The Bottom-Up Revolution
Your downtown isn't a money pit — it's a money pot. When Medicine Hat, Alberta, discovered the real financial value of traditional urban form, it sparked something bigger: a grassroots movement that's now changing who runs city hall. Superintendent of Planning Shawn Champagne joins Norm to discuss small bets, fiscal resilience, and why bottom-up change actually works.
Transcript (Lightly edited for readability)
Hello and welcome to this Bottom Up Short. I'm Norm with Strong Towns, and I'm excited to welcome you to this conversation with Shawn Champagne, who is the superintendent of planning for the city of Medicine Hat in Alberta, Canada.
Shawn and many of the other members of the city of Medicine Hat staff participated in the Community Action Lab, working together with members of the community to grapple with the ideas and the challenges that Strong Towns ideas put in front of them. They grappled seriously with the real needs that they have to contend with—not just opportunities for growth, but also responsibilities for ongoing maintenance, for making careful use of scarce resources, and for doing the work of building a strong community.
Shawn was a key part of that. He was one of our core liaisons working with the Strong Towns team, and he continues that work in the community in Alberta, building capacity, building up opportunities, and doing what he can to make Medicine Hat a stronger community. Shawn, welcome to Bottom Up Shorts.
Hey, thanks a lot, Norm. That's a very kind introduction, and it's great to reconnect with you again.
It's good to connect. The compliments are well earned. As the city of Medicine Hat moves forward in your strategic plan, there are nods to trying to do things in a Strong Towns way, and you've had a role in helping to flesh out what we mean when we say that. Can you describe what some of that has looked like?
Of course. Participating in the Strong Towns Community Action Lab was really eye-opening for me. As an urban planner who's gone through an urban planning program and studied this, I think we talk a lot about why mixed-use development is a good thing for a city and why density might be good for the way that we build our cities because it builds a sense of community and well-being.
But working through the Community Action Lab, I learned that although those things may be true, there's also a huge financial component to that. What was really interesting for me was working through this fiscal analysis of all the decisions that we're making. Professionally, that was probably one of the biggest impacts it had for me—looking through things through a financial lens to make sure that the decisions we were making make financial sense for our city.
When we talk about vibrancy and resiliency, those things are often aligned, but sometimes they're not. Something that might render a neighborhood more vibrant might not make the city more resilient. I've noticed that as we've been working through some projects professionally here in the city. Right now we're looking at some plans for potentially building another large recreation facility here, and we're in an engagement phase with the public.
A lot of people would think I'd be on board with this 100 percent. This is great—more vibrancy, a space to bring community together. But when I start looking at it through a financial lens, I start asking difficult questions. Although this might be great, it might make it more difficult for us to be more resilient, especially fiscally as a city. That was my big takeaway from the Community Action Lab.
Yeah, I appreciate that. The Medicine Hat Tigers stadium, for example, is out some distance from the core of the community, and that does create conditions in which much of the responsibility to enjoy and share the resources that have been put into that space come with limited opportunity for a lot of people because it's either not accessible to them or not woven into the fabric of the neighborhood.
One thing that stood out was this reappraisal of downtown's value. In a speech, I said your downtown is your money pot, not a money pit. Can you describe maybe some of the return of love or the increase of confidence that downtown Medicine Hat, with its traditional built form, actually had so much value—maybe a value that wasn't fully appreciated?
Absolutely. That actually comes from one of our most interesting lessons when we were in the Community Action Lab. Strong Towns actually wrote a great article on the topic where we had really broken down and done a fiscal analysis of just one business downtown. It was a cheesecake store, and we compared it to one of our quote-unquote power centers on the outer edge of the city.
We realized pretty quickly that the value per hectare of this property downtown was leaps and bounds over the power center that's in the far north of our city. It's because of its built form. The power center is mostly a parking lot. Just from the way that our tax assessment is done, a parking stall is never going to be assessed at the same value as a business downtown.
That was a perfect example of where vibrancy and resiliency really did align and go hand in hand. You go into our downtown, and this is a vibrant core, a vibrant center, but it's also a money-making machine. That's what I think won a lot of people over as we were working through the Community Action Lab.
Some people from the public thought that we were maybe trying to impose some development forms or really trying to push a certain narrative on the city. That wasn't it at all. As soon as we explained this is free-market capitalism at its finest—this is really the invisible hand that's guiding development patterns in the city—that won over a lot of people, especially here in Medicine Hat. Alberta is conservative. Medicine Hat is probably the most conservative of the conservative. There's definitely a lot of fiscal attention paid by the people here, making sure that their money is being spent wisely. We were able to gain a lot of allies once we started to analyze things financially like that.
One of the things that is visible—we were in Medicine Hat this summer and last summer as we were driving through on family road trips—are some instances of Quick Build. Sort of rapid deployment, safety improvements, things like bump-outs at intersections where the city has not gone and done the finished product, but it's a version of iterating on that process.
You're not only a planner, but you're also recognizing there's a vitality and evolution that takes place within a community. Can you share a little bit about that tension—maybe between "we have a plan, let's stick to it" versus "we actually need to observe on the ground what's happening here and adapt accordingly"? What has that been like for you?
Absolutely. The example you shared on the bump-outs and traffic calming measures was a great example as well. Strong Towns wrote a great article on this too. I always encourage people to check those out.
For us, what was really difficult when working through a project like that was balancing what a small bet was. Especially as city employees, we were always really trying to overreach or do too much. I remember in that session we were brainstorming how to do some traffic calming. We always look at another municipality to see how they do it for inspiration. Calgary had this great example where they had concrete molds that they pour leftover concrete into, and they just put these in an intersection to temporarily create a bump-out. We thought that was great. Calgary is doing it, so why can't we?
Then we realized we can't do it because we don't have any of these materials on hand. We don't have the concrete or the molds. So we're really trying to find something we can do in 24 hours. In step two, we swung way too far the other direction. We were thinking, "Okay, well, let's start putting tires out in the street and some raised planters, let's get some dirt in the street. We can definitely do that."
Then our municipal engineers got involved and said, "This is great, but there's no way I'm letting you put tires out in our streets. But I got something better that you can do." As soon as we started collaborating with our roads department, we better understood what constraints they were facing. There were certain things we as planners were really gung-ho to do. But as soon as we understood that these engineers need to meet engineering guidelines and engineering standards, we tried to meet them in the middle.
Collaborating like that was a really good exercise. Coming out of this, it was really advantageous for us because we could really observe how this traffic calming was functioning before we started to invest a whole bunch of money into a finished product. The biggest benefit is that we really didn't get a lot of pushback from the public because it's not something we sunk a whole bunch of money into.
Had we built something to its finished state without piloting it like that, there'd probably be a lot more pushback from the public. But this was so small. Some people would ask, "What's the point of this? Why did you even put these here?" But then they'd move on because it's small. They understood pretty quickly how it functions and what the purpose is. Mostly they thought, "Oh, it's a small bet, sure. Let them do what they want."
Some will say they're just going through a phase. Yes, but this is a phase that begins this process of first making the good visible and then making it permanent after some time of testing and learning from it.
What stands out to me, Shawn, is that as I've gotten to know you—and let me introduce you to our podcast audiences—you are a technical professional. You're very skilled and you have all the training. But deep down, you're also a strong citizen loving your place, really caring about the community, and carrying those things with you into each of the things you do in your work.
Can you share a little bit about the path that brought you to Medicine Hat and some of the responsibilities that you see as being core to your sense of what it takes to be a strong citizen in your community?
My journey here started when I studied urban planning. I got my master's in planning from the University of Aix-Marseille in France. That was a great experience for me. I was living abroad at the time, and I realized this is really a great way of living. I was living in an apartment and riding my bike everywhere. I was walking to the grocery store and walking to the library. Although I owned a car, I realized I didn't have to rely on it so much. I was really intrigued by that, so I decided to start studying it.
Once I graduated, my wife and I decided to move back to Canada and move here to Medicine Hat. I think I brought some of that knowledge with me here, but what has changed most drastically and most recently is the planning landscape. It was no longer reserved only for those who had specifically chosen to study this. There were so many materials and YouTube channels specifically talking about good urban planning practices, and I realized these were tailored for a broader audience.
Strong Towns is a great example of this, but it's part of a larger network of other YouTube channels that have become really popular. I'm thinking about Not Just Bikes, City Nerd, and The Happy Urbanist John. Even some really good Canadian ones like Urbanity, based out of Montreal, and even some cycling ones like Shifter, out in Calgary. I love that these short-format 10-minute videos are reaching a really broad audience.
What's great for me as a professional is now I'm able to engage with residents at that level. People who are showing an interest have an opportunity to learn more about it. You don't need to be a technical professional anymore to study these things, show an interest, and then participate in it. That's the Strong Towns thing—how can you empower a resident to take upon themselves some responsibility in making their city a better place?
I love the language you used—just the recognition that the planning profession began to be benefited by and bolstered by this broader network of people contributing insights and popularizing terms and concepts like "missing middle" and other things like this.
Do you want to share some tips or suggestions for others that are either interested in doing a master's in urban planning or taking on responsibilities with their city, or wanting to learn how to make the most of those opportunities as they work with people in city administration?
Yeah, absolutely. For me, that's an easy question to answer. I tell them to just do it. Figure out what it is that you can do. I always go back to the Strong Towns four-step approach to public investment: identify a way that people are struggling in your community, figure out what's the smallest thing I can do to address that struggle, and then just do it and repeat.
As small as it might be, just dive into it. We were really lucky as a municipality that we had a lot of support behind us, so we were able to apply for and be accepted to this Community Action Lab and participate in this two-year program. It was wonderful, but all of the materials that we studied as part of our action team are all publicly available. That's what I thought was great. The homework that we were being given was a lot of materials that are just hosted on the Strong Towns platform—at Strong Towns Academy—where anyone can sign up and take some of these lessons.
Our action team sessions were really informal. There was one person facilitating, they'd send some homework, everyone would study it, and then we'd come together over a lunch hour once a week, once every two weeks, or even once a month, and just chat about it. Anybody can do that. Just find a group of like-minded people—whether that's through a local conversation group or if you're working professionally in a municipality, find some other employees at the city who might be interested and just start your own action team.
Our public library had a great initiative where they said, "You know what? We like the Strong Towns thing. We're going to create a book club kit." It's just a kit with 10 of these books. Residents could read them and then come together and have a book club session. I participated in that one, and it was great, and it really didn't take much.
Just take that first step. Do whatever you can to bring people together and participate in this local conversation in one way or another, and you'll eventually see it grow organically. This stuff will grow and snowball organically.
I love that because, unlike rocket science or some other topic that you might try to get people interested in just because they're curious, if you look out of your bedroom window, you're going to see things that touch on what Strong Towns is concerned about. There's that real practicality to this, a real opportunity to always be connecting it to things people experience on a day-to-day basis.
But in your work within the city and your official responsibility as a family member within the community, what are some of the things that give you hope?
That's a great question. I'm often looking for things that give me hope because my job can be difficult sometimes. We're dealing with the public a lot of the time. Although some may be happy, others may be very unhappy, and people are becoming a lot more vocal online.
But what gives me hope is I've realized that for the most part, everybody is good, and everybody wants the best for the community. They may differ in the ways that they want to accomplish that, but for the most part, we all want the same thing for our community. We want Medicine Hat to thrive.
What's giving me the most hope right now is we're going through municipal election season. We've got a lot of candidates out for both councilor and mayor. What I love is seeing a lot of the same familiar faces that I was seeing at a lot of our Strong Towns events, our local conversation groups, the curbside chat that you actually hosted at the library.
Many of the people that participated in those sessions—I've actually seen a few who are now running for council or running for mayor. That gives me a lot of hope for our city. Things that happened at such a small scale—specifically, I think of our local conversation group. One of the co-founders of the Medicine Hat chapter of the Strong Towns local conversation group is running for council. I think that's a great thing.
Somebody who's been really civic-minded and involved in the community and really wanting the best for our community now striving to have an official role in leading our city is a really wonderful thing. Just knowing that soon there may even be some Strong Towns aspects that are creating some political influence within our city is such a great thing.
I had never anticipated that when this small thing happened of being accepted to the Community Action Lab. We're seeing mostly a grassroots effort now being a lot more legitimized and in certain ways taking center stage, just changing the lens and the frame through which people are looking through municipal issues as a city.
That's fantastic. If folks want to connect with you, especially thinking of our Canadian audience members and those that work as technical professionals in cities across the country, what's a good way for them to connect with you?
Yeah, of course. I'm always happy to talk to other planners, especially other Canadians, who might be interested in this. I just presented last week to PPI, which is the Alberta chapter of the Professional Planners Institute. I gave them a one-hour lunch and learn session where I shared our experience through the Community Action Lab, and I had a lot of good feedback from them.
I love helping other municipalities. If anyone wants to reach out to me, they can send me an email: [email protected]
That's fantastic. Well, thank you, Shawn, for making time and for continuing the work that you're doing in your community. You're certainly bringing civic leadership and guidance, and I think helping to facilitate a humble discussion about those small bets and those next steps that actually are within reach.
I'm encouraged by what you said—even just go back and pick up the Strong Towns book or do other things like this with other people—because truly, there is interest and desire for these types of conversations to emerge and to mature within our places.
Thank you, Shawn, for being on Bottom Up Shorts. As always, take care, folks, and take care of your places.
This episode was produced by Strong Towns, a nonprofit movement for building financially resilient communities. If what you heard today matters to you, deepen your connection by becoming a Strong Towns member at strongtowns.org/membership.