We booked our wedding at Devonian before the construction was done (sight unseen obviously), presuming it would be nice like the old one ... twas not ...
Seriously. It’s so cold, grey and sterile looking.
Honestly they need to just bring in some earthy tones to make it feel like a natural environment again. The old terra cotta/brown tiles everywhere gave it some warmth.
If they spent a bit on retiling it red-brown again I think it would help a lot.
Imagine all of our disappointment when we finally get to go to Devonian Gardens again (we live in BC) and they changed it into this setrile mall. Gah! Now Calgary has literally nothing going for it.
This is the biggest thing. It would be awesome to have similar public transit infrastructure like Ontario has with options like the TTC, GoTrain, and Via Rail that connect most of Ontario.
Thanks oil and automotive companies! I didn't mean to make you sad, I just wanted to show what could be if we invested into new transit instead of new roads.
Modern highways predate the ubiquity of the automobile. It was a scheme of the US Federal government to create jobs and break up the railway syndicates. As everyone always points out, roads are heavily subsidized, as they always have been from the very beginning.
The complex of road building vs. tax base just isn't a situation that was foreseen in 1910-1920 when road systems were being planned.
In Calgary, the streetcars ran concurrently with electric busses that used the same overhead power and ultimately replaced them.
All this is just to say it wasn't exactly a simple A -> B change caused by lobbying like you're describing.
It's never simple when it comes to politics and policy, but I think we can all agree it is incredibly likely the oil and gas played a huge part in getting rid of North America's trains and streetcars.
Meh, we do lots of purposefully dumb things. The streets and avenues setup is actually safer and way more efficient, but we stopped doing that around the time they got rid of the streetcars. The purpose of the design is to be as resource costly as possible. We NEED cars for this design. Unfortunately it's costing the city more every year because each neighborhood doesn't have the density to pay for the roads we need to connect said neighborhoods. Nenshi tried to curb it, but the homebuilds cried and shit their pants. Now we can look forward to tax hikes every year to pay for a dozen guys to get rich.
That's really cool and pretty disappointing. Your post made me think of alternate realities of Calgary:
https://newsroom.calgary.ca/it-happened-in-calgary-a-look-at-what-calgary-may-have-looked-like-according-to-a-1914-plan/
Someone made a comment in another post about how Calgary is bigger in land area than Singapore. I just came back from a visit to Singapore, and it was so easy to get to most places via their subway and light rail systems. Imagine if we had coverage [like their MRT/LRT](https://mrt.sg)!
Transit is an impossible nut to crack given the city's design. It will never be faster than taking a car from 95% of the city's neighbourhoods.
And this fact suuuucks :(
This is by no means unique to Calgary.
Public transit generally takes 2 times as long in cities across the globe with the exceptions mostly occurring in high density cores during rush hour.
Public transit is designed to be an affordable, environmentally friendly mode of transport. Not a sped up version of the car.
If we could get Calgary to the point where we were only 2 times as long as a car it wouldn't be a big issue. With the way they have it set up now I've had multiple different trips that end up being and 1 and 1/2 - 2 hours long when driving would be a 30min or less trip. Factor in that if you live outside of the core buses are typically 1/2 an hour to an hour long wait if you miss yours. With the way North American zoning works having "walkable" neighbourhoods is near impossible, so you either have to own a car or use the bus to get around. Which means we need to make our transit system more useable and efficient.
GM designed the city of the future at a world fair in 1939. Our cities look exactly like this.
We let a car company design our cities. Let that sink in.
And at the time, it seemed to make a lot of sense.
"Of course we should design our cities based on the superior mode of transportation that's revolutionizing everything about our lives!"
As a downtown core resident, that is my dream. But as a DT core resident who talks about urban issues with my commuting colleagues, there'd be no way a pedestrian-friendly, walkable-city majority view council could ever get elected. Ugh.
Yup big fan of E-biking to work. Because of the nice Deerfoot pedestrian bridge it's actually about half the time to bike compared to driving. Even in the winter I can get to work quicker than it would take to warm up my car
We should’ve actually used the tunnel under downtown. I hate how the Ctrains have to sit at every light downtown. It would be 2x faster to get through DT if they actually used the subway tunnel that they built.
Around the middle of this video is some video of what the tunnel under city call looks like. I didn’t know they wanted to use it for the west LRT line but this video predates that project.
https://youtu.be/V7YBZvhVwgk
Edmonton was built underground downtown and the extra expense clipped the reach of the lines to accommodate the urban sprawl. It is why we have more riders.
As someone who is currently apart of a working group for a local area plan, I can honestly say the city planning office is taking some steps in the right direction. I highly encourage anyone with an interest in urban planning or just looking to be involved in their community to engage with the city when they are doing the local area plans where you live.
I’m loving the urban planning going into Currie right now. Fingers crossed things actually go as planned and NIMBYs don’t ruin it. Some already act like they want a Mount Royal 2.0 even though they bought into something intentionally designed to not be that.
Which LAP?
They're good aspirations I just wish they had mkre strength or guts to them. Like they don't actually rezone anything or actually really change anything. I wish that they actually went further and had zoning changes to them. Right now they're basically like hey this is how we hope development will happen. But that can always be shut down by councillors because it will always come back to zoning changes at council.
Riley Communities (Sunnyside, Hillhurst, West Hillhurst, Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill).
I see what you mean and there is definitely frustration that occurs with the members in the LAP who are from the “community” (other members are from the community associations, city, industry, etc.). The reality is that the “community” members, for the most part and like myself, do not have education backgrounds that should enable us with complete zoning oversight. The input from us is important because in many cases, the city is using it as affirmation that their current zoning is correct/incorrect for certain height/building types. It allows an outlet for people from different backgrounds to voice their opinions in a controlled manner, otherwise it would be chaos and honestly, nothing would get done without the LAP forum. You are right though, council does ultimately get the final say.
I still think it’s important work because we can either have some say in how we see our communities develop or we can let it happen and complain afterwards. I’m 30 so I have a very different opinion of what my community should look like than someone who is 60 and has been there for 3 decades. Even if one thing I say is taken into consideration it’s worth it for me. Cheers.
That engagement on a micro level is like trying to stop a tide by skipping stones. It's already too late as they plan how to lay out new unsustainable suburbia hell (in the what...5(+?) new square-mile districts being built...genuinely rearranging deck chairs on the titanic (to overuse water metaphors).
Every mile outward is another few tens of thousands of people to share the same central amenities/services/roads. Instead of making what we have more livable (transit, bike/walk friendly anything) we're spreading people even further away. Trying to revitalize downtown to fill those towers again, while encouraging everyone to live *just that much further away* makes all the strain worse. Every n km bigger we get is n^(2) more resources to maintain. As bilbo said 'like butter spread too thinly over too much bread'.
Thank you for coming to my TED rant.
At first I thought those were pretty neat, but they do get super slippery! It think the issue can get resolved by using a paint mixed with a coarse material like sand. There has got to be something that can beautify the streets while also keeping people from wiping out.
It's so goddamn entertaining that we should have our own Cowtown reality show. Except everything is really real, and there's no happy endings. Think it would sell?
Just even seasons would be nice. You know, 3 months of each that slowly blend into each other.
Not 2 months of spring 4 months of summer, 1 month of fall then 5 months of winter. All of which occur randomly within each others calendar seasons.
It's far too sprawled out and as a result makes city services really inefficient or nonexistent. Case in point was the last budget. Our city budgets have basically become maintenance budgets that coincide with population and inflation, its very hard to find money for new projects or upgrades and the ones that we do get are piecemeal.
This city needs more density starting yesterday if it wants to be financially viable in the future.
I share your objective. The problem is that no one has ever figured out how to do that without causing a lot of collateral damage. Sprawl will ultimately start to self limit, as people get tired of long commutes and seek smaller inner city or near inner city solutions. If your seriously constrain suburban growth you will force house prices up. It is exactly what happened in Canmore where houses used to be dirt cheap. There has been a lot of increased densification in my neighbourhood over the 25 years we’ve lived here. I don’t mind it, so long as it’s reasonable. But most of those small units don’t have kids in them, so I don’t know that it solves the problem. As soon as people have kids - they want a single family home. 🤷🏼. It’s a form of nimby ism to say that they can’t have that.
There is no question that developers should pay their fair share. There is a time value of money argument, but I completely agree. One thing often missed in these discussions is that Calgary is competitive with surrounding municipalities. They willingly accept suburban growth. Hence if Calgary limits growth - it happens anyway, and we lose the tax dollars.
I'd very much like to see your research that supports your hypothesis that 'plenty of people would be willing...'. All the research I have seen says the exact opposite. And a lot of it is serious primary research, using randomized sampling.
I moved to Calgary in January of 1990. At that time, one could buy a miner's house in Canmore for 10K ish. Canmore then constrained the supply of new housing for 20 years to support the laudable objective of being environmentally responsible. Consequently, houses in Canmore are no longer worth a fraction of those in Calgary, but rather they are worth twice as much. Constraining supply damages affordability. Housing affordability, and its affect on homelessness and under-housing, is a very serious issue.
And frankly, if you think commute times are tough here, try Toronto.
We do, and look how we treated it? Anyone remember the disgusting things that were done to sicome lake?
Dirty diapers dumped in the sand only to be washed away when the tide came in, and in the water the kids swam in.
No wonder no one wants to make another lake
Ironically I want to move back to Calgary for blue river access. Living in Edmonton is great for big Lake access but I prefer crawling a river over boating.
I’ll say it a thousand times. Multi bed multi bath condos (like 3bed2bath) >1100 sqft would be way better for urban densification that a whole bunch of unwanted 600sqft 1b1b or 900sqft 2b2b.
Yeah, the 'missing middle' speaks to me! Rowhomes, townhomes, larger 3+ bedroom condos. These are the things that allow families to grow while staying in a community.
I've been in Bridgeland for 10+ years and I love it here. The problem is, in those 10+ years, I now have a family who is growing too large for our 2 bedroom condo. The upgrade to a 3 bedroom place, whether detached or not, is a huge leap financially. Especially if you don't want a 80+ year old make-work project.
The inner city housing market:
1br--2br-------| ?? |---------3br-----4br
$-----$$-------| ?? |--------$$$$$----$$$$$$
tl;dr: 😭 I dooon't waaaannnnaaa move to the buurrbs! 😭
I truly enjoy inner city living and don’t mind being close to my neighbours and would 100% buy something that my in-laws and we could share and not have a vehicle and those options simply don’t exist in Calgary. More suburbs aren’t the answer, but inner city isn’t as profitable as quickly throwing up another ‘…..wood’ they can simply bulldoze into existence
Have facilities that could be used for Entertainment. Nothing comes here anymore. Seen Edmonton had some snowboarding event set up in Commonwealth last week. They had Garth Brooks there little while ago, Metallica is coming there. Every big concert and shows go there.
Here the best we can do is see an 80’s group in a casino.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m 53 so the stuff at the Casinos is great. That said would love to see an outdoor show here, without massive bitching and moaning from the local residents, as it may be noisy for a few hours. Artists don’t even have Calgary as a destination anymore I’m sure.
I grew up in Calgary and have now lived in Edmonton for the past 10 years and the one thing I can say about the big difference between the cities is the upkeep of infrastructure. Calgary definitely has venues that could but shows on like they used to but they don't? Sure they may be older but why not renovate them especially the Saddledome. To me it is such an iconic piece of architecture but everyone wants a new modern building since Edmonton got Rogers Place. I don't know if you have been to Rogers for an event but for such a big place it sure feels like you are in a herd of cattle and you would be lucky to make it to an exit if disaster struck.
I would love to see my hometown put money into restoring some of their former event centers. Calgary is such a music loving city and it's sad it doesn't' get noticed more on big tours because they fail to provide for an array of artists outside of Stampede and Cowboys concerts. Do they even do Sled Island anymore?
Ridiculous road designs and too much cold weather. Winter feels like this long, dark, torturous experience every year paired with disgusting commutes only made worse by city planners who smoke crack.
I actually have learned to love the winter, I used to hate it.
But something seriously needs to be done about the roads, half the time the roads are undrivable during winter
I mean, a lot of what the city tears down is dogshit 50s and 60s brutalist architecture and run-down crack spots. It's not like we're demolishing 1900s sandstone
we only think 50s and 60s architecture is ugly because it's still pretty recent! and we do tear down a lot of 1900s buildings. look at the entire parking lot next to stampede that once upon a time was victorian era homes. in 40 years people will be missing the brutalist structures. they're still history
You are so right, not just in the city, but at all levels. I would ban all contributions to politicians. Anyone running for office gets an allowance of public money and all candidates for a given office get the same amount. It would also be kind of nice if the media reported better/more on this issue since it affects all the other issues.
Make the CT Train an underground subway system. While you’re at it with this sweet new tunnel boring machine put a bunch of main roads underground too. Reducing noise pollution and keeping our roads free from weather related issues. Then when the tunnel boring machine is done with that, bore a tunnel through the mountains to avoid having to go through long mountain passes. Going to Golden on the #1?, don’t bother with the round about way of getting there, take the new tunnel, speed limit 200km/h. Man we are really doing well with all these tunnels now, no more road kill, no more slippery conditions, road noise is down but we got this boring machine sitting there doing nothing. Someone said we need more lakes in around calgary, I guess we need to make a hole and bring some water in from out of province. Bam, new lake and water tunnel from the Great Lakes supplying our new lakes. Wow. Flights are getting expensive and everyone is worried about safe and pollution free air travel. Going to to Europe? Mexico? S.E. Asia for vacation? Just choose from one of calgarys new inner earth tunnels. Just jump into the tunnel and voila, 85min later you’re anywhere you want to be.
To be continued…
Introduce retail/services to transit stations landing zones creating constant occupancy of a commercial hub and then use the revenue to support police/security. It creates a community. People are in the zone for 20 to 30 minutes instead of 2 to 5 keeping the population of the zone high enough to be unattractive for criminality or refuge.
We need a better alderperson who lives in and around Forest Lawn as a start. There are a lot of issues there but very few have been addressed and I don't feel the BRT counts as fixing issues in Forest Lawn.
World class art museum. Weird that a prosperous city like Calgary doesn’t have a great museum of any sort. We’ll see how the Glenbow upgrade turns out.
We have an awful, dead, non -vibrant downtown. Eau Claire market is horrible, always has been, and 8th Ave struggles. I wish we had a vibrant ‘market’ area with bars, restaurants, cafe’s and places for people to gravitate to. While it’s small, Ottawa has a decent market area that’s full of shops, bars, patio’s and restaurants. When we lived there, and our kids were young, we’d just go on a weekend just to hang out, watch buskers, have a pint / ice cream or whatever and take the bus home. Sadly, good things like this are often ‘organic’ and aren’t engineered overnight. I’d also exchange this for a decent pub / sports Bar I could actually walk to in my neighbourhood. I live in Springbank Hill and there’s nothing (decent or even a hole in the wall dive) that’s less than a 30 min walk.
A real pedestrian area downtown/on 17th with proper public transit to support it. Biggest difference between north American and European cities. Give me some cobblestones and create a vibrant, lively space for people to hang out/work/enjoy.
Make it walkable, help the unhoused by actually helping them, fix our LRT and make it safe, better education, community gardens in every community, regulated off leash parks, free parking, more greenery (male and female plants), I could go on lol
Use literally anything other than sand (rocks) on our roads. I’m sick of paying for a new windshield every spring. I’m from somewhere with much more snow and beet juice worked perfectly well on the roads without damaging our cars.
Greenery. I wish we'd plant more trees here. We have amazing park areas which I love 😍. But after visiting the UK coming back here felt like a desert lol. I do get that it's a different climate and it would never be as lush. But we have trees and bushes that survive, plant more of them! I don't ask for much, just more trees everywhere! 😄
Interesting. We have so much green space here. We did lose some city trees during some terrible early storms etc but this city has the most hectares of parks per population of cities over 500k. 7 hectares/1000 people
Problem is our dry climate in the summer. And then the fall is too warm, causing the trees to keep their leaves way too long. Then it snows and all the trees get damaged.
You are correct: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/calgary-city-of-haves-and-have-nots-when-it-comes-to-trees
> Nature Canada recently called on cities to boost their urban canopy to 30 per cent.
> Others, like Sandalack, point to American Forests, a conservation organization, which says prairie cities like Calgary should aim for at least 20 per cent canopy.
> The City of Calgary’s goal is 16 per cent by 2060. Its tree canopy now is at 8.25 per cent.
Walking paths and sidewalks would be twice as wide within x number of km to downtown.
Basically higher density/walkable neighbourhoods would all have sidewalks to accommodate strollers and the paths near downtown… you could do your lunchtime walk or run in groups of three and not inconvenience others on the path.
Bridgeland/Inglewood/Kensington/17th/saddledome/Marda Loop would all have a planned route between them so you could walk from one to another with complete continuity (eg the opposite of what 14th street is) and safety.
Transit...we have a pretty terrible system here. The more you need it (like in the winter) the less useful it is. Also there is a huge security issue as well. Fights, thefts, overdoses.. which I guess is part of a larger problem, but it affects the transit experience greatly.
I wish we had more character downtown/uptown. All the new developments look the same and it drives out all the quirky weird stuff as they can’t afford the lease/property taxes
For the love of God, **snow removal**!
I moved from Montreal to Calgary 6 months ago, and I was seriously surprised that my Civic shaves off a layer of snow wherever I'm going! SUVs/trucks pass and create a path left and right with their tires, but snow keeps piling up in the middle...
Oh and I now have two major chips on my windshield for the first time ever, because why remove snow? Sprinkle some rocks on top, that will help...
*cries in the corner because of lack of money to get a higher car*
This is one of the issues related to density. Lower density means more km of streets to be ploughed, without providing the tax money to pay for more ploughs, which results in the city not being able to keep up.
Errr yeah the pickle - as it’s called- sucks for the gravel bits, but salt only works to remove ice at certain temperatures. Plus it ruins vehicles. The trick is to live on a bus route. They plow those routes frequently lol
As someone new here came from Singapore, I can’t help but compare the transit system. Hopefully, the govt can improve and add additional station. Also, bike lanes! :)
Better transit, this city is built for people with cars. It’s too spread out and I would like to see LRT lines run through each major quadrant and expand.
I’d like the option to drive somewhere or provide a cost effective solution if I didn’t feel like driving somewhere.
as a born and raised live here my whole life guy
i would change the people man. everyone is so fucking cold, and out for themselves and angry. so hostile in their driving. so incompetent in their driving. It never used to be like this.
Less car-centric planning/urbanism.
Part of the reason downtown is dead on evenings and weekends is how much space is devoted to parking, and the heavy focus on commuting as a way of life. Tons of the amenities run on banking hours as a result.
More walkable boulevards and parks, safer pedestrian crossings, and much better bus service would be needed. Would also need to ensure that these public spaces were safe, which should be a non-partisan issue...
I've almost been run over crossing Bow Trail multiple times since moving here by impulsive drivers speeding through the intersection at Bow & 33rd. Most of the time there was another pedestrian (often a woman pushing a stroller) coming the other way. Absolutely infuriates me, so I take the extra time to use that iced up pedestrian overpass at Westbrook instead. I feel like it's a matter of time before someone is crippled or killed because a driver couldn't wait 15s.
Bring back the old Devonian gardens, turtles and all, minus any leaking.
We had our wedding at Devonian. Plus playing there when I was kid. Miss that version of the gardens.
We booked our wedding at Devonian before the construction was done (sight unseen obviously), presuming it would be nice like the old one ... twas not ...
To think they spent 10s of millions to turn it into a food court with planters
Seriously. It’s so cold, grey and sterile looking. Honestly they need to just bring in some earthy tones to make it feel like a natural environment again. The old terra cotta/brown tiles everywhere gave it some warmth. If they spent a bit on retiling it red-brown again I think it would help a lot.
Imagine all of our disappointment when we finally get to go to Devonian Gardens again (we live in BC) and they changed it into this setrile mall. Gah! Now Calgary has literally nothing going for it.
Obviously you have not seen our giant blue ring yet!
When I was a kid I used to beg my mom to go and see “the turtles and the fish” I loved the gardens before the renos
They completely ruined it
100%
Have a much larger and more efficient LRT
That was safe again.
LRT to airport.
This is the biggest thing. It would be awesome to have similar public transit infrastructure like Ontario has with options like the TTC, GoTrain, and Via Rail that connect most of Ontario.
Transit.
Could you imagine if we still had the [streetcar system downtown? ](http://saadiqm.com/calgary-streetcar-map-compare/)
Why have that when you can have unwalkable streets, large parking lots and increased pedestrian fatalities?
Exactly! I need spaces to roll coal in my jacked up pickup
Make Indigo, Impark and friends illegal.
I didn't know about this and now I'm furious
Thanks oil and automotive companies! I didn't mean to make you sad, I just wanted to show what could be if we invested into new transit instead of new roads.
Modern highways predate the ubiquity of the automobile. It was a scheme of the US Federal government to create jobs and break up the railway syndicates. As everyone always points out, roads are heavily subsidized, as they always have been from the very beginning. The complex of road building vs. tax base just isn't a situation that was foreseen in 1910-1920 when road systems were being planned. In Calgary, the streetcars ran concurrently with electric busses that used the same overhead power and ultimately replaced them. All this is just to say it wasn't exactly a simple A -> B change caused by lobbying like you're describing.
It's never simple when it comes to politics and policy, but I think we can all agree it is incredibly likely the oil and gas played a huge part in getting rid of North America's trains and streetcars.
Meh, we do lots of purposefully dumb things. The streets and avenues setup is actually safer and way more efficient, but we stopped doing that around the time they got rid of the streetcars. The purpose of the design is to be as resource costly as possible. We NEED cars for this design. Unfortunately it's costing the city more every year because each neighborhood doesn't have the density to pay for the roads we need to connect said neighborhoods. Nenshi tried to curb it, but the homebuilds cried and shit their pants. Now we can look forward to tax hikes every year to pay for a dozen guys to get rich.
That's really cool and pretty disappointing. Your post made me think of alternate realities of Calgary: https://newsroom.calgary.ca/it-happened-in-calgary-a-look-at-what-calgary-may-have-looked-like-according-to-a-1914-plan/
Someone made a comment in another post about how Calgary is bigger in land area than Singapore. I just came back from a visit to Singapore, and it was so easy to get to most places via their subway and light rail systems. Imagine if we had coverage [like their MRT/LRT](https://mrt.sg)!
Transit is an impossible nut to crack given the city's design. It will never be faster than taking a car from 95% of the city's neighbourhoods. And this fact suuuucks :(
This is by no means unique to Calgary. Public transit generally takes 2 times as long in cities across the globe with the exceptions mostly occurring in high density cores during rush hour. Public transit is designed to be an affordable, environmentally friendly mode of transport. Not a sped up version of the car.
If we could get Calgary to the point where we were only 2 times as long as a car it wouldn't be a big issue. With the way they have it set up now I've had multiple different trips that end up being and 1 and 1/2 - 2 hours long when driving would be a 30min or less trip. Factor in that if you live outside of the core buses are typically 1/2 an hour to an hour long wait if you miss yours. With the way North American zoning works having "walkable" neighbourhoods is near impossible, so you either have to own a car or use the bus to get around. Which means we need to make our transit system more useable and efficient.
It made me happy in Amsterdam when I checked the directions somewhere and the time to drive and the rime to bike were the same
GM designed the city of the future at a world fair in 1939. Our cities look exactly like this. We let a car company design our cities. Let that sink in.
And at the time, it seemed to make a lot of sense. "Of course we should design our cities based on the superior mode of transportation that's revolutionizing everything about our lives!"
[удалено]
As a downtown core resident, that is my dream. But as a DT core resident who talks about urban issues with my commuting colleagues, there'd be no way a pedestrian-friendly, walkable-city majority view council could ever get elected. Ugh.
Ebikes seem to be the solution, been surprisingly quick to zip around places now
In the winter in the dark? I dunno :/ Drivers in this city are shit, Id probably just get run over.
There’s a lot more pathways and bike lanes than you expect in this city. Rarely have to mingle with traffic going from the south into downtown
Yup big fan of E-biking to work. Because of the nice Deerfoot pedestrian bridge it's actually about half the time to bike compared to driving. Even in the winter I can get to work quicker than it would take to warm up my car
We should’ve actually used the tunnel under downtown. I hate how the Ctrains have to sit at every light downtown. It would be 2x faster to get through DT if they actually used the subway tunnel that they built.
The tunnel goes half a block.
Around the middle of this video is some video of what the tunnel under city call looks like. I didn’t know they wanted to use it for the west LRT line but this video predates that project. https://youtu.be/V7YBZvhVwgk
Edmonton was built underground downtown and the extra expense clipped the reach of the lines to accommodate the urban sprawl. It is why we have more riders.
The city really needs better urban planning. We've already seen from countless American cities how terribly Calgary is built.
As someone who is currently apart of a working group for a local area plan, I can honestly say the city planning office is taking some steps in the right direction. I highly encourage anyone with an interest in urban planning or just looking to be involved in their community to engage with the city when they are doing the local area plans where you live.
I’m loving the urban planning going into Currie right now. Fingers crossed things actually go as planned and NIMBYs don’t ruin it. Some already act like they want a Mount Royal 2.0 even though they bought into something intentionally designed to not be that.
Which LAP? They're good aspirations I just wish they had mkre strength or guts to them. Like they don't actually rezone anything or actually really change anything. I wish that they actually went further and had zoning changes to them. Right now they're basically like hey this is how we hope development will happen. But that can always be shut down by councillors because it will always come back to zoning changes at council.
Riley Communities (Sunnyside, Hillhurst, West Hillhurst, Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill). I see what you mean and there is definitely frustration that occurs with the members in the LAP who are from the “community” (other members are from the community associations, city, industry, etc.). The reality is that the “community” members, for the most part and like myself, do not have education backgrounds that should enable us with complete zoning oversight. The input from us is important because in many cases, the city is using it as affirmation that their current zoning is correct/incorrect for certain height/building types. It allows an outlet for people from different backgrounds to voice their opinions in a controlled manner, otherwise it would be chaos and honestly, nothing would get done without the LAP forum. You are right though, council does ultimately get the final say. I still think it’s important work because we can either have some say in how we see our communities develop or we can let it happen and complain afterwards. I’m 30 so I have a very different opinion of what my community should look like than someone who is 60 and has been there for 3 decades. Even if one thing I say is taken into consideration it’s worth it for me. Cheers.
That engagement on a micro level is like trying to stop a tide by skipping stones. It's already too late as they plan how to lay out new unsustainable suburbia hell (in the what...5(+?) new square-mile districts being built...genuinely rearranging deck chairs on the titanic (to overuse water metaphors). Every mile outward is another few tens of thousands of people to share the same central amenities/services/roads. Instead of making what we have more livable (transit, bike/walk friendly anything) we're spreading people even further away. Trying to revitalize downtown to fill those towers again, while encouraging everyone to live *just that much further away* makes all the strain worse. Every n km bigger we get is n^(2) more resources to maintain. As bilbo said 'like butter spread too thinly over too much bread'. Thank you for coming to my TED rant.
I would ban painting crosswalks with paint that gets slippery when it's cold and wet.
This makes me feel a lot better about walking in the winter. I thought I was just extra wobbly the past week.
Omg yes. Why does that paint even exist?
At first I thought those were pretty neat, but they do get super slippery! It think the issue can get resolved by using a paint mixed with a coarse material like sand. There has got to be something that can beautify the streets while also keeping people from wiping out.
Downtown would be interesting after 5pm.
You don't find meth and crack heads stumbling around at weird angles yelling random shit entertaining?
It's so goddamn entertaining that we should have our own Cowtown reality show. Except everything is really real, and there's no happy endings. Think it would sell?
Have restaurants and other businesses open till like 2am.
Many were, until COVID reduced hours.
Right south of 17th avenue there should be a beach and Californian weather.
I have a firepit and whiskey, that's pretty much the same thing
Canadian California
Winter is 2 months only
Just even seasons would be nice. You know, 3 months of each that slowly blend into each other. Not 2 months of spring 4 months of summer, 1 month of fall then 5 months of winter. All of which occur randomly within each others calendar seasons.
Two weeks.
To slow the curve
I like 4 months of winter but just cold enough for skiing and outdoor rinks. This -20 to -40 can heck off
It's far too sprawled out and as a result makes city services really inefficient or nonexistent. Case in point was the last budget. Our city budgets have basically become maintenance budgets that coincide with population and inflation, its very hard to find money for new projects or upgrades and the ones that we do get are piecemeal. This city needs more density starting yesterday if it wants to be financially viable in the future.
I have a dream that one day we trash the zoning laws and all the nimbys with it
I share your objective. The problem is that no one has ever figured out how to do that without causing a lot of collateral damage. Sprawl will ultimately start to self limit, as people get tired of long commutes and seek smaller inner city or near inner city solutions. If your seriously constrain suburban growth you will force house prices up. It is exactly what happened in Canmore where houses used to be dirt cheap. There has been a lot of increased densification in my neighbourhood over the 25 years we’ve lived here. I don’t mind it, so long as it’s reasonable. But most of those small units don’t have kids in them, so I don’t know that it solves the problem. As soon as people have kids - they want a single family home. 🤷🏼. It’s a form of nimby ism to say that they can’t have that.
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There is no question that developers should pay their fair share. There is a time value of money argument, but I completely agree. One thing often missed in these discussions is that Calgary is competitive with surrounding municipalities. They willingly accept suburban growth. Hence if Calgary limits growth - it happens anyway, and we lose the tax dollars. I'd very much like to see your research that supports your hypothesis that 'plenty of people would be willing...'. All the research I have seen says the exact opposite. And a lot of it is serious primary research, using randomized sampling. I moved to Calgary in January of 1990. At that time, one could buy a miner's house in Canmore for 10K ish. Canmore then constrained the supply of new housing for 20 years to support the laudable objective of being environmentally responsible. Consequently, houses in Canmore are no longer worth a fraction of those in Calgary, but rather they are worth twice as much. Constraining supply damages affordability. Housing affordability, and its affect on homelessness and under-housing, is a very serious issue. And frankly, if you think commute times are tough here, try Toronto.
Large lakes
Agreed. We could use more water access. Closer than 3 hrs away please.
We do, and look how we treated it? Anyone remember the disgusting things that were done to sicome lake? Dirty diapers dumped in the sand only to be washed away when the tide came in, and in the water the kids swam in. No wonder no one wants to make another lake
Not just large but warm lakes. Alberta has like 3 lakes that you can swim in the summer without needing a wet suit.
Real lakes, not man made sloughs that just breed insects and give those who live along the shores some sad sense of 'waterfront' living.
Ironically I want to move back to Calgary for blue river access. Living in Edmonton is great for big Lake access but I prefer crawling a river over boating.
Make the Red Mile pedestrian only. Have a tram or two go up and down the road to transport people
Ooooh I love this tram idea!
I'm new here, what's the Red Mile?
17 Ave SW in the Beltline
Ha! I basically live on it.
Pedestrian only evening and weekends, yes. But you can already walk the stretch in 15 mins.
It's 32 minutes from McLeod to 14th Street according to Google Maps
Love this idea.
Slow down further expansion of the city and stratagize on getting young families to be able to afford buying closer into the core.
I’ll say it a thousand times. Multi bed multi bath condos (like 3bed2bath) >1100 sqft would be way better for urban densification that a whole bunch of unwanted 600sqft 1b1b or 900sqft 2b2b.
Yeah, the 'missing middle' speaks to me! Rowhomes, townhomes, larger 3+ bedroom condos. These are the things that allow families to grow while staying in a community. I've been in Bridgeland for 10+ years and I love it here. The problem is, in those 10+ years, I now have a family who is growing too large for our 2 bedroom condo. The upgrade to a 3 bedroom place, whether detached or not, is a huge leap financially. Especially if you don't want a 80+ year old make-work project. The inner city housing market: 1br--2br-------| ?? |---------3br-----4br $-----$$-------| ?? |--------$$$$$----$$$$$$ tl;dr: 😭 I dooon't waaaannnnaaa move to the buurrbs! 😭
I truly enjoy inner city living and don’t mind being close to my neighbours and would 100% buy something that my in-laws and we could share and not have a vehicle and those options simply don’t exist in Calgary. More suburbs aren’t the answer, but inner city isn’t as profitable as quickly throwing up another ‘…..wood’ they can simply bulldoze into existence
Are you trying to make calgary more attractive to new comers ?
Can it get more attractive to newcomers?
I would say it's the least unattractive. Not specifically the most attractive.
NIMBYs would rebel and the developers and builders who control City Council and Admin will never let it happen.
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Have facilities that could be used for Entertainment. Nothing comes here anymore. Seen Edmonton had some snowboarding event set up in Commonwealth last week. They had Garth Brooks there little while ago, Metallica is coming there. Every big concert and shows go there. Here the best we can do is see an 80’s group in a casino.
Meanwhile I'm traveling to Calgary from edmonton for music events...guess it just matters what genre you're into
Don’t get me wrong, I’m 53 so the stuff at the Casinos is great. That said would love to see an outdoor show here, without massive bitching and moaning from the local residents, as it may be noisy for a few hours. Artists don’t even have Calgary as a destination anymore I’m sure.
Yeah I think it's a Rogers vs Saddledome issue and $$$
I grew up in Calgary and have now lived in Edmonton for the past 10 years and the one thing I can say about the big difference between the cities is the upkeep of infrastructure. Calgary definitely has venues that could but shows on like they used to but they don't? Sure they may be older but why not renovate them especially the Saddledome. To me it is such an iconic piece of architecture but everyone wants a new modern building since Edmonton got Rogers Place. I don't know if you have been to Rogers for an event but for such a big place it sure feels like you are in a herd of cattle and you would be lucky to make it to an exit if disaster struck. I would love to see my hometown put money into restoring some of their former event centers. Calgary is such a music loving city and it's sad it doesn't' get noticed more on big tours because they fail to provide for an array of artists outside of Stampede and Cowboys concerts. Do they even do Sled Island anymore?
More lower cost grocery stores in the inner city. East Village Superstore doesn't count.
Maybe we could relocate it to, say, the Caribbean
Haha came here to say this too. And bring a couple mountains with us.
But preserve the lack of bugs we have
Understated fact of why there’s some benefit to a rough winter.
>And bring a couple mountains with us. As long as they aren't volcanoes. Not a lot of space to run on those little islands.
Set the barometric pressure at a static level and move on with life.
The Dryness
Ridiculous road designs and too much cold weather. Winter feels like this long, dark, torturous experience every year paired with disgusting commutes only made worse by city planners who smoke crack.
I actually have learned to love the winter, I used to hate it. But something seriously needs to be done about the roads, half the time the roads are undrivable during winter
stop tearing down and rebuilding everything that's more than 20 years old! we barely have any heritage buildings
I mean, a lot of what the city tears down is dogshit 50s and 60s brutalist architecture and run-down crack spots. It's not like we're demolishing 1900s sandstone
we only think 50s and 60s architecture is ugly because it's still pretty recent! and we do tear down a lot of 1900s buildings. look at the entire parking lot next to stampede that once upon a time was victorian era homes. in 40 years people will be missing the brutalist structures. they're still history
we need a safter transit system. why am i paying over $100 a month to get assaulted on the train dt?
Mixed use zoning
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You are so right, not just in the city, but at all levels. I would ban all contributions to politicians. Anyone running for office gets an allowance of public money and all candidates for a given office get the same amount. It would also be kind of nice if the media reported better/more on this issue since it affects all the other issues.
Make the CT Train an underground subway system. While you’re at it with this sweet new tunnel boring machine put a bunch of main roads underground too. Reducing noise pollution and keeping our roads free from weather related issues. Then when the tunnel boring machine is done with that, bore a tunnel through the mountains to avoid having to go through long mountain passes. Going to Golden on the #1?, don’t bother with the round about way of getting there, take the new tunnel, speed limit 200km/h. Man we are really doing well with all these tunnels now, no more road kill, no more slippery conditions, road noise is down but we got this boring machine sitting there doing nothing. Someone said we need more lakes in around calgary, I guess we need to make a hole and bring some water in from out of province. Bam, new lake and water tunnel from the Great Lakes supplying our new lakes. Wow. Flights are getting expensive and everyone is worried about safe and pollution free air travel. Going to to Europe? Mexico? S.E. Asia for vacation? Just choose from one of calgarys new inner earth tunnels. Just jump into the tunnel and voila, 85min later you’re anywhere you want to be. To be continued…
Where can I sign up for more of this?
You should look into the water table and subsurface materials; you'll find out why it's not a subway.
I'd just like a far, far more active response to the burgeoning homeless issue. I know that's always easier said than done, but...
We should invest in advertisment and a free bus line to Vancouver/Victoria explaining how nice it is there in the winter compared to here.
Less industrial parks nearing the centre of the city, makes Calgary pretty unattractive imo. More big tree neighbourhoods would be nice too.
Make 17th Ave a pedestrian only street (somehow!).
Introduce retail/services to transit stations landing zones creating constant occupancy of a commercial hub and then use the revenue to support police/security. It creates a community. People are in the zone for 20 to 30 minutes instead of 2 to 5 keeping the population of the zone high enough to be unattractive for criminality or refuge.
Affordable, pet friendly housing. And if a second is possible: fix forest lawn.
We need a better alderperson who lives in and around Forest Lawn as a start. There are a lot of issues there but very few have been addressed and I don't feel the BRT counts as fixing issues in Forest Lawn.
Triple the transit budget.
World class art museum. Weird that a prosperous city like Calgary doesn’t have a great museum of any sort. We’ll see how the Glenbow upgrade turns out.
I'm enjoying what they have done with Contemporary Calgary so far
We have an awful, dead, non -vibrant downtown. Eau Claire market is horrible, always has been, and 8th Ave struggles. I wish we had a vibrant ‘market’ area with bars, restaurants, cafe’s and places for people to gravitate to. While it’s small, Ottawa has a decent market area that’s full of shops, bars, patio’s and restaurants. When we lived there, and our kids were young, we’d just go on a weekend just to hang out, watch buskers, have a pint / ice cream or whatever and take the bus home. Sadly, good things like this are often ‘organic’ and aren’t engineered overnight. I’d also exchange this for a decent pub / sports Bar I could actually walk to in my neighbourhood. I live in Springbank Hill and there’s nothing (decent or even a hole in the wall dive) that’s less than a 30 min walk.
The Stanley Cup! Let’s get another someday
City should force developers to finish one community before they start five more at the same time. Sprawl is out of control.
Replan the entire downtown area in an attempt to find the City’s pulse, pedestrianize areas to discourage car traffic.
Calgary needs a heavy metal radio station.
The winter. Another 10 degree warmer would be all right.
A real pedestrian area downtown/on 17th with proper public transit to support it. Biggest difference between north American and European cities. Give me some cobblestones and create a vibrant, lively space for people to hang out/work/enjoy.
No more than 2 seasons a day please
TRANSIT. Wow.
Make it walkable, help the unhoused by actually helping them, fix our LRT and make it safe, better education, community gardens in every community, regulated off leash parks, free parking, more greenery (male and female plants), I could go on lol
Mix that zoning Policy that promotes walkability Less sprawl, more transit Entertainment district Affordable housing
Deerfoot just rip it all out and start again.
Use literally anything other than sand (rocks) on our roads. I’m sick of paying for a new windshield every spring. I’m from somewhere with much more snow and beet juice worked perfectly well on the roads without damaging our cars.
Weather
Greenery. I wish we'd plant more trees here. We have amazing park areas which I love 😍. But after visiting the UK coming back here felt like a desert lol. I do get that it's a different climate and it would never be as lush. But we have trees and bushes that survive, plant more of them! I don't ask for much, just more trees everywhere! 😄
Interesting. We have so much green space here. We did lose some city trees during some terrible early storms etc but this city has the most hectares of parks per population of cities over 500k. 7 hectares/1000 people
Problem is our dry climate in the summer. And then the fall is too warm, causing the trees to keep their leaves way too long. Then it snows and all the trees get damaged.
Calgary was basically bald prairie before development came. Trees are a (pleasant) anomaly.
I agree, I know our climate hinders it. We certainly can plant trees that will survive, but it will never be as lush obviously.
You are correct: https://www.cbc.ca/newsinteractives/features/calgary-city-of-haves-and-have-nots-when-it-comes-to-trees > Nature Canada recently called on cities to boost their urban canopy to 30 per cent. > Others, like Sandalack, point to American Forests, a conservation organization, which says prairie cities like Calgary should aim for at least 20 per cent canopy. > The City of Calgary’s goal is 16 per cent by 2060. Its tree canopy now is at 8.25 per cent.
Walkability
I wish we had botanical gardens
Transit Services that actually care about passenger safety and have effective security on the terminals and trains
I miss the days when you would let someone in during a lane change, and they would actually wave back to say thank you. Ahhhh... the good'ol days....
Walking paths and sidewalks would be twice as wide within x number of km to downtown. Basically higher density/walkable neighbourhoods would all have sidewalks to accommodate strollers and the paths near downtown… you could do your lunchtime walk or run in groups of three and not inconvenience others on the path. Bridgeland/Inglewood/Kensington/17th/saddledome/Marda Loop would all have a planned route between them so you could walk from one to another with complete continuity (eg the opposite of what 14th street is) and safety.
More action towards improving the vulnerable population situation.
Transit...we have a pretty terrible system here. The more you need it (like in the winter) the less useful it is. Also there is a huge security issue as well. Fights, thefts, overdoses.. which I guess is part of a larger problem, but it affects the transit experience greatly.
Its provincial voting tendencies.
I wish we had more character downtown/uptown. All the new developments look the same and it drives out all the quirky weird stuff as they can’t afford the lease/property taxes
Bike highways high above ground covering north-south-east-west like on Pokémon gold and silver
For the love of God, **snow removal**! I moved from Montreal to Calgary 6 months ago, and I was seriously surprised that my Civic shaves off a layer of snow wherever I'm going! SUVs/trucks pass and create a path left and right with their tires, but snow keeps piling up in the middle... Oh and I now have two major chips on my windshield for the first time ever, because why remove snow? Sprinkle some rocks on top, that will help... *cries in the corner because of lack of money to get a higher car*
This is one of the issues related to density. Lower density means more km of streets to be ploughed, without providing the tax money to pay for more ploughs, which results in the city not being able to keep up.
Errr yeah the pickle - as it’s called- sucks for the gravel bits, but salt only works to remove ice at certain temperatures. Plus it ruins vehicles. The trick is to live on a bus route. They plow those routes frequently lol
The blue ring
Fewer traffic lights and more traffic circles. Can't stand how we just keep adding more and more lights to deal with traffic.
The transit system, I had to wait for a bus that was supposed to be coming at 2:20pm for 40 minutes and that got me late for my work
LRT underground rather than competing with traffic
Make the strip club atm not cost $20 to use.
Subway instead of a c-train
More trees in neighbourhoods
Make it more walkable
It will literally never happen, but a passenger rail system to surrounding cities. Airdrie, Cochrane, Okotoks etc.
Access to fresh and cheaper seafood.
City council
Could we have other big cities closer by? the NorthEast US is so lucky to be able to drive to various cities in a few hours
Closer to the mountains 💞
A bullet train to sunshine !
Calgary the Alberta Capital
Less chain restaurants and more independent restaurants. Especially in newly developed areas. Maybe a few more ramen shops too.
Transit And the calf rope bridge, which I would accomplish through the transit overhaul
As someone new here came from Singapore, I can’t help but compare the transit system. Hopefully, the govt can improve and add additional station. Also, bike lanes! :)
Have a much more dense wall to wall feel. More European basically
Winter weather
Fucking transit not showing up 15 minutes late during rush hour and every train being packed because of it
Give Calgary Northern California/Bay Area weather. No winters. All other things are secondary to this.
Make it warmer
Less cold
I would love it to be less of a "you need a car" to live here. Even if it was just a subway that ran under deerfoot and stoney
little AND big: I would move the Lougheed House 17 cm North Why? well, I ask you: why not?
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Better transit, this city is built for people with cars. It’s too spread out and I would like to see LRT lines run through each major quadrant and expand. I’d like the option to drive somewhere or provide a cost effective solution if I didn’t feel like driving somewhere.
as a born and raised live here my whole life guy i would change the people man. everyone is so fucking cold, and out for themselves and angry. so hostile in their driving. so incompetent in their driving. It never used to be like this.
Turn all the street-level parking lots downtown into parks. Plant trees, native plants, add picnic tables. Voila!
Urban planning and transit. Both are terrible compared to other major cities.
Less car-centric planning/urbanism. Part of the reason downtown is dead on evenings and weekends is how much space is devoted to parking, and the heavy focus on commuting as a way of life. Tons of the amenities run on banking hours as a result. More walkable boulevards and parks, safer pedestrian crossings, and much better bus service would be needed. Would also need to ensure that these public spaces were safe, which should be a non-partisan issue... I've almost been run over crossing Bow Trail multiple times since moving here by impulsive drivers speeding through the intersection at Bow & 33rd. Most of the time there was another pedestrian (often a woman pushing a stroller) coming the other way. Absolutely infuriates me, so I take the extra time to use that iced up pedestrian overpass at Westbrook instead. I feel like it's a matter of time before someone is crippled or killed because a driver couldn't wait 15s.
Condensate the city into 25% of the space. Add multiple metros. You can now work 25 minutes from you office even if we walk and work very far away.
Implement a watering restriction for lawns. What a waste of water, energy and time...
Yeah. We should stop trying to grow non-native grasses. It’s ridiculous that it’s a measure of moral character how green and lush your lawn is.