jdixon
Active Member
Some parts of Bankview are kind of rough. I do think there needs to be some more development there.
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CBBarnett
Senior Member
Bankview is definitely an underrated hood, at least from the main stream discussions.
I think what keeps it beneath the radar is how steady it is, it's not exciting or ever the "next big thing" area - it just quietly has always been redeveloping forever, often at reasonably dense, middle-class housing products. This differs from places like Upper Mount Royal that only rebuilds mansions on an endless loop.
It's got SFHs, duplexes, walkup apartments of different vintages, all sorts of one-offs thanks to weird topography. Totally a mixed income neighbourhood with everything from fancy mansions to low-income apartments.
On the public space side it's got some great stuff too. Bankview has some of Calgary's best, oldest and only examples of road-to-park transitions. Weird and narrow street layouts and traffic calming from a few decades ago make the area calm for traffic and very little cut-through volumes despite being in the direct path of many downtown commuter routes.
Bankview's only real downside is the lack of retail, pretty much the only style of development that it doesn't have. It's really close to all the good stuff in the Beltline, while still being painfully far away from some of the basic stuff. They really should have allowed retail to grow up 17th and 14th back in the 1970s and 1980s.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I use to do work with cellular towers and went in a few buildings in bankview that have some antenna's on the roof, they were very run down. A friend use to rent a house there a few years ago which has since been taken down and turned into this development. So there is variety of housing and people.
This is very true, on the very far southside there is 26th Ave that has a very small section of retail at 14th and then again at 20th Streets and there is some things along 17th but it really isn't much.
As much as I mentioned rapid transit access each bordering road, 26th Ave, 14th Street, 17th Ave and Crowchild does have a decent frequency of buses just nothing that goes through the community... As has been pointed out it is quite hard to cut through the community so it could be tough to run a bus right through there.
I'm so jealous of some of their traffic calming!
The City took a two-way stop at 17th Street and 23 Ave...
And turned it into a four-way yield and a traffic circle.
Closed 22 Ave at a pedestrian crossing between two parks.
And outside of some alley access, closed 19th Ave from being a cut through by adding a park.
Perfect traffic calming, I have no notes.
Bankview really is a pretty perfect inner-city neighbourhood. Well balanced and well connected. A true utopia.
potatopizzafan
Active Member
I technically live in south calgary, but very close to bankview, and the diversity of housing in the area is probably the best in the city. On my street alone there are 100 year old SFHs, massive modern infill SFH, 4-plexes new and old, a couple townhouse developments, and some small apartment buildings
There's the route 6 on 17A St (that one wider street) and it basically goes through the middle of the community.
When I lived in Richmond I never liked the 6 and 7 (which goes along 14 St), because of the giant one-way loops they made through downtown/the Beltline. If your destination was somewhere on the loop (and not the turnaround point downtown), you couldn't just use the bus stop across the street to head back the other way - you either needed to walk up to a km, or ride the entire loop and wait for a time stop downtown. The 17 Ave portion of these loops east of 14 St was just egregiously slow, too.