Recent content by CBBarnett

Yeah, a longer growing season is awesome .... but you need water to actually grow stuff (and live). This is the next record I have my eyes on: Calgary on track to see its driest September in more than 100 years We haven't gotten more than 0.5mm of rain in day since mid August. It's lucky July...

Here's another similar threshold that illustrates the warming local climate, particularly at nights in the summer - most days over 10 degree minimum. Despite no real notable really hot heat waves, 2025 still made it to the new record. All of the top 5 are in the last 5 years, 9 of the top 10...

I think this is one of the more noticeable climate change impacts. Over the past 30 years Calgary's growing season has extended 2 to 4 weeks on average, the really extreme years are already pushing beyond that. That's an extra month of growing. That's such a change that's it's readily...

Another interesting factoid from https://www.reddit.com/r/CalgaryWxRecords/ . Longest streak of above 4 degrees in history, pushing 120+ days. We might test this low tonight or tomorrow, but if it doesn't drop too low, the forecast shows we have a good 7 to 10 more days at least - might...

I also like how unusual this development would be if it was built today. It's so simple, take a standard 25-foot residential lot and build a big box with 100% site coverage. It's like a FAR of 14. Built in the early 1980s, this was constructed on blocks with single family homes still...

TOD conversations seem to get bogged down in a scarcity mindset - there's endless debates on which ones are the priorities, which ones are the best, we can't possibly have them all. I'd say let them all rip! Unleash the TODs! While site-specific constraints, marketability and infrastructure...

To some extent, economic diversity is a product of metropolitan size in a open, market economy. While the "lead" primary industries are great things and get all the attention (Calgary/Alberta's historical obsession on O&G is best example of this), huge swathes of economic activity come from more...

Feeder busses would work fine and it's a short enough distance to be reasonably cheap to provide good frequencies without many buses. I've always been bugged by this alignment though - our system of suburban growth being first and foremost a stormwater and arterial road planning exercise is on...

Nice and to the conversation in the other thread about the pros/cons of free transit, here's the line item for the low income subsidy pass: To be clear, I am in full support of the fare subsidy program - it's exactly who and what we should be subsidizing, majorly improving mobility for a huge...

The problem with free transit is that someone has to pay for it. To expand the free fare zone to the most popular destinations nearby outside of downtown would take tens of millions of revenue away from Calgary Transit. That would have to be backfilled by tax dollars, which unlike fare revenue...

I thought it was due to the Suncor construction, where intermittent construction closures restricted vehicle capacity so the bus signal was removed to accommodate? Whatever the case, a frustrating development for a minor attempt at downtown bus priority just quietly disappear with no fanfare...

Yeah I kind of like it - and solve this problem that many of these places have around outdoor amenites being too piecemeal or divided up to be a meaningful value to residents. A quasi-courtyard that's functional will be kind of cool. Totally random question, not unique to this building - what's...

Closer to Okotoks (16km), than the city centre (20km). The "unicity" approach creates some weird investment distributions once you get to a city of our scale.

It would be hard to do worse than the current streetscape, Centre Street south of 16th Avenue is one of Calgary's best stretches of road as an example of the totally cavalier and uncoordinated lane width decisions that go on silently over the years, effective acting like a decades long process...

Have we seen this one yet? Called Nari, in Marda Loop (34 Ave and 14A Street SW). 44 units, and a bit of retail, replacing two small walkup apartments, if I got the location right. https://www.ournari.ca/