As Calgary experiences rapid population expansion, reshaping its urban landscape and self-perception, a prominent think-tank member emphasizes that quantitative growth alone cannot create a thriving community. Alex Sarian, president of the Werklund Centre and participant in Postmedia's Countdown to 2 Million project, contends that the city must cultivate deeper cultural, social, and civic dimensions alongside its physical expansion.
The Limitations of Population Growth as a Success Metric
New residents continue arriving daily in Calgary, attracted by economic opportunities, affordability, and the dynamic energy of a city still evolving. While population growth typically receives celebration as an indicator of prosperity—bringing more investment and momentum—Sarian challenges this conventional perspective. From his institution's position in downtown Calgary, he observes that growth without corresponding social and cultural development fails to create communities where people genuinely want to settle and remain long-term.
The Werklund Centre as a Microcosm of Urban Transformation
The Werklund Centre serves as a living laboratory where growth manifests not as statistical abstraction but as daily human experience. Hundreds of thousands of individuals pass through its rehearsal halls, educational spaces, galleries, and theaters annually—a mix of established Calgarians and newcomers learning the city's rhythms, values, and contradictions. In these shared spaces, people from diverse backgrounds who might otherwise never interact find themselves sitting side by side.
Sarian identifies a crucial function of arts institutions during periods of rapid urban change: they help residents locate themselves within a place and establish meaningful connections with others. This represents essential work that population growth cannot accomplish independently.
Bridging Divides Through Cultural Engagement
As Calgary's population expands, the city becomes increasingly diverse across cultural, generational, economic, and ideological dimensions. While this diversity represents a significant strength, it also creates potential distances between groups who might not otherwise share physical spaces, traditions, or conversations. Growth can paradoxically bring people closer geographically while pushing them further apart socially.
The arts serve as powerful mediators in this dynamic, creating shared experiences that require no prior knowledge or political alignment. Cultural activities allow people to encounter differences without defensiveness and practice empathy without requiring consensus. In this capacity, arts institutions function as vital civic infrastructure.
Expanding the Infrastructure Conversation
Urban planning typically emphasizes physical systems: housing developments, transportation networks, utilities, and public spaces. These elements rightly command attention during growth periods. However, Sarian argues that cities equally depend on social infrastructure—places where trust develops, belonging gets practiced, and residents transition from mere co-location to genuine community participation.
When arts institutions remain accessible, relevant, and integrated into civic life, they perform this connective work continuously and often quietly. Their role extends beyond entertainment to fundamental community building.
The Risks of Unbalanced Urban Expansion
The primary danger of rapid growth extends beyond congestion or density concerns to more profound social fragmentation. Without strong cultural infrastructure, cities risk developing efficient functionality while lacking emotional depth—places where people live alongside one another without feeling anchored to their shared environment.
Sarian warns that growth without corresponding cultural development can produce proximity without genuine relationships, scale without social cohesion, and constant movement without deeper meaning. As Calgary approaches its two-million population milestone, the challenge involves balancing quantitative expansion with qualitative community building through sustained investment in the arts and cultural institutions that weave the social fabric holding cities together.
