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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

Alex_YYC said:
Calgary needs thousands of those.
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Agreed. I think the City needs to think seriously about getting rid of RC2 zoning in most inner-city hoods and replacing it with this modified MCG (d111) zoning like this. RCG zoning respects existing home setbacks too much, this form is much more urban and much better. Neighbourhoods like Banff Trail and Capitol Hill should be basically exclusively this form. RC2 and RCG have unnecessary suburban setbacks, if Calgary wants genuine urbanity in established neighbourhoods it is time to reduce setbacks and allow Wall-to-Wall rowhomes with almost no setback from the sidewalk. This is why i think MCG (d111) zoning with reduced front and side setbacks should be the de-facto inner-city zoning for anything that is RC2 today. Calgary is in a really good position to start allowing ground-oriented multi-family forms, and to kick Vancouver and Toronto's ass at actually building for the 'missing middle' in the inner-city at reasonable price points.

When is the last time that a North American city has successfully built blocks of street-oriented rowhomes/brownstones? If they could sell units like this, in places like Killarney, Capitol Hill, Mt Pleasant, etc. in the 475k-550k range, you would start actively pulling buyers away from single and semi-detached homes in the new suburbs. RC2 homes don't have the density to hit decent price points. RCG has side and front setbacks that make doing mid-block development unfeasible. That seems to be why there are almost no examples on RCG anywhere but on corner lots, developers can't make sense of the assembling mid-block parcels and making that form work. we need to make it easy to build to zero lot-line on the side setbacks, and to push front setbacks much closer to the curb to bring efficiency to an urban rowhome form to the inner-city in Calgary.

If the City of Calgary can figure this out, we can start to see a form of housing in the inner-city and established neighbourhoods that isn't so suburban, and i think that would lead Calgary to have more affordable forms of inner-city housing like Montreal does. Best way i can think of to stop having people buying in the new suburbs is to allow a housing form in the inner city that can be relatively competitive in terms of size and price. If this was the norm, voila less outward suburban expansion and more real urbanity. And it is a market-based solution, if the city could make land-use bylaw work for developers to build this rowhouse form.

TLDR?

No more of this shit:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.0172...4!1sPAUn4UYU14MdV45F0oqsUA!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

We should be be building a Calgary version of this to replace older ranch style bungalows:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@39.9817...4!1sFTrPVdEWgox6vc5dNTp7FQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656
 
Wow, great numbers! I was looking at the Aura Towers the other day, which by the way are now Aura (east) and Arch (west), and I noticed that almost all the units seem to occupied now. A year ago the towers were half empty. Arch was only about 1/4 full. Also Versus looks to be full or very close to full.
 
Not too surprised with the very strong apartment absorption numbers. Even during slower growth, the last few yrs have seen near record semi-detached, row, apartment construction. Cgy has seen a very strong decline in single detached construction % over the past decades, much stronger reversal pattern than other prairie markets. Single detached accounted for 80%+ of all unit type construction in early 90's, to low 30% over the past 4 years. Source - CMHC Calgary Housing Market Data. These are city proper stats, but similar trends across the CMA, just slightly higher detached starts ratio.

https://www03.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/hmiportal#TableMapChart/4806016/4/Calgary (CY)
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Single detached ratio in Cgy has been in low 30% range in recent years, Wpg/Edm 40%+, Saskatoon ~50%, Toronto city property around 6-7% lol. I actually like Cgy's mix the best as it provides options for many different housing types. Toronto is heavily skewed to apartments, which is a lifestyle not everybody wants to live. I'd like to see Cgy's row housing up more though.

Here's TO city proper

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Reecemartin said:
Does Calgary have any buildings with animated lights or just iconic lighting? What do you guys think?
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I think the Calgary tower has great lighting. I like the color combos. The crown lighting at Brookfield Place and 707 - 5th is very good.....not sure if I'd use the word iconic, but very good, maybe iconic. Telus Sky from what we've seen will be animated and probably iconic. The Kahanoff expansion building has a very cool lightbox installation.
 
The 2018 Economist Liveability Survey is out. Calgary was the top placed Canadian city at 4th. Vancouver came 6th and Toronto 7th. Calgary was placed 5th last year if you recall. With both Vancouver and Toronto placing ahead of us at 3 and 4, so butts to them I say! Calgary Wins! :D

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Calgary's biggest drawback was Culture and Environment, where we only scored a 90. Which I think is fair. We do well, but there's no way we can compete with a city like Vienna yet. It takes time to build up the institutions. We had the lowest score in the top 10, but I still have to think that doesn't reflect too poorly on us. At least it was an improvement. Calgary scored 89.1 last year. We also upped our infrastructure score from 96.4 to 100. Oddly, Vancouver scored the only 100 in the category in the top 10. I'm assuming that the environment portion is pulling it's weight harder than the culture portion. Which isn't to say that I don't think they have some great culture there, but I don't even think I'd score it higher than TO.

Calgary had perfect 100s across the board the rest of the way. So go enjoy an art more often and maybe we'll top the pile. :p

I'm glad that Vancouver and Toronto were hammered for their infrastructure. Toronto had the lowest score in the top 10 and handily deserves it. I also wonder about Vancouver's lower stability score. 95 is consistent from last year. I wonder if the pipeline protests are hurting them at all, or if it's more of a reflection of some of the really rundown areas of the city (e.g. Hastings).

EDIT: If found a CBC article, which shows the rank for Montreal, but not the metric scores. It ranked 19th, dropping 7 places from 12th last year.

MORE EDIT: I also found a MacLean's article which might shed some light on Vancouver's lower stability score. Crime is a component and Vancouver Metro municipalities tend to score worse than those of Calgary and Toronto. Langley is actually 6th worst. Vancouver proper is 35th worst compared to the other cities the Economist ranks: Calgary 93, Montreal 97 and Toronto 124. (Edmonton is even worse at 31)
 

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Yeah saw that in the news this morning. Pretty crazy that Calgary is number 4. I love it here so it's a bit of validation of what we all know. Interesting that Vancouver keeps dropping, wasn't long ago they were #1 for 4 or 5 years in a row. Just shows that other cities are constantly making improvements. Hopefully the new art gallery in the old palentarium helps our culture score.
 
Melbourne has apparently reigned supreme for the last 7 years at the Economist. The lead story in the free report is that Vienna knocked them off. I know what you mean about Van topping lists though. They must have done it somewhere else recently. There's very little depth in the free report on Canadian cities. The most they have to say is that low population density might have a large role to play in Canadian and Australian success on account of us possessing 6 of the top 10.
 
Agreed with Oddball on basically every point. Calgary is a fantastic place to live; the only knocks on this city are the lack of cultural institutions. I wouldn't make excuses that we aren't an old city so we don't have cultural institutions (we've knocked down our fair share of heritage buildings here). To me, culture is something that gets developed when people are focused on it. We need to invest in better entertainment and cultural institutions (museums, music centres, universities, etc.), but also focus on allowing for better urban development to allow for organic cultural institutions to pop up.
 
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