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It's a about ~130 - 150km of trail, which would be doable in a single day for the more serious cyclists. However if you have a few campgrounds to break it up, you'd really attract the family and more leisurely crowd that's more interested in a 30 - 60km / day trip. With e-bikes becoming main...

If you could bike to Banff from Calgary on a separated pathway that would be revolutionary. Throw down a few campsites and with the advent of e-bikes for the less mobile and it would become a classic weekend adventure getaway in the region.

This is the kind of rational, efficient urban concept plan really highlights just how bizarrely inefficient and unthoughtful our major provincial facilities are at site design at integration with the communities around them. Children's Hospital (and to a lesser extent U of C) is so strange...

Part of the reason is BC (and most provinces) are still growing relatively rapidly - periodically Alberta grows faster for a while, but a sustaining a meaningful higher growth rate in Alberta hasn't really happened short of a few years every decade during a boom. BC's larger base population...

It's also a proportional problem related to local population. The Beltline has continued to grow and get increasingly vibrant despite these issues - it's reached a critical mass of local population that the issues themselves seem less severe because there's more other "normal" activity going on...

Unfortunately the quality design on the front really gives up the win on the back side, with a inordinately large surface parking lot and generally poor interaction with the community considering it was in an era of construction we should have known better.

Very interesting re: density bonusing. It's a tricky one to wrap your head around where there's clearly a bunch of competing objectives: We want to encourage more development so waiving the bonusing fees (more density for no additional costs), But we don't want to get rid of the bonusing...

For a neighbourhood of the scale of Inglewood I wonder what type of new development could have threaded that needle - a new place, but also gritty in the Inglewood "style". The challenge with Inglewood's historic parts is that it never really was a complete heritage street - it's had parking...

Yeah but the scale is important here - that "mall" is a big box strip mall style of a hundred or two hundred thousand square feet. It's not a significant node - Airdrie has 2 or 3 power centres of similar magnitude, Calgary has about 200 of these. Square One in Mississauga is 2.2 million...

The thing is though - Airdrie doesn't even have the mall, that's 7km out of town towards Calgary in an industrial park outside their city boundary. Mississauga actually did have a big giant mall they eventually filled in around in the centre of their city. Plus they have major hospitals and...

Much like anything, most of the longevity questions usually come down to maintenance - wood or otherwise. Wood frame buildings can last hundreds of years if they are taken care of and issues fixed. More contemporary times is a different concept about “useful economic life”, which is related to...

Put more simply, arrogance. A government that’s been around too long and has entrenched the party to a higher status than the electorate gets into these kind of issues about corruption, nepotism and surprisingly sloppy behaviour scandals. The Dreeshan types thrive, because they need to...

It's actually a good election to remember that right/left, progressive/conservative dichotomies may be useful to chat politics at a high-level, but voters are far more nuanced in practice particularly in a country as diverse and regional as Canada. NDP vote went all over the place, largely to...

I am not a fan of "contextually appropriate" arguments as it's so squishy - it can mean anything and is subjective. It also fails to account for how much change can and will occur in a place, essentially arguing that "what's here now is reasonably close to the best it can be so we shouldnt...

Oh man. 14th Street will be the real test - it's one of the shittiest streets in the city where no one is happy and pedestrian and vehicle traffic is both high 24/7. It's got higher density everywhere around it, but is also a reasonably significant cross-town route. Unlike the MacLeod Trails of...

One random thought I think every election about turnout is where is everyone? Turnout for the history of Canada has never been higher than the 75 - 80% (highest was 79% back in the 1960s). In more contemporary times, we have been typically in that 60 - 70% turnout range. We've had dozens of...

One of my favourite examples of 1970s transportation engineer over-building hubris is a full-block dedicated turn lane to support a total of 14 houses on a cul-de-sac on 24th Ave N. Not every intersection needs a cross-walk, but we definitely need a 30 to 40 car turning capacity to support 14...

It's been a slow-burn on Kensington but the needle is always pointed in the right direction. It's been an interesting journey for the area. From the early and mid-2000s perspective, Kensington was talked about in the lens of being top 1 or 2 urban communities - hip area, cool places, a bit of...

Perhaps the old London Drugs location in Mount Royal Village? Can't beat the Beltline - has just become an automated engine of urban growth. Amazing how far it's come since one of the first modern "urban" grocery store projects back in the early 2000s with CO-OP Midtown.