Calgary’s main developers group apologized Thursday after igniting furor and mockery with an article some say preached segregation by suggesting that gay couples may not feel comfortable living “in a world of heterosexual suburbanites.”
But it only did so after several cries of protest — most notably from Mayor Naheed Nenshi.
The online article, removed a day after Urban Development Institute’s Calgary branch posted it Wednesday, said research exists that “how comfortable a person feels in a place where no one is like them” is a “profound influence” in people’s housing choice, and that the city should be planned accordingly.
“It’s amusing, but it’s also deeply offensive to the kind of community that we’re building here,” the mayor said in an interview. “I’m shocked that in 2013, not 1958, you actually have quote-unquote research that shows that minorities and people with tattoos and gay people should live in different neighbourhoods.”
Guy Huntingford, the group’s CEO, said his organization was attempting to celebrate diversity in the collaboratively written piece. (The article ends by saying as much.)
“I guess I accept that was not the right way to put it across, but it was to say that we’re all different,” he said Thursday.
“And, obviously, the examples that we used were obviously offensive to some people, which is unfortunate, and I would probably apologize for that.”
The article, based on research it never cites, relies on a concept named “comfort capital.”
“And it doesn’t just apply to visible minorities searching out the diaspora,” the article states.
“It can be the guy with tattoos, feeling on display every time he shops at the Safeway on the city’s periphery.
“Or the gay couple in a world of heterosexual suburbanites.”
The two-page piece goes on to say some women wouldn’t know what to wear at a hip nightclub, let alone want to go. “Shoe-horning everyone into mandated, single-vision neighbourhoods won’t work,” it concludes.
The article was posted on the UDI website under a “Just the Facts” banner. It’s apparently part of the group’s long-standing push to encourage more suburbs along with dense redevelopment — both of which city hall is accommodating in its plans.
Later in the day, Huntingford’s association issued a more definitive statement: “These examples didn’t work, and in fact were seen as offensive. UDI wishes to apologize unconditionally to anyone who was offended.”
Bev Sandalack, who leads the Urban Lab at University of Calgary, said she’s never heard of comfort capital. Nor did some urban sociologists the Herald consulted.
Ethnic or linguistic minority groups sometimes settle in particular sections of Calgary and other cities, Sandalack said.
“But the way the UDI letter was reading is that people are feeling uncomfortable if they’re different,” she said. “And that’s twisting the logic, that letter could definitely promote a kind of bigotry that’s really unhealthy.”
Click here for the full story by Jason Markusoff in the Calgary Herald.