The Thinking Cap

For the past 5 or so years, there has been a tremendous growth in the number of blogs in Alberta that have started to discuss and ponder about local governments within the province. This is a huge step forward in a world where federalism, provincial, and federal politics are more popular than school boards and city politics. This is an exciting time when people who are actively involved in their cities, towns, or hamlets are discussing local issues and contributing their field of expertise in the form of blogs, news aggregations, or podcasts.

This new blog hopes to go beyond the opinions and news of local politics, and instead take a look at academic research of local politics. There is a lack of literature and journal articles on urban politics and governments, especially within Canada. With that, there is a further lack of acknowledgment or publicly available research for the regular citizen. It is the hope that this blog will cover a wide range of articles and facts, and share them with the Internet. This exploration will take time, and potentially money, in order to achieve that goal.

While opinion and news are available to many individuals in all kinds of forms, academic research in urban politics and urban political theory is not. It is also the hope that those interested and able can also help contribute to this initiative. This will be beyond elections and quotes, but looking at patterns, reasoning, and yes, even visits to city archives.

This blog will focus heavily on Calgary because Calgary is such an interesting city with a lack of research done. Most of the research is dated and hidden in university/college libraries, where people may not have time the time to access.

Kudos to those who are actively blogging and covering city politics for their efforts and dedication to bringing Calgarians and those interested in Calgary news the coverage this city so desperately needs.