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The biggest issue with the 1980s-2000s style developments is not their lack of their grid pattern, but their really spread out nature, almost exclusive single use, and for the most part exclusively car-centric. A grid patten would have addressed some, but not most, of these issues. Doesn't mean...

You hit on a few trends here - overall population growth appears to be slowing globally, however cities still attract outsized share of this growth. I think it's fair to say the pace of change in cities may be slowing in a general sense, but it's probably not accurate to say it's stopped or...

I think you're forgetting a step - downtown Calgary was mostly single family homes first. It's actually a great example against your last point - its very possible to redevelop cities into something vastly different than they first were developed, assuming growth remains positive over a long...

So much of the urban quality of our cities relies on how big the city was before cars consumed everything in planning and society. So few cities have been able to dig themselves out of the design abyss that 75 years of car-centric thinking gave them. The ones that did leveraged their pockets...

Wonder how long that Panama flight will be - that's getting up there!

It'll happen eventually soon, although I am impressed with Lethbridge's growth lately. Statscan estimates city has population of 111,400 in 2024, putting it just behind Red Deer. link to statscan table I'd assume Lethbridge's growth in the long-run will moderate relative to the super-charged...

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...

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...

I would be interesting to see how the hotel industry groups estimate demand and a deficit. I'd imagine they are more interesting to look at and a bit boosterish, than accurate and useful. Trends seem to often change much faster than most of these projections are capable of contemplating. For...

When you continually push broadly unpopular policies - particularly unpopular in the cities - you need culture war/wedge issues in the cities to distract. Here's Dreeshen's letter: The funniest/saddest part to me is how the minister can't even reference a specific project or corridor -...

Yeah the "foreign-made" paver thing and the fact people will be unsafe walking near construction fencing near homeless people is where they lost me - it's a total shotgun approach to cast doubts on the project. There's legitimate construction timing and impact concerns that can be discussed, but...

This reference to public engagement seems like a bit of a PR/marketing move more than a risk itself - I cannot recall a building in the Beltline ever being reduced in height due to community opposition, particularly not on the east side. We have that row of out-of-scale ugly condos on MacLeod...

I know we often want every location to be a landmark and stand out, but this one seems to be a good opportunity to just be competent - build a livable, high density tower neighbourhood here with good street walls and trees. Add 2,000 units downtown in a 8 phase tower development with boring ol'...

This type of development and it's location are so important - a little pocket of walkable retail on a suburban car sewer that hasn't lost all it's land use productivity potential through arterial/freeway-ification. Start training up suburban Calgarians (and the transportation department) to...

It's The Calgary Way - downtown land is apparently so valuable it only has two possible uses: unkempt gravel surface parking lots or multi-billion-dollar shiny glass towers.

I am amazed Truman can financially support the level of development they are. Thinking back to their size only a decade ago, that's a wild amount of scaling up they have done. Add another $1.5B to their portfolio with these hotels. Impressive stuff. To see this one through, just got to hope we...

Lol - so much for my theory on some sort of correlation between height and unit count. Units and heights are just random numbers :) 69 Storey tower = 157 room hotel + 239 residential units = 396 units total 62 Storey tower = 248 room hotel +120 residential units = 368 units total 14 storey...

Cool stuff - that would probably push the towers over 200m I think? If Toronto condos with residential floor heights are any indicator, 60 - 70 stories seems to be 200 to 225m range (weird roof points and mechanicals add some uncertainty of course)

Ah the memories... the saga of the 1st Street SE idea dates back to the original cycletrack debates in the late 2000s. It was proposed as a key corridor, but ultimately, it was sacrificed as a corridor to win over a few Council votes, resulting in the cycletrack being approved (and continues to...

I mean that is clearly not the case in practice or it wouldn't have take 3 years of arguing to fix a 40+ year old issue. And this quote from the article is perfectly sums up the 1984 level of double-speak that goes into the traffic engineering world. Does this sound like walking and cycling were...