It’s election season for many cities across Canada: Calgary and Edmonton settled their polls Monday; Ottawa faces decision day; Toronto heads into its final week of campaigning before the vote on Oct. 25. For all those pondering the future of their cities, here are some illuminating election-related reads.

• The election of new Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi has the whole country
  talking — he’s Canada’s first Muslim mayor; a young professor;
  progressive politician; an immigrant son. If you’re curious what his
  policies and governing style are like, this well thought out TEDx Calgary talk he gave on urban planning may hold clues as to what’s ahead for Cowtown.
• The politically divisive race between Rob Ford, George Smitherman and Joe Pantalone has reached soap-operatic proportions, which has a lot of Torontonians feeling, shall we say, confused. Vote strategically? Vote counter-intuitively? Vote rationally? Toronto writer Jonathan Goldsbie sums up the internal struggle to decide who to side with in his latest column.
• But Toronto: don’t get too down. This election may not be the most inspiring, but at least there aren’t any Nazis, homophobic cops or the KKK, as there were in 1980.