pond. That got a lot of laughs.
We then had a guest speaker called Devon Clunis talk. He was the former Police Chief of Winnipeg (2012 - 2016). I can’t do his speech justice, but he had a great message about diversity without it sounding preachy. Which is insane, because when looking him up for this article, apparently he was the force’s chaplain. He's clearly a very passionate guy who seeks to mitigate crime not through solely criminal justice but through social services and institutions. He has books you can buy.
We then had our pick of talks to go to. I will only mention one for the sake of brevity:
WHAT COMES NEXT: REGIONAL PLANNING AND RELATIONSHIPS AFTER EMRB
Jane Purvis, who spoke in my PLAN 310 class, was there.
There was an extended “Day of our Lives” metaphor applied to regional planning in Edmonton. As a soap opera, it will drift into and out of lives in relevance depending on the present provincial govt. 's whim. Also, it will keep on going until we all die.
Strong rural and urban divide between municipalities in EMRB. Some rural municipalities did not like having to kowtow to Edmonton in regards to regional strategy. They have to do that as Edmonton has the greatest influence on the board.
The (former) CMRB people there seem to actually prefer not having the provincial government mandate how to do regional planning.
After all the talks, there was a banquet dinner. I sat with the UofA MURP students. They are all very nice people. Some of them TA your classes, so they can (and will) beat you up.
Some people won some awards. Dnyanesh Deshpande, who teaches some urban design at the UofA, and is a principal for Green Space Alliance received an award on behalf of his work for the City of Edmonton on District Planning. Congratulations to him! There was also municipal election trivia. Our table lost. We should’ve guessed Red Deer more.
TUESDAY
This was essentially a half day. The conference ended at noon, but there was one more talk worth mentioning.
This was a debate held between three planners comparing District Planning in Edmonton vs. Local Area Plans in Calgary. There were two planners from Edmonton and one planner from Calgary. The moderator was a planner from Calgary so it all evened out. I will give some notes:
PLANNING BATTLE OF ALBERTA comparing Edmonton and Calgary
I’m not going to detail what district planning is to you folks
The Calgary equivalent are local area plans (LAPs). These serve a similar purpose in consolidating and getting rid of old policy/plans and having another policy document to point to that isn’t the MDP. The biggest difference is that they are smaller in scale geographically (15 district plans vs. proposed 40 LAPs).
Holy cow, does Calgary have money. For the first 8/40 LAPs, there was 2+ years of engagement. And they were doing work groups and going on local walks with community members and fancy stuff too. Edmonton had one slide talking about engagement for district plans. Calgary had several.
I will say that Calgary still has to get 32/40 LAPs approved by council. Edmonton did all 15 districts in one shot. The people who worked on that were shook to their core to get that done, but it was done in one shot!
Edmonton got a new MDP, zoning bylaw, and district planning all done in a relatively short time approved in sequence. Calgary is currently working on a new MDP, zoning bylaw, and more LAPs, with all those timelines overlapping. So good luck to their coordination team.
After the debate, the power went out. I left the final talk early because I couldn’t hear (the mic had no power) and I was worried about being locked out of my room.
Also, I talked to a lot of U of A alumni from the conference. They all asked if Bob was still around. He was at the conference!
Written by GAPSS member Raymond L.