Recent content by CBBarnett

This is anecdotal, but I don’t think what Marda Loop is experiencing is a great example of retail gentrification. There’s been some minor displacement, but the net supply of retail spaces has grown many multiple times over - the high end spots are all in new builds, replacing very little retail...

While not everything is a housing problem, a sufficiently affordable housing supply is a pre-requisite for any other solution to be effective. Tough or soft approaches to policing, relocating facilities etc. none of that will be meaningfully impactful if there's always a poverty pipeline -...

No one said driving slow can’t be dangerous in certain situations, but do you seriously not think that vehicles going too fast is the more common and widespread safety issue on our roads than slow merging on highways? I can’t recall the last time it was reported that a cause of death or...

I hear this rebuttal a lot that slow speed is also dangerous, I’m sure there’s situation-specific stuff available but …. come on, it’s hardly an equivalent risk to the public safety on the roads. I would like to know the ratio between the number of people killed by vehicles going to fast /...

I just don’t think there should be “traps”. Traps imply a trick or something sneaky to catch people. There should be nothing sneaky about it. There should be photo radar so frequently the expectation is drilled in that you are likely to get a ticket if you speed. Enough risk of tickets in...

With modern technology we could govern cars remotely to only be able to drive the speed limit wherever they are. We could get 100% compliance and speeding would be a thing of the past! Of course, such a move would be seen as wild overreach and would never survive the first dose of politics...

The River Hall plaza thing last summer near the LRT bridge was amazing start for this - it had mostly food, beer and music but seemed incredibly well attended everytime I went by. Hopefully it comes back and starts to prove this is a concept that works in other places too. Retail on the river...

Marda Loop could use more “normal” retail. Cool wine bars are awesome and we should always have more of them, but we also need a bit more competition on the more day-to-day end of things. Donairs, sandwiches, convenience stores, bookstore, a normal pub etc. Retail could use more competition in...

This is one of these streets where the sized to fit every possible need (except street trees), including street parking. Then they put front driveway homes on it, removing the ability for 95% of the street parking to occur in reality. So there's a few million dollars of extra asphalt, no...

You'd be correct - it will be a improvement for connectivity and traffic volumes, at least temporarily. It will also end up in a hostile, ginormous concrete canyon that bleaches the potential out of the areas nearby. Here's from the Crowchild long-term plans. Takes the road in many places from...

Springbank to YCC is about 25km, and shows a 25 to 30% difference in rainfall. Illustrates the highly localized rain conditions here.

I also wonder how localized the drought classifications are - so much of Southern Alberta's rain is thunderstorm based, so inevitably leads to high local variations on rainfall totals. For example, Calgary's up to 160mm+ of rain for the month, while Lethbridge is only at 60mm for the month.

Thanks @ByeByeBaby - I was desperately hoping someone with better GIS skills than me would pick up the torch and advance this conversation :)

What you’ll find is the massive drop-off is often still far denser than Calgary’s drop off. Calgarys early suburbs (1960s - 1980s) are remarkably low density compared to many other cities on average, unless they are redeveloping. Don’t have the data in front of me, but recall much of Calgary...

It’s all CMA populations so it’s comparable and includes all suburbs within the CMA. I didn’t bother isolating for the city proper, it’s more work than time I had - but I don’t know if it would reveal anything more interesting. There’s no magical way to slice things to pretend the cities are...