Michael Agueci

Convenience is about where people actually want to live, and right now, zoning makes that harder than it needs to be. Along transit corridors and near commercial activity, more density means more people can live close to where they already go. Mixed-use zoning in walkable areas brings the corner café, the pharmacy, the small employer: the ability to grab a missing recipe ingredient without a 15-minute car trip. A city bikeshare, with stations where transit and density already meet, lets new Guelphites arrive without a car. Ward 5 can be that kind of place.

A constrained housing supply is the root cause of unaffordable rent, rising tax bills, and surging homelessness. Here's why: a long approval process means small developers can't make a modest project pencil, so they consolidate into large-scale developments that recoup the wait through economies of scale.

Those large projects push the city's infrastructure farther from existing systems, raising servicing costs for everyone faster than the tax base grows. Upzoning to allow more homes on existing lots will fix this. Small-scale developments won't need bylaw amendments to make their projects pencil, meaning rental housing gets built faster, keeping up with demand in a way that costs the city less than the increase in the tax base will provide. This May, council shelved the planners' own upzoning report by one vote. I'll finish the work.

Keeping our graduates here should be a priority. Our students have already built something valuable in this city, a knowledgeable network of like-minded classmates, friends, and collaborators. Our city breaks this agglomeration of knowledge every year when thousands leave. Talent is scattered to other cities, losing the compounding effect of smart, motivated people working near one another. Waterloo leaned into its computer science program and built a tech cluster. Pittsburgh leaned on Carnegie Mellon University and went from rust belt to robotics. Waterloo's tech boom and Pittsburgh's resurgence didn't happen by chance; both only got there by capitalizing on their universities. Guelph already has that raw material: in agri-food, veterinary science, and advanced manufacturing, all rooted in the university. Agri-tourism is the next layer of that same story: turning our farming roots into another source of local jobs and spending.

But jobs alone don't keep people in a city. They need a reason to want to stay. Guelph is big enough for a real economy, small enough to still feel like a community, with the greenspace and bikeability to match. That's an edge worth building on, not just protecting.

Let's turn degrees earned in Guelph into careers built in Guelph.