Interactive Tour & Workshop / In.between

The City of Calgary has been ranked as the 5th most livable city in the world—for the sixth year in a row. What a fortune it is to live in such a globally recognized and viable city!

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Although a city without issues is impossible, the challenges Calgary faces are neither secret nor hidden. In fact, they are widely visible and increasingly unavoidable. Public spaces across the city are overwhelmed with social issues. This is undeniably a social emergency, one that demands a coordinated response from the city, healthcare providers, and social support agencies.

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But one might begin to wonder if this is truly just a social problem or rather a visible result of something hidden. And, what can we—as designers and architects—do about it?

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Trained to understand that space is both emotionally and psychologically affected by and affecting its users, we recognize that there is a design problem here — and potentially, a design solution, or at least a partial one, that could improve the conditions of our shared environments.

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As we dove deeper into this issue, we came to an unsettling realization: we have been looking at the matter in reverse. What we are witnessing in public spaces is not the problem itself—but rather the result of a deeper, systemic issue.

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The Program
Join us for a two-hour interactive tour and workshop through East Village, the Riverfront, and the Downtown Core. This walking session will serve as both an exploration and a collaborative investigation into the visible and invisible forces shaping these nodes. Together, we’ll identify not just what’s present, but what’s missing, abandoned, neglected, and forgotten.

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The session will include short participant questionnaires and open brainstorming discussions. Attendees will be invited to contribute their insights across disciplines, drawing from architecture, urban design, public health, planning, and social work. We’ll identify gaps, broken links, and opportunities for connection—physical, social, and spatial.

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This workshop is an invitation to open a dialogue about ownership, access, neglect, and possibility. We’ll explore the idea of activation—how spaces are used, under what conditions, and for whom. The conversation won’t focus on polished or celebrated places, but on those that have been overlooked: the underused, undefined, and often purposeless zones left in the middle. These in-between spaces—neither fully public nor fully abandoned—carry stories worth hearing. Together, we’ll question what it means to design with intention, and how we might rethink the spaces that fall through the cracks. We invite you to step into the in-between with us.