West District | ?m | ?s | Truman

Can't wait to tour this one when I visit Calgary. Only real downside is its remote location with little transit. Of course, not a problem for those who get around by car, which I imagine will be most residents.
 
kora said:
Can't wait to tour this one when I visit Calgary. Only real downside is its remote location with little transit. Of course, not a problem for those who get around by car, which I imagine will be most residents.
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With the quantity of nearby and highly walkable retail, it will have far fewer car trips than previous generations of suburbs I think.

School and work are obviously big trip categories for much of the population - most of that will happen outside the community, mostly by vehicle given the remote location - but all other trips are going to be very short.

Under 1km walking distance to 3 full grocery stores (with a reasonably pleasant quality walk by suburban strip mall standards) is pretty remarkable for a fringe of the city build, probably actually only surpassed by Beltline in grocery store density. Seton, NE and North suburban builds have nothing comparable.

Obviously the West District development is intentionally trying to be walkable and dense within it, but a lot of credit goes to the unusually small and incremental subdivision process (and high incomes) of the overall area. The result was a fairly tight clustering of developments, often with interesting attention to details, and way more mixing of uses on 85th Street than would be seen including had the area been built out as a more typical mega-master planned subdivision.

Nothing will solve the remoteness of the neighbourhood overall, but it does make a fairly serious attempt of mitigating that with so many local amenities.
 
It isn't that remote if you are willing to use a transfer. The 98 will pick you up from 69th street station and take you right here. Or, you could catch the 111 from Westbrook. If you time the transfer right, both are very quick and direct.
 
MichaelS said:
It isn't that remote if you are willing to use a transfer. The 98 will pick you up from 69th street station and take you right here. Or, you could catch the 111 from Westbrook. If you time the transfer right, both are very quick and direct.
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And on the citywide scale it isn't particularly remote either - it's the closest in greenfield area to the core, with well established direct links. As the local transit routes hopefully improve in the coming years, they can leverage the time-competitive West LRT in from 69th Street.

It's probably our best example of if you put enough stuff in a small enough walkable area, it starts to not matter as much where it actually is or if it's brand new. Someone living there will get a fairly self-contained, short commute, walkable lifestyle despite it being not physically central to the region or close to the traditional hubs.

The actual suburban towns around Calgary should be paying attention. A West District-style hub would the type of project that would open up a whole other market for them of potential residents, businesses and vibrancy. It's proof you don't need to just build the same old sprawl-type low density with minimal amenities in greenfield.

None of our suburban towns have a bold enough vision to really attempt this with their current politics, but can imagine just how revolutionary a West District-style hub at the future Cochrane train station could be, for example.
 
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