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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

Love those photos. I've eaten at both those places Jalan Alor in KL, and the Shake shack at Madison Square Park.Good times, and yes, it would be so nice to see that here. I'd love to see another resto in Central Memorial Park, but one that's more like a lower priced burger place, like the Shack Shack, or maybe a gourmet hotdog place. Just something a little more for the average person.

I thoroughly loved Jalan Alor, as one of my favorite eating experiences, but not sure if that could be replicated here with our climate. With a street like Jalan Alor, most of the eating is outside, with minimal space and seating inside. Some places have no seating at all. It would be nice to have even a temporary food festival take over a street.

This is Little Italy's feast of San Gennaro. Similar to the Lilac Festival with all the booths, but they are all food booths. I think this could work in Calgary.
176561
 
Permissiveness is a big part of it. One only needs to look at the difference between Sydney and Melbourne to see what a difference regulations can make. Melbourne has been more liberal with regulations for pubs and restos, and as a result has a much better food and pub culture. Sydney, up until recently had the same stupid, archaic regulations that much of Canada has had, such as bars having to be in a hotel, and pubs closing early, etc... and the food and pub culture is a lot more subdued. It's only coming around now thanks to new regs.
retrofiturbanism said:
Just to add my two cents to the "vibrancy" discussion. In my experience, cities that had vibrancy also had a very permissive and risk taking attitude towards things.

London- wanna convert a gas station into a food market? Sure, go ahead. Wanna stack a bunch of shipping containers on top of each other, fill them with micro retail and restaurants? Sure, go ahead.
Barcelona- Wanna start a festival with a parade with alternating parts peopling shoot firecrackers at each other/samba drumming? Sure, do it.

I think one of the best ways for us to encourage vibrancy is just generally have a permissive attitude toward new ideas.
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Surrealplaces said:
Permissiveness is a big part of it. One only needs to look at the difference between Sydney and Melbourne to see what a difference regulations can make. Melbourne has been more liberal with regulations for pubs and restos, and as a result has a much better food and pub culture. Sydney, up until recently had the same stupid, archaic regulations that much of Canada has had, such as bars having to be in a hotel, and pubs closing early, etc... and the food and pub culture is a lot more subdued. It's only coming around now thanks to new regs.
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Yes, despite the fact that Canada's considered a relatively progressive, secular country, there's still this underlying Bishop Strachan-esque Toryism that seems to be encoded into our national DNA, across the political spectrum: "Drinking... in a public park? How dare you, sir!"
 
Disraeli said:
You’re pushing at an open door in suggesting that there are areas Calgary needs to improve upon. But improvement (and our expectations) needs to be held in the context that we are a city of around 1.5 million. I don’t need to expand any more on what UrbanWarrior already said regarding population difference, other than to say that you will find yourself frustrated if you expect Calgary to be comparable with hose cities in terms of downtown retail ext. Regarding improving entertainment and retail in the core: I think that will come with more population. Canadian Tire and the numerous grocery stores proposed are a good example of an emerging inner city market catering to residences rather than office workers and tourists. Hopefully Stephen Ave. will see a change in its retail landscape with all the new residential towers going up a few blocks south.
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Disraeli said:
You’re pushing at an open door in suggesting that there are areas Calgary needs to improve upon. But improvement (and our expectations) needs to be held in the context that we are a city of around 1.5 million. I don’t need to expand any more on what UrbanWarrior already said regarding population difference, other than to say that you will find yourself frustrated if you expect Calgary to be comparable with hose cities in terms of downtown retail ext. Regarding improving entertainment and retail in the core: I think that will come with more population. Canadian Tire and the numerous grocery stores proposed are a good example of an emerging inner city market catering to residences rather than office workers and tourists. Hopefully Stephen Ave. will see a change in its retail landscape with all the new residential towers going up a few blocks south.
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Again, I emphasis, there are plenty of cities around the world that are much more vibrant with lesser populations. Bigger population does not gurantee more vibrancy. A large city like Atlanta is probably no where near as vibrant as a Nice, France which is smaller than Calgary. If Calgary had started planning more like other dense cities we may have already been a Vancouver or Toronto , or even a London/Barcelona depending on how aggresive the planning was. Density is probably the most crucial part to vibrancy but it isn't the sole factor. Obviously you don't wanna budge on your stance and I'm not going to try and convince you, we have completely opposing views on this matter. I think to prove my point and settle this we should have a poll on a forum asking whether Calgary needs to improve in vibrancy, my gut says an overwhelming majority would say yes. 1.5 million people is more than plenty to create a vibrant fun city, the real issue here is how the City should have and could plan out the city so 1.5 million feels like Vancouver/Montreal/Toronto in terms of vibrancy. We don't have to enforce vibrancy in the suburbs but atleat our Core should be lively for more than 12+ hours of the day. Thats what defines most cities. And if you think I'm being sour about the lack of vibrancy in our city, I can't remember which councillor on the Sprawlcast podcast stated this but they said the first time they arrived to Calgary they didn't know where exactly the "city" was and their still unsure till this day. But they also said we've been making progress so its not all doom and gloom.
 
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Atticus said:
You've raised some great points. As someone who has lived in London, and has spent a lot of time in Paris, and NYC, I think those cities are great to visit, but living in those cities isn't always what it's cracked up to be. There are moments when you say to yourself, 'wow, this city is awesome', but I found those moments came less frequently as time went on. In general I found those cities less enjoyable as time went on.

Bigger and busier isn't always better, you need a balance of vibrancy, and quality of life, and ease of living. Calgary in many ways is an easy place to live that offers a fair amount of urban vibrancy for a smaller city. Decent housing in an inner city setting that is reasonably affordable, compared to Vancouver, London, NYC, etc.. A place where you can raise a family in an inner city neighborhood, and walk to your downtown job if you'd like. Calgary needs to emulate places like Kensington, Mission, and the nicely evolving Marda Loop. Good density and vibrancy, yet still a livable neigborhood.

Sure I'd like to see Calgary's core get busier and denser, but not to the point of London, NYC, or Paris etc.. That kind of density and busyness is better for visiting.
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Ideally, we should offer a mix of lifesyles, but when it come to the core area, I say make it as vibrant and as dense as you can go! So we have a little bit of everything. I wouldn't wanna live in the suburbs if it resembled a chaotic Manhattan, but in the core? Heck yeah! Thats the dream, making a complete city that has areas that cater to everyones unique choices. I just think a cities core speaks volumes, if it's vibrant, its looks good on the city, travellers speak well about it. All the top most visited cites in the world are some of the most lively and exciting cities but that doesn't mean the suburbs of a city like Paris are as chaotic as its core. Thats why I think you can have both lifestyles coexisting. I remember reading in a urbanism journal somewhere, where ideally a good density level is in the middle of the pack, not a Manhattan but definitely not a Calgary either. Some great reoccurring examples were cities like Vienna which average around 4000-5000 people a Sq.Km. I think thats pretty healthy levels, with heavier concentrations in the core and lower in the suburbs balancing the overall numbers out.
 
I think overall some great ideas are being thrown around here! More liberal towards having fun, building a larger post secondary institution in the core, risk taking/open to new things like pop up markets. Someone needs to pass this list of ideas over to city council or CMLC ;) Its exciting seeing the downtown/Beltline getting denser but we definielty need to do more than just adding more people. Looking at what works in other cities is perfectly fine to help give our city a boost, every great place has borrowed at least one idea from another place.
 
gsunnyg said:
Again, I emphasis, there are plenty of cities around the world that are much more vibrant with lesser populations. Bigger population does not gurantee more vibrancy. A large city like Atlanta is probably no where near as vibrant as a Nice, France which is smaller than Calgary. If Calgary had started planning more like other dense cities we may have already been a Vancouver or Toronto , or even a London/Barcelona depending on how aggresive the planning was. Density is probably the most crucial part to vibrancy but it isn't the sole factor. Obviously you don't wanna budge on your stance and I'm not going to try and convince you, we have completely opposing views on this matter. I think to prove my point and settle this we should have a poll on a forum asking whether Calgary needs to improve in vibrancy, my gut says an overwhelming majority would say yes. 1.5 million people is more than plenty to create a vibrant fun city, the real issue here is how the City should have and could plan out the city so 1.5 million feels like Vancouver/Montreal/Toronto in terms of vibrancy. We don't have to enforce vibrancy in the suburbs but atleat our Core should be lively for more than 12+ hours of the day. Thats what defines most cities. And if you think I'm being sour about the lack of vibrancy in our city, I can't remember which councillor on the Sprawlcast podcast stated this but they said the first time they arrived to Calgary they didn't know where exactly the "city" was and their still unsure till this day. But they also said we've been making progress so its not all doom and gloom.
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Given that you are now making straw man arguments I can see that this 'debate' is going nowhere in a hurry so i'll say some final words and move on. My point is not that Calgary doesn't need "improve in vibrancy" it's that you insist on pointing to cities with either a) twice the population or b) you point to smaller European cities as examples of what Calgary should or could have been. These comparisons don't hold water for me. In a perfect world yes, by all means things should have been done differently. Give me a time capsule and I would have made Larry Heather look like he lacked conviction the way I would have harassed the city council's of the 70s-90's to do things differently. But this isn't a perfect world and the reality is that Calgary is a young North American city where most of its growth came during a period of single minded car oriented development. Vancouver and Toronto both suffered from decades of this mindset as well and their emergence as modern, urban cities has happened relatively recently for reasons more complex than just planning policy. I don't think I need to explain why looking at 1000+ year old European cities-- big or small-- is a ridiculous, irrational standard to hold Calgary to in terms of vibrancy. Most of the growth in those cities happened when Calgary didn't even exist as a name on a map. I'm sorry but context matters. What we can do now is do things differently going forward, build off what we have and choose to live in and support our urban areas. That much we can agree on.
 
Silence&Motion said:
What’s wrong with an art gallery? That’s great! There’s already a critical mass of galleries along 11 Ave. This is building on a strength.
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I've got nothing against art galleries in general, only that they don't generate a lot of traffic, unless they're bigger, public art galleries. Given the location across the street from Central Memorial Park, I'd rather something like the ice cream shop. People would pick up their ice cream and stroll around the park.
 
Alex_YYC said:
Would such a great location for a Village Ice Cream, but I guess an art gallery is like you say...better than nothing.
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Fortunately art galleries are usually a very leasehold light use, so unless they have a compelling reason to be right there (owner living in the tower?) they will chase rents to a space with similar attributes.

Also Loch moving might be indicative the Grosvenor wasn’t willing to rent for as long of a term at 17 and 4. That’s good news for that redevelopment!
 
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