Noel Buckland Dant

With university education from Edinburgh and London Polytechnic College, a Masters Degree in Architecture in City Planning from Yale and a Doctorate in Regional Planning from Harvard - seventeen years of post-secondary education in total - and with experience as a senior planner in Chicago before moving to Toronto to design subway stations, Noël Buckland Dant was more than qualified to become Edmonton's first full-time city planner in 1949. He arrived in Edmonton at age 35, ostensibly lured by a romance, and took on the position when the city was in its post-war boom and as Alberta was just entering the oil rush. The challenges were great: the city was experiencing a severe housing shortage as soldiers returned home and immigration drew countless newcomers from Europe and other parts of Canada, vehicle traffic had increased exponentially, and Edmonton found itself with vast tracts of surplus land ripe for development.

Dant's formula for success gave Edmonton three major defining elements. The first was almost 40 intentionally planned neighbourhoods outlying the city's core. Each was created to maintain enough density to support a central school, with defined boundaries to foster unique community identity, and with a central heart - carefully designed community oriented facilities, recreation spaces, and a small commercial strip that residents could walk to. The result was a stark contrast to the grid system Edmonton upheld previously which had allowed for direct access and through traffic in residential areas. Instead, Dant's communities featured the now familiar crescents and cul-de-sacs contained within curvilinear streets that limited access to the neighbourhood and encouraged efficient traffic flow within its boundaries.

The second lasting contribution from Dant was the installation of the traffic circle and the subsequent love-hate relationship Edmontonians and out-of-towners have with them. Intended to be a stepping stone for future overpasses and clover leafs, a few of these unique traffic-flow measures still exist. However, many more were removed as the space around them was eaten away by surrounding development.

Finally Dant encouraged Edmonton to look into the future of municipal transportation and advocated that the City create a ring road to move traffic freely around the central core. The inception of this in the 1950s, and the initial use of the roads 75th Street, 170th Street, Yellowhead Trail, and Whitemud Drive, has developed into Anthony Henday Drive, and land set aside for another transportation utility corridor beyond the City's current boundaries.

The implementation of Dant's city plans garnered international attention for Edmonton as many of these ideas had been postulated, but never put into practise. Dant resigned from his position after only six years for health reasons and returned to England. Five years later, however, he was back in Edmonton, this time in the role as Director of Town and Rural Planning for the Alberta Government. Dant wrote the Alberta Planning Act in 1978, then retired in 1979 to become a private consultant. He died in Edmonton in 1993.