Recent content by CBBarnett

Currie is a weird one - something about the era of planning plus the timing and complexity of execution resulted in the interesting - but underwhelming - progress so far. The end vision is pretty interesting and could be quite good, just the execution and momentum dragged it's unclear to me that...

I have often seen chatter about 8 units mid-block, really be referring to a 4 unit townhome with 4 basement suites.I can think of a few of those, but most of those are relatively new so might not be on street view yet. Generally these buildings don't look any different from the street than a 4...

That's awesome. Acknowledging they are pretty small units, it's still a brand new unit, it's in a good location on reasonable transit, and with great cycling access - at that price is only about 30% of a full-time, minimum wage worker. That's a great outcome. Given the quality and execution...

So we get a sustainable levels of density, a brick facade, arches, and pedestrian-oriented retail all in an affordable housing project? Plus the whole thing went up lightning fast, it only starting excavation a year ago. What's every other development's excuse?

This block hasn't had a building on it since about 2000, it's been a parking lot ever since, and has been at least partially a parking lot since the 1970s according to old aerial pictures. Of the nearby upgrades, the DJD/Kanahoff expansion and upgrade was a mid-2010s vintage, with Hotel Arts...

the Banff Trail motel village triangle is another inner NW Calgary example on the list where design and planning has been largely forgotten - or at least misaligned - with the role the area plays in the region. The area's design is as if no one ever realized that demand would be permanently...

Well... the reacted a couple weeks ago by denying the funding request by Elections Alberta to actually run the referendums and recalls against their party. UCP MLAs slash Elections Alberta $13.5M request

Exactly - there are no "normal" weekends in a city of nearly 2 million where transit - although imperfect - probably gets 100K+ trips each Saturday or Sunday (although it would be awesome if Transit published more data to confirm that !). This isn't performative transit of the mid-sized American...

Great to see something move forward here, even if it's just a plain, forgettable, mixed use box. That ground floor height inconsistency will drive me nuts if they keep that in the final design. The site grade isn't remarkable at all, just figure it out so we can skip all these unnecessary ramps...

I'd be far more sympathetic to the random, niche policy interests of the provincial government if they made any improvement on the major portfolios in their now 6 years in office. The biggest ones for me are health care, public education, car and home insurance and day care costs. IMO, any...

This is great news, but am always curious how a regular person would see an impact from a mutual recognition pact like this. It's kind of obvious that all these separate rules cause friction, costs and time. But it's also really diffuse sounding - like random widgets and business-to-business...

One thing that's never been clear to me is what are we actually talking about from a risk perspective on this creosote issue. From my understanding, currently there's this contamination plume under the soil at some depth just sitting there. What's the risk of doing nothing about it? It's been...

It's a really solid area with good fundamentals - great park access, flat, rivers, easy access to the core and the NW employment hubs. Bowness' main limitation like most of Calgary - that's slowly changing - is that it's such low density that it can't support a vibrant, walkable retail scene...

I think this graph sums it up pretty well, with an all-time great chart title

Another possibility is that all the red tape wasn't actually the critical path for investment decisions as much as critics/proponents claimed - market demand and price factors overwhelm the relative burden of regulation in many cases. Or it's only been 6 months in of a minority government, in...