Tim Keane, Atlanta’s visionary planning commissioner from July 2015 to February 2022, will be moving from Boise to Calgary, Canada.
Keane will become Calgary’s general manager of planning and development services beginning on April 1.
“I’m moving to Canada for the biggest job by far I’ve ever had,” Keane wrote in a text.
Stuart Dalgleish, Calgary’s chief operating officer, said in a press release: “We want to ensure Calgary is a place everyone feels they belong. It’s a top priority for our organization and for the planning and development department as they plan our great city. Mr. Keane will be a valuable leader in the organization to help us advance our commitments to equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging, anti-racism, and truth & reconciliation.”
Keane left Atlanta to become director of planning and development services in Boise, Idaho. The timing of his departure coincided shortly after Atlanta Mayor Andre Dickens went into office. But in an exit interview, Keane spoke highly of Dickens saying the new mayor had a lot of energy and passion for the City of Atlanta.
Still, Keane obviously expressed frustrations at several projects that were underway — the approach MARTA was taking on the redesign of the Five Points Station as well as the fact that the city’s planning department was not consulted on finding the best location for the controversial public safety training center.
During his time in Atlanta, Keane left a deep imprint on the city by championing the Atlanta City Design project with Ryan Gravel, an urban planner who had the initial idea to create the Atlanta BeltLine.
The Atlanta City Design Project was a work of art and design that has served as a beacon for how we can grow as a city – creating corridors for density while preserving the residential areas and Atlanta’s natural environs.
Keane, who had his detractors, also fought hard to save several historic structures in Atlanta and make sure that new buildings adhered to street-friendly urban design standards.
Just last week, Keane authored a piece in Scientific American with the following headline: “To design cities right, we need to focus on people.”
In the column, Keane wrote:
“Design-based, community-scaled solutions are paramount because we now must grow within our existing places rather than sprawl, which has ruined too much land, generated too many greenhouse gas emissions and wasted too much time as we drive for every simple thing. The city and all its neighborhoods must get better with more people in them.
“We need to design physical cities to be more enriching and distinguished. The degree to which a city becomes more equitable and resilient has to do with its physical attributes. How the physical city changes determines the degree to which we can deal with housing affordability, mobility and climate adaptation.”
Those messages still resonate in Atlanta.
He’s still a huge failure. His arrival heralds the destruction of any planning department. Only the worthless staff will remain. Tim has already left Canada. No suprise to anyone that he is employable ANYWHERE? His approach to Planning, lack of leadership, and placating the blacks is the reason he is no longer with the City of Atlanta.