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Article by Boris on Remotely Urban:

REF

Nenshi says what?


Nenshi, now with 20% more Moose

If Skyscraperpage forumers voted now (right now, July 7, 2010), Naheed Nenshi would be mayor of Calgary, according to the latest results on the forum poll. He leads the vote by 57%.

The moose who ran through downtown would be the next strongest contender, trailing behind at 23% of the vote. Still, that’s well ahead of third and fourth place, Ric McIver and Kent Hehr, who are tied at 6%. The moose hasn’t officially entered his name into the contest and could not be reached for comment.

While these numbers greatly exaggerate the base of support that Nenshi currently has (we are talking about a fairly close community of skyscraper and urban enthusiasts here), it does come at a time when the Mount Royal professor has kicked off his campaign with a speech at Arts Central. The Political Calgary blog ranks Nenshi’s twitter usage just behind Paul Hughes and ahead of Craig Burrows, in terms of Authenticity, Effectiveness, and Uniqueness. That doesn’t necessarily mean that Nenshi is one of the best at getting his message out there — a lot of people don’t use these social networking tools and the print media seems asleep on the job — but it does offer him an opportunity to go viral.

Interestingly, the poll results for Nenshi on Political Calgary correlate with the one on SSP, showing him ahead at 54%. I suspect the support some other candidates picked up in that poll is largely due to the moose’s absence.

No really, Nenshi says what?

The candidates are still setting up their platforms, and we have a while yet until this election gets into full steam. So it’s understandable that not all the information is out there yet. Heck, my parents had no idea who Nenshi was until I showed them his site. And it seems like academic is the new black.

To break it down quickly, Nenshi is releasing his platform in alphabetical order and has 4 main planks so far:

Accountability

Better Management

Congestion

Dollars

Now, that ought to seem fairly simple. A and B are pretty closely tied however, as the first is about better auditing and b is about better oversight. We could just combine them and start talking about Better ABs.

Nenshi, during his speech the other night, also mentioned the importance of the built environment in attracting and retaining talents (he might be familiar with the work of Richard Florida, who knows?). There is also the matter of the environment, and all that other fun stuff.

The one issue that stands out among the others: the airport tunnel debacle. Nenshi promised the crowd at Arts Central that he would fight hard to get this thing built, and I hope if he gets elected that he can follow through on that promise.