A lab-produced chicken product created by a small startup company in downtown Edmonton is expected to be ready to serve within five years.

Future Fields, a three-person company that launched a year and a half ago, is hoping to break through in the growing cultured meat industry by producing chicken products in a lab rather than the traditional farm in order to meet the growing demand for protein.

Edmonton may be best known for industries like energy and government, but the city also boasts an entrepreneurial class that is burgeoning even as other sectors fluctuate.

The city’s business community taps into a number of industries and economic drivers, giving it strength, said Edmonton Chamber of Commerce president and CEO Janet Riopel. And owners of those businesses are “very attuned to what’s going on,” she said.

Downtown Edmonton’s real estate market has bounced back as the oil and gas industry recovers from its recent slump, but the glow could fade in coming months.

The office vacancy rate at the end of June dropped to 12.5 per cent, down from 15.3 per cent in 2017 and far below the crushing 26 per cent vacancy rate in downtown Calgary, figures from Avison Young real estate show.

A self-professed Edmonton data nerd has managed to capture a century of city growth in six seconds flat.

Using the city's open data portal, Eugene Chen created an animated map of Edmonton that tracks building construction in the city from 1917 to 2017.

"It's definitely fascinating to see the growth of Edmonton as it reaches out to the outer parts of the city," said Chen, a member of the analytical team at Darkhorse Analytics.

Transportation staff with the City of Edmonton have committed to begin shifting traffic signals to new smart technology.

Members of city council’s urban planning committee were told on Tuesday that this September, council will get a report that spells out a set of test corridors.

As well, when the next four-year budget is adopted this fall, plans will be to begin shifting over to new signal lights for those times when the old ones are replaced.

Edmonton Mayor Don Iveson says the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project won't be a "silver bullet" for the city's economy even if it goes ahead.

And the city can no longer count on oilsands development for its economic health, Iveson said in his annual state of the city address Thursday in front of an Edmonton Chamber of Commerce audience at the Shaw Conference Centre.

"The oil sands are not likely to see a return to the frenetic expansion of the last generation," Iveson said.

Edmonton could become a major centre for developing ways to use the artificial intelligence (AI) that will probably drive the world’s next industrial revolution, a top scientists in the field says.

“AI could be well thought of as the leading edge in the second industrial revolution; Edmonton is a leader in the science,” University of Alberta computer science professor Richard Sutton said Tuesday.

“Why can’t we be a player in AI applications?”

Clean-running electric buses represent "the future of public transit," Mayor Don Iveson said Friday as he helped announce funding that will put 40 of the green vehicles on Edmonton's streets.

Iveson joined federal Infrastructure Minister Amarjeet Sohi and Alberta Transportation Minister Brian Mason at a bus garage in southwest Edmonton to announce $43 million in funding for the project.

Jeff Williams has been trying to showcase local Edmonton music since 2011 when he started GRadio, an internet radio station dedicated to the city's local music scene.

But while Williams was seeking a sponsorship from Axe Music, a local Edmonton musical instrument store, he stumbled on an idea that changed his entire business model.

Brad Ferguson is the President & CEO of Edmonton Economic Development Corporation, responsible for ensuring Edmonton and the Capital Region consistently outperform every economic jurisdiction in North America for the next 20 years.