Glenmore Landing | 115m | 35s | RioCan | NORR

It's interesting the prevailing style of high rise apartment living during the modernist era is often referenced as commie blocks. These are split between condo and market rental. Only a small percentage are socialized housing. My understanding is that it's meant as derogatory which contradicts being pro high rise suburban living. These towers in a park are usually narrower with wider, airier suites necessitating the more common cereal box shape. Vancouver really lucked out with the preferred modernist tower consisting of only 4 corner suites per floor.
 
maestro said:
It's interesting the prevailing style of high rise apartment living during the modernist era is often referenced as commie blocks. These are split between condo and market rental. Only a small percentage are socialized housing. My understanding is that it's meant as derogatory which contradicts being pro high rise suburban living. These towers in a park are usually narrower with wider, airier suites necessitating the more common cereal box shape. Vancouver really lucked out with the preferred modernist tower consisting of only 4 corner suites per floor.
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Found this on Toronto's city website, show the extent of change the last time we had a period of more rapid growth. Those "commie" blocks that are often derided were the solution to rapid growth and are the foundation of modern urban Toronto, and by extension modern urban Canada. Hundreds of thousands were created in this era all over the city, many rentals and some early condos as well.

Thanks to the concept of depreciation, this stock of housing are some of the more affordable, transit-adjacent places to live in an otherwise unaffordable city. They are not perfect developments - times and design priorities shift, built quality and maintenance since construction are highly variable building-to-building - but fundamentally they are places to live for hundreds of thousands of people. Providing a home is far more important than whether the building looks "good" from a random person passing by.

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Had Calgary stomached a mere 1,200 units back in the 1970s and 1980s, thousands of people who would have had access to more affordable units in the area today.
 
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Toronto has built hundreds of thousands of units during the past decade designed around providing some semblance of affordability in an ever increasing unaffordable market. This isn't sustainable. At some point, wages will have to rise or housing will have to undergo a severe correction. After the dust has settled, renovated modernist era commie blocks will be more sought then these under sized post 2010 investor units.
 
maestro said:
Toronto has built hundreds of thousands of units during the past decade designed around providing some semblance of affordability in an ever increasing unaffordable market. This isn't sustainable. At some point, wages will have to rise or housing will have to undergo a severe correction. After the dust has settled, renovated modernist era commie blocks will be more sought then these under sized post 2010 investor units.
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I agree, The unit size on new builds is not liveable long term. I don't mind living in a sub 500 sqft place by myself for a few years, but long term I couldn't do it. I find it a lot harder for a place to feel like a home when there isn't even enough space to fit a couch and a dining room table.
 
artvandelay said:
Montreal and Vancouver are the cities we should be emulating. Not Toronto.
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We should emulate the urban design of Vancouver in the 21st century, Montreal's built form and density from pre-1940 and their public space design of the 2020s, and Toronto's enthusiasm for massive housing supply growth of the 1950s - 1970s.

What none of these three cities would have done is have the right-of-way setbacks that Calgary had protected - forever and for little reason - in locations such as this. Everything about our arterial right-of-ways (giant medians, bloated intersection designs, slip lanes etc.) is ignorant of space and assumes land has no value. No major city does this. This proposal should be illustrative that if you can fit 6 towers in a setback space without even tearing down the adjacent strip mall or moving a road, perhaps your setback and right-of-way plans were wildly bloated and unnecessary. Clearly someone thinks the land has substantial value.

I am only half-joking but most of Calgary's arterials and 1970s-era neighbourhood boulevards have larger setbacks than the 401 in Toronto. You could add tens of thousands of units in the current footprint of the city by applying this kind of Glenmore Landing development approach to other similar situations.
 
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CBBarnett said:
We should emulate the urban design of Vancouver in the 21st century, Montreal's built form and density from pre-1940 and their public space design of the 2020s, and Toronto's enthusiasm for massive housing supply growth of the 1950s - 1970s.

What none of these three cities would have done is have the right-of-way setbacks that Calgary had protected - forever and for little reason - in locations such as this. Everything about our arterial right-of-ways (giant medians, bloated intersection designs, slip lanes etc.) is ignorant of space and assumes land has no value. No major city does this. This proposal should be illustrative that if you can fit 6 towers in a setback space without even tearing down the adjacent strip mall or moving a road, perhaps your setback and right-of-way plans were wildly bloated and unnecessary. Clearly someone thinks the land has substantial value.

I am only half-joking but most of Calgary's arterials and 1970s-era neighbourhood boulevards have larger setbacks than the 401 in Toronto. You could add tens of thousands of units in the current footprint of the city by applying this kind of Glenmore Landing development approach to other similar situations.
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Maybe one day, when Calgary’s winter has become mild from climate change, and roads have become superfluous due to flying cars, we can turn some of Calgary’s oversized roads into tree lined pedestrian streets like La Rambla.

Here’s a question for the forum, what street in the City do you think could/should become a pedestrian only street?
 
adamyyc said:
Here’s a question for the forum, what street in the City do you think could/should become a pedestrian only street?
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I've always thought 10 ave would be great, as it has low traffic and is kind of redundant for cars, already dead ends at both east and west ends of beltline. Place bollards mid block so vehicles have local access but no through traffic. Bike lane on the north side (triple wide) to limit intersections. Where the promenade crosses 11th, 8th 5th 4th, 1st streets west, MacLeod couplet will have a signal, with priority for a bike and pedestrian green wave.

Expand sidewalks into both park lanes, add tons of trees. Nice materials. Maybe a wide promenade bridge across Olympic Ave from village icecream directly to the green line station on the east side.
 
10 Ave doesn't dead end in the west, though. It connects directly to on/off ramps for Bow Trail and Crowchild trail. I think it probably gets a lot of traffic west of 18 St SW.
 
adamyyc said:
Maybe one day, when Calgary’s winter has become mild from climate change, and roads have become superfluous due to flying cars, we can turn some of Calgary’s oversized roads into tree lined pedestrian streets like La Rambla.
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That's the part I don't get about our standard designs - we absolutely can have our cake and eat it too in so many places - you can free up dozens of hectares of space without take out a single lane.

Almost as easy, dozens of more hectares would be available just by shifting the roadways around a bit and tightening up overly generous widths, curves, medians etc. You still don't even have to remove any lanes or capacity - you just have to assume the land has a non-zero value and should be put to higher and better use.

After all that - yes definitely remove lanes. There is a mistake in Calgary planning that roads are at capacity - they are not. You could remove substantial capacity along some corridors where demand never materialized to match the design, let alone the future-proofed expansion area that will never achieve the demand to be used. All that space could be used to for something more economic valuable. Probably dozens or hundreds of hectares of land before you run out.
adamyyc said:
Here’s a question for the forum, what street in the City do you think could/should become a pedestrian only street?
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I think every LRT station should have a pedestrian corridor prioritized and car-free. 3rd Avenue in Sunnyside is an obvious example, but nearly every station should have a corridor with basic local services and some higher-density residential built into a car-free node right at the station. This example at Glenmore Landing ( if they ever get to the long-range built out plan) is pretty decent at this I think.

After that, almost every neighbourhood side-street could easily convert to a "car-lite" design, where speed is deprioritized over walking and space other modes. If you design it right, you don't even need them to go car-free totally, just design them so that there's little incentive ever for cut-through traffic and prioritize everything else over fast cars. Suburban Netherlands is what I am thinking here - cars are still everywhere but don't dominate except on the car commuter routes and highways.
 
badc0ffee said:
10 Ave doesn't dead end in the west, though. It connects directly to on/off ramps for Bow Trail and Crowchild trail. I think it probably gets a lot of traffic west of 18 St SW.
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Woops, I misspoke, too little time in a car these days I forget about those ramps. Never seems to be much traffic under there when I'm at TRUCK or Two House. The road seems dead under there

I'd be fine with a pedestrian promenade ending at 14st, which I think absorbs most of the traffic anyway. City traffic data doesn't even bother to count past 15th.

www.calgary.ca

Traffic volume flow maps

www.calgary.ca www.calgary.ca

,
 
Ramsayite said:
Never seems to be much traffic under there when I'm at TRUCK or Two House. The road seems dead under there
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Cars come off of SB Crowchild or EB Bow Trail, turn immediately on 19 St and then continue on 12 Ave. There are no lights or stop signs so I guess that traffic is mainly noticeable on 12 Ave. There is a similar situation with 11 Ave and 18 St, although there is a traffic light.

The 10 Ave connection is the whole reason for the 11/12 Ave one way couplet west of 14 St. If it really is low volume, it seems like there is a great opportunity to close access from 10 Ave, eliminate a bunch of ramps, save maintenance costs, and restore two-way streets. But the story of the last 10 years (since the west LRT opened) has been to tweak this area for higher traffic volumes. Anyone remember that weird shirt-lived half circle ramp near 18 St?
 
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