EDMONTON - Scott Fenwick believes democracy is more than just voting for politicians every four years to be his voice on city council.

It includes having his voice heard too, which is why the 25-year-old spent Saturday in a meeting room in City Hall learning how Edmonton plans for moving people around on its roads and public transit.

“Democracy goes beyond votes. It involves participating in society and participating in whatever public consultation processes the city has,” he says.

Transportation is one of six Planning Academy courses the city is running in November that provide citizens with information about how to get involved in transforming the community’s physical layout and design.

With what he’s learned, Fenwick says, “I would at least like to participate in the public conversation to help improve the state of the city itself.”

That’s what Stephanie McCabe, one of four city staffers involved in the daylong presentation, loves to hear.

“We rely on citizens as part of a two-way conversation between the city and citizens in planning infrastructure. We rely on their feedback,” she says. “Sometimes, citizens have local knowledge the engineers doing the design or planners doing the design don’t have, that help to inform city council’s decision-making. We bring that forward as an integral part of the planning process.”

The city has been running the Planning Academy for about six years — offering courses in the spring, and again in the fall. Twenty-two people attended the Transportation course, but there is room for up to 40 people.

“We get all kinds of people coming out,” says McCabe, general supervisor of policy implementation and evaluation with Transportation. “Some are interested citizens, or they have development going on in their area and they want to learn a little more about how to become involved. We have students taking planning courses and would like to learn a little more about the city’s processes. We also have city staff attend so they can learn more about other areas; Realtors; and development industry representatives.”

Colton Mozak was on hand because he’s working on a civil engineering degree and says the Planning Academy courses are “definitely part of what I would like to do in the engineering field when it comes to road design and that kind of stuff and this plays an important part, so I want to know the background of it.”

The 21-year-old has already taken a few of the city courses and plans to complete them all by the end of the month.

Hande Tanerguclu, Stacy Herrick and Tanjin Rahman are all city employees who took the course because they want to better understand how the whole planning process works, beyond their part in it.

“It really puts you in their (other employees’) shoes and all the different things that you have to consider,” says 29-year-old Tanerguclu, who works in the financial services and utilities department assessing the economic impact of projects and developments to the city.

“It’s so easy to criticize what’s done and what’s there, but you don’t know what actually goes into it, what the process is.”