Edmonton Economic Development Corporation

The report highlights 7 challenges facing city planners: energy and climate change, river water supply, food security, biodiversity, air quality, one planet living, and waste management.

Edmonton is currently losing protected spaces to generating new ones at a rate of 5:2, and it recommends that we implement city-wide biodiversity planning which uses techniques such as biodiversity offset (where new protected spaces are generated for previous spaces claimed)

Noting that the White Paper report has a 30-year timeline, its largest weakness is that it provides no financial analysis citing that all of these projects would be economically beneficial if studied in sufficiently long timeframes. While the irreplaceable value of our natural surroundings is widely appreciated, a 5-year or 10-year estimate of how this plan will affect the city’s bottom line would be a necessity before the valuable suggestions the White Paper has made are incorporated into city planning policies

notable increase in housing difficulties experienced by newcomers (nation-wide and locally) increasing reliance on immigration for Calgary’s economic growth intensifying disparities faced by immigrants in finding and maintaining appropriate employment impacts of income and employment disparities on housing outcomes

average percentage of immediate family after-tax income spent on housing was 50 per cent 23 percent of responders reported worrying about their housing situation all the time 30 per cent reported that their housing situation was worse in Canada than in their home country only 10 and 7 per cent reported that being close to their cultural/national community and faith community respectively was something they liked about where they live the most commonly reported resource for help with finding housing was friends (60 per cent), compared with 13.5 per cent for family and 12.8 per cent for immigrant services

increase the number of affordable housing options that are appropriate for newcomers in terms of size, location, and proximity to amenities ensure settlement funding recognizes housing as critical to settlement and provides adequate resources enhance collaboration and communication between the homeless and settlement sectors to increase joint program design, planning, and service delivery for newcomers

Alberta isn't far away from a labour shortage worse than the one it suffered during the last boom, says the head of a provincial business group.

The problem with the unemployment rates that are published on StatsCan or the Government of Alberta is they're taken in such large census districts, they can't tell where there (are), in fact, currently labour shortages," Kobly said.

Most of the job gains occurred in the professional, scientific and technical services category, which added 13,300 jobs; and in the forestry, fishing, mining, oil and gas category, which added 6,100.

ConsiderCanada.com and CanadaEnTete.com, two new Web sites that provide comprehensive information for global companies considering expansion into North America.

According to the World Economic Forum, Canada has benefited from the soundest banking system in the world for the last three years running. For the eighth consecutive time, KPMG's Competitive Alternatives study finds Canada leading the G7 with the lowest business costs. The C.D. Howe Institute, which studies social and economic policy, also stated that Canada's international reputation as a destination for capital and investment is better than it has been for a generation

Economic development professionals from Toronto, Montréal, Vancouver, Ottawa, Calgary, Edmonton, Halifax, Québec City, Winnipeg, the Waterloo Region, and Saskatoon work together every day to guide international companies to the Canadian city or cities that offer the most strategic fit," says Michael Darch, Executive Director of OCRI's Ottawa Global Marketing team. "ConsiderCanada.com and CanadaEnTete.com are the latest tools at our disposal to bring new opportunities home.

four sectors on which to focus its growth efforts: agri-food, medical devices, clean technology and information technology

In recent decades, though, many of the fastest-growing cities in America, like Phoenix and Riverside, Calif., have given us a very different urban model. These places have traded away public spaces for affordable single-family homes, attracting working-class families who want their own white picket fences. West and Bettencourt point out, however, that cheap suburban comforts are associated with poor performance on a variety of urban metrics. Phoenix, for instance, has been characterized by below-average levels of income and innovation (as measured by the production of patents) for the last 40 years. “When you look at some of these fast-growing cities, they look like tumors on the landscape,” West says, with typical bombast. “They have these extreme levels of growth, but it’s not sustainable growth.” According to the physicists, the trade-off is inevitable. The same sidewalks that lead to “knowledge trading” also lead to cockroaches

Is President Obama's laser-like focus on students going to and graduating from college all wrong?

According to a team researchers out of Harvard, yes. The just-released "Pathways to Prosperity" (PDF) report claims that instead of making college the ultimate goal, students actually need vocational education for so-called blue collar professions.

Forty-seven million new jobs will be created by 2018, and although almost two-thirds will require some education beyond high school, they won't all require a college degree. Some of the fastest growing jobs—like construction worker, electrician, dental hygienist, police officer, or home health care aide—only require vocational certificates or specialized training.

Bradford, the education authority found that in some neighbourhoods schools were increasingly polarising into becoming all white or all-non white. This was allowing little opportunity for children to learn more about each other. A process of linking between over 70 local schools has now led to much closer co-operation and joint working between staff and pupils. Pupils have on average made 2.6 new cross-cultural friendships since the project began

twinning

TDSB provides for low-achieving students individual support in the classroom and access to language learning in the students’ native language. TDSB supports also efforts to involve parents, neighbourhoods and ethnic communities.

Chinese city planners proposed merging the nine cities around the Pearl River Delta into a single metropolitan area, containing some 42 million people: more than Argentina, and covering an area 26 times bigger than Greater London. (Source: Reuters, January 2011.)

while 'traditional' global powerhouses such as New York, London and Paris are already sharing the stage with Beijing, Mumbai and Istanbul, increasingly cities such as Belem, Chongqing and Guadalajara are ready to make their mark.

Just 100 cities account for 30% of the world's economy, and almost all its innovation. 

Report Urges Increased Labor Mobility to Meet Demands for Economic Growth

Future labor and skills shortages among industrialized nations could be solved in part by boosting the global mobility of talent, according to a new report.  

In Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, expected immigration and birth rates will not offset the workforce losses caused by aging populations

Temporary workers are starting to look, well, not so temporary.