The secret in the Vancouver school of design.
Unfortunately that strategy works a lot better if your city was built within a coastal rainforest rather than a semiarid steppe.
Honestly, this is so true, as beautiful as some buildings are (especially the heritage and newer builds), I'll be driving or walking through way too many areas in metro Van where even Calgary's Forest Lawn neighborhood will look posh in comparison but thanks to the abundance of vegetation I don't notice it most of the time.
I agree about the grass. Put something else instead and use the water for trees. Trees wil grow here, but it's crucial to take care of them in the early stages. I've seen so many failures in that regard.
What drives me nuts is how much grass Calgary plants when they can be planting trees or shrubs. I'd rather see a row of dead trees for 8 months of the year than yellow grass. Edmonton is lucky in that sense. I know their weather favors vegetation more but that's no excuse as to why Calgary can't replicate throughout the city the amount of vegetation present in many of its older inner-city neighborhoods, particularly along highways and main streets.
Calgary has just under a million trees, so a billion would probably make a difference. That many trees in the middle of a forest wouldn't make much difference, but in a city where 3/4 of the land is occupied by buildings, parking lots, sidewalks and roads it would be huge. I don't remember who the person was, but there was a guest lady on CBC talking about this and she mentioned a quarter of a million trees would make Calgary noticeably greener.