Ah, yes. gotcha.
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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Mountain Man
Senior Member
Ottawa doesn't have a lot of developable land in it's core, and with a height limit the numbers don't really work for new towers. There are a few parking lots and small buildings they could develop though.I imagine things will pick up for Edmonton’s core. It’s been a much slower go than in Calgary, but I remember Calgary had a tough go of it 20 years ago and now look at how far Calgary has come!
Ottawa is an interesting case, a lot of high-rises are being built there but a lot of them, probably more than half of them are out in the suburbs.
Outside of Vancouver and Toronto, Calgary has easily seen the best growth for inner core development of any other city. We’ve had lots of room for improvement of course
Same for Halifax and Montreal, older cities with cores that are pretty much filled in. Calgary has a ways to go, but has done an amazing job in catching up.
A memory refresher of how Calgary used to look like.
A memory refresher of how Calgary used to look like.
MissingMiddle
Active Member
Height limits in Ottawa are largely gone now, what remains is protected sightlines for certain heritage buildings i.e. Parliament etc.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
Mid 80s I’m guessing?
Someone had pegged the pic to be from around 1987.
I never realized how bad Calgary looked back then lol.
Mountain Man
Senior Member
Calgary went from a mediocre (but still impressive for a city of 5-600 000) to one of the best on the continent!
Habanero
Active Member
There has been great progress in the last 20 years. We just have to keep the pedal on the metal.
Roaring Flames
Senior Member
DougB
Senior Member
Has to be 84 or 85. Suncor (nee PetroCan) is complete, but Banker's Hall hasn't started construction and Eaton's store still stands.
JTron
Active Member
The old pic is too blurred out to tell if BH has started construction or not, but I remember the crane for BH went up just before the Olympics, in late 1987 some time. Eaton's store was still around at the time of the Olympics. It could be as late as spring of 1987, but yes some time after 1985.
Silence&Motion
Senior Member
Okay. I see your point now and I agree. My main point was that Jane Jacobs attributes a lot of social ills to urban design, but history has mostly tempered this view in favour of socio-economic and demographic factors. As well, priorities have shifted in an era where an affordability crisis has replaced crime and urban decay as the major issue facing most major cities. To be sure, a lot of what Jane Jacobs said is still incredibly important today (e.g. the importance of adapting rather than demolishing old buildings, walkability, mixed-uses, etc.). However, Le Corbusier's focus on eliminating housing scarcity by embracing modern materials and building techniques is also important today.
smart_development
New Member
It's reasons like this I could see Halifax potentially overtake Winnipeg in terms of population someday if it handles growth well enough. Obviously not tomorrow but in 50+ years.
JTron
Active Member
It's possible that it could happen, but would take a long while given current growth patterns. Over the past 5 years, Winnipeg has grown more than Halifax (Winnipeg +49K vs Halifax 34K), but Halifax did grow more than Winnipeg from 2019 to 2020 11K vs 6K, so who knows, anything is possible. It would be exciting to see a population race with Halifax added to the Wpg/Ham/Que group.
DougB
Senior Member
Excavation for BH started summer of 86. I remember walking out of Top Gun at the old Palliser Square movie theatre and walking past the site
