News   Apr 03, 2020
Pastel Morning
 4.7K     1 
News   Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 6.5K     3 
News   Apr 02, 2020
Soon to be Gone
 3.8K     0 

Calgary, the next Detroit?

Patrick.1980

Patrick.1980

Active Member
Member Bio
Joined
May 26, 2016
Messages
591
Reaction score
1,367
Cowtown said:
For all the doom and gloom we sometimes hear about, Calgary is hauling ass.
Click to expand...
Thank you! I spent yesterday evening listening to my brother in law talk about how bad the situation is in Calgary, and that 'the last person to leave Calgary will have to turn out the lights' :mad: I brought up all of these developments, and also the small fact that Calgary is still growing in population, but it went in one ear and out the other.
 
Lol that's too funny. We're still one of the fastest growing cities in the federation, and that's not changing any time soon. The only thing that might change is that we become thee fastest growing city again. Some people really just want to focus on contrived doom and gloom scenarios, likely just because things aren't as good for them, individually, as they once were.

We have 8 skyscrapers over 100 meters tall currently UC/nearing completion, with another 20+ over 35 meters in the same state, and countless multifamily structures underway as well. Four times the number of Edmonton, and about on par with Ottawa (which is experiencing a record growth spurt). Things are more than fine here.
 
Last edited:
Yeah, it's weird. I continually hear how bad things are, although that does seem to be dying down as of late. I haven't seen any news headlines of massive layoffs in the oil patch for a while, and that usually gets the Debbie Downers going. About a month ago I was at Analog, and overhead a guy talk about how Calgary was going to be the next Detroit. Now I'm not at all a violent person, but the guy looked so punchable at that moment. lol.
 
Beltline_B said:
Yeah, it's weird. I continually hear how bad things are, although that does seem to be dying down as of late. I haven't seen any news headlines of massive layoffs in the oil patch for a while, and that usually gets the Debbie Downers going. About a month ago I was at Analog, and overhead a guy talk about how Calgary was going to be the next Detroit. Now I'm not at all a violent person, but the guy looked so punchable at that moment. lol.
Click to expand...
There is almost nothing analogous about Detroit and Calgary. I've heard it too many time over the years, so tiresome.
 
Beltline_B said:
Yeah, it's weird. I continually hear how bad things are, although that does seem to be dying down as of late. I haven't seen any news headlines of massive layoffs in the oil patch for a while, and that usually gets the Debbie Downers going. About a month ago I was at Analog, and overhead a guy talk about how Calgary was going to be the next Detroit. Now I'm not at all a violent person, but the guy looked so punchable at that moment. lol.
Click to expand...
Something I have repeated a few times, in a few ways - the official Story of Calgary is very different than the stories of Calgary.

Capital "S" stories are told by the loudest people in the room - not unfair to characterize Calgary's loudest storytellers as mostly rich, old, white, political, conservative, men in oil and gas - they have set the main stream narrative of what Calgary is, what Calgary thinks, what Calgary does for a few generations. They have the Herald and the Sun blaring their rhetoric non-stop for decades. Many people listen to them.

But they aren't the lower-case stories - they aren't even close to what actually is going on here for the 1.5 million of us. Neighbourhoods, people and our local cultures shift uncorrelated to whatever wrong or right was done to victimize or extoll our storyteller class. Our city shifts regardless of the price of oil. for the majority, none of that matters to hundreds of thousands of people who live here - only 10% of us are rich, only 40% are over 40 years old, only 60% of us are white, only 40-60% vote, only 50% are men, only 5% work in oil and gas. Even more important - only a dozen of us have daily columnists parroting whatever we think in the Calgary Herald.

Focusing it back on the topic at hand, Calgary's city centre is both dying and healthier than it's ever been. It's dying to those that drove downtown to an office and commuted to their suburban houses. But the people that live here know it's more vibrant, populate and engaging than ever. Just as old Calgary was destroyed to make way for the boom of suburban Calgary car commuter from 1970 - 2010, the city is growing back into itself, whether political Herald columnist agree this is good or not. The city centre is changing and has been long before COVID and office vacancies were monthly updates in the mainstream.

If everyone believed Calgary = Detroit, you wouldn't have boring old banks fronting boring 300 unit apartment buildings in the middle of this city. The Detroit reference thing is purely a rhetorical device to take advantage of the idiots for political gain.

Anyone that tries to paint a city of 1.5 million with a single brush is also an idiot.
 
Last edited:
Well said @CBBarnett. From what I've seen, the comparison to Detroit often seems to be a flippant, semi-sarcastic comment, but some people truly belive it. I had this discussion with a coworker a few years back. He really believed that Calgary would take on the same fate as Detroit. all he could see that that both cities were heavily dependant on one industry, and therefore Calgary would obviously face the same outcome.
 
This one has me fired up.

Although disingenuous, the people who compare Detroit are not entirely unfounded - hear me out. @CBBarnett beautifully illustrated, as per usual, that downtown Calgary is largely moving away from the suburban commuter culture. The difference is that while Detroit experienced the absence of this culture, Calgary is actively replacing it with something much better: a growing sense of ownership and agency over the experience of our urban environment. Take for example:
  • Engaging community spaces like the Riverwalk, Central Library, EV basketball court, skate parks, etc.
  • Investments in culture like the Glenbow, Contemporary Gallery, and Arts Commons, and BUMP.
  • Maturation of urban neighborhoods like Kensington, Bridgeland, Marda Loop, and Inglewood.
  • Influx of high-rise residential in the core.
  • Commitment to transportation: Green Line, a large and expanding cycle network, great highways (ugh), and one of the most notable and effective e-scooter adoption policies there's been.
  • What is/will be the best urban craft beer/alcohol scene in the country (high-five Est. Brewing).
What we're rapidly gaining is far more valuable than what we're losing. We're understanding the importance of making a phenomenal place to live. Of course I'm hard on this city in my criticisms, but that's because I love it. If someone doesn't see the great parts of Calgary, they haven't tried to.
 
Patrick.1980 said:
Thank you! I spent yesterday evening listening to my brother in law talk about how bad the situation is in Calgary, and that 'the last person to leave Calgary will have to turn out the lights' :mad: I brought up all of these developments, and also the small fact that Calgary is still growing in population, but it went in one ear and out the other.
Click to expand...
If he's your brother in law because your wife is his sister, it's time for a divorce lol.
 
It would be good if these sort of meta-discussions were moved into other threads; I won't think Park Central is the place to look to find this sort of comparison.

But anyways, as someone who has used the word Detroit in these forums somewhat recently, I think that reflexively dismissing comparisons because cities are different is as silly as making very superficial ones. Obviously, every city is different; every person is different, but where would we be if doctors never compared people with similar maladies to find common treatments? A big problem in urban management is not-invented-here syndrome, where something that works in 54 other cities has to be piloted or tested or debated ad infinitum; just because it works in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Vancouver, there's no way to know it'll work in Calgary. What's useful is to ask what lessons can be learned, but also to ask if there are multiple appropriate comparisons.

Calgary is in the process of losing it's largest industry. Has been for a while, and the pace will in all likelihood quicken. And this isn't a case where it's just moving somewhere else; there is greater demand for steel, and cars, and airplanes than there has ever been and there still will be in 50 or 100 years; it doesn't matter how many pipelines Trudeau builds for us, oil demand is at a broad peak globally. So I think it's important to look at other cities that have lost their largest industry, and see what can be learned from them. And that absolutely includes Detroit, but it should also include Pittsburgh. It should include Seattle, where the 1970s oil crisis nearly killed Boeing and led to the phrase "turn out the lights". It can include Winnipeg, which grew by a factor of four from 1901 to 1921 and has grown much more slowly ever since the Panama Canal opened. It should also include looking at our fossil fuel peers, at Denver and Dallas and Houston and Brisbane.

And the key lessons that emerge from these cities are around investing in education; around culture; around immigration and diversity; around livability.

But the other thing is that Calgary has been remarkable for a very long time; for 50 years, we've led our peers in growth, in education levels, in affluence. I think it would be unreasonable to assume that this will continue forever, I suspect that the next 50 years -- even with good citybuilding -- could see Calgary behaving more like slower-growing cities, adding 15,000 people a year instead of 30,000. Maybe our tax rates need to be similar to other places with similar services. The economic hard times in the years before the pandemic were actually our median individual income dropping from 30% above the national average to 15% above the national average. I think it's more likely and more sustainable to assume we'll be closer to the national average rather than a massive outlier going forward.
 
It's somewhat fair to make the comparisons, as Detroit was based heavily on one one industry that took a hit, and Calgary is facing a similar situation... just as other cities have been hit by economic downturn of an anchor industry (Winnipeg, Denver, Seattle, Pittsburgh, etc..) In most of cases the issues were job and economically related and the cities were able to recover and re-invent themselves over time.

Detroit's struggles were more complex, with one of those problems being white flight. The auto industry did take a hit, but it was a slow hit over several decades, and began after Detroit's slide had already begun. A big issue for Detroit was crime and race related. White flight started in the early 50's and those issues took hold fast, spiraling the city in a 20 year period. After the riots of 1967, the city lost 150,000 residents in less than two years, ~15% of its population. Something extremely difficult to recover from, and it never really did. White flight was an issue in a lot of American cities, but the way it happened, and the rapid pace of it was something Detroit was never really able to recover from. Decline of the auto industry was of course a big factor, and some of that decline wasn't so much an industry decline but rather was due to new plants being built in the suburbs and taking jobs out of Detroit. That''s not something that would happen here.

IMO, that is those are the main reasons we won't be the next Detroit. The other reason is that Calgary has a lot of other things going for it. It's a safe, clean city with a well educated population, and skilled workforce. It doesn't hurt that the Rocky Mountains are next door. People care about this city, and a good number of people like living here. We'll have our challenges when it comes to oil and gas winding down, and we're not likely going to see the kind of booming growth we've had in other years, but we're already seeing the transition happening and the city is still growing.
 
Calgary definitely is not be the next Detroit. It could be the next Pitssburgh, Denver, St Louis, whatever.. but definitely won't be the next Detroit. I highly doubt any large city in Canada will ever go through what Detroit went through, it was a unique situation.
SP summed up Detroit's siuation pretty well with this.

A big issue for Detroit was crime and race related. White flight started in the early 50's and those issues took hold fast, spiraling the city in a 20 year period. After the riots of 1967, the city lost 150,000 residents in less than two years, ~15% of its population. Something extremely difficult to recover from, and it never really did. White flight was an issue in a lot of American cities, but the way it happened, and the rapid pace of it was something Detroit was never really able to recover from. Decline of the auto industry was of course a big factor, and some of that decline wasn't so much an industry decline but rather was due to new plants being built in the suburbs and taking jobs out of Detroit


I've always thought the same thing. White Flight was a huge cause, and the fact that the auto industry jobs were not entirely disappearing, but rather moving to another part of the region (didn't know that part) - a region which has been doing reasonably well as mentioned by Mountain Man.
Calgary's future could certainly be compared to place like Winnipeg or Pittsburgh, sower growth than in previous boom years, but my feeling is that it's going to be more like Denver. With it's sizable population (relative to other parts of Canada), its skilled labour pool, and some side benefits like the Rockies, it has enough to keep going decently. I know we boost over the Rockies a lot and our outdoor lifestyle, but it does have an affect. Maybe not in drawing people directly but it helps keep people.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top