West District | ?m | ?s | Truman

CBBarnett said:
The majority of census tracts in Calgary are about 2,000 - 3,500 people / sq-km. This represents the majority of the city's area, which are mostly growth areas from the 1970s - 2000s suburban era. Higher density areas are inner city redevelopment areas as well as brand-new suburbs with higher amounts of children per house (and denser community designs).

Of note, the CT with the West District in it was about 3,200 people / sq-km in 2021. Notably, it's a large tract with a large population, I think it's likely to split into 2 new tracts in next census - there's some threshold that Statscan uses when deciding when/how to slice things up. This would likely push at least one of those new tracts into the next bucket up, perhaps over 10,000 people / sq-km depending on how it's sliced. But I am no Statscan methodology expert so someone smarter can tell us!

Many of our CTs include large swathes of parks and/or undeveloped lands. For example, East Village includes Fort Calgary, so regardless of the density in the the neighbourhood proper, the CT is unlikely to show a substantially higher density in the next census. A bunch of communities have similar issues - particularly when we get into those bloated arterial setback era of the 1970s and 2000s. That's a lot of undeveloped land that needs to be amortized over incremental population growth to bump a community from one density threshold to another!

With all that said, it's still just arbitrary lines and data slices - there isn't really a "right answer" here, it's all up to interpretation. I think 10,000 / sq-km is a round and compelling number, but still arbitrary line I invented for this conversation.

Bankview has been sitting at 8,000 to 9,000 / sq-km for decades and is a great neighbourhood - it doesn't have any walkable retail despite that density so there's obviously more to the story than a specific density threshold.
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Speaking as someone who used to live in bankview it’s a nice neighborhood but miserable to get around from without a car. Which is surprising with how close it is to both 17th and Marda loop.
 
I wouldn't be too surprised to see Bridgeland jump straight from dark blue to dark green on that map. Since 2021 we've had... Dominion, The Bridge, Era, Brio... and I'm sure a couple others. With nearly 800 units between those 4 alone, gotta be another 1100 to 1200 people? Over 20% growth for the neighbourhood.
 
UrbanWarrior said:
I wouldn't be too surprised to see Bridgeland jump straight from dark blue to dark green on that map. Since 2021 we've had... Dominion, The Bridge, Era, Brio... and I'm sure a couple others. With nearly 800 units between those 4 alone, gotta be another 1100 to 1200 people? Over 20% growth for the neighbourhood.
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It's impressive growth but won't be enough - again, the problem isn't the growth, it's the data how the way the lines are drawn. Bridgeland's current census tract includes Memorial Drive highway corridor, the river parkway, all those escarpments and hills, and the zoo. About half the area is undevelopable. A rough calculation to get the whole tract over 10,000 people / sq-km would take approximately 21,000 Bridgelanders!

That's the way is goes sometimes with the quirks about density data and geographies - the data can only get you a nice map and tell part of the story. Obviously Bridgeland's booming main street area is operating at a far more urban density than an arbitrary density calculation would suggest. Or put another way - for the part that's developed, it's likely Bridgeland is already exceeding 10,000 people / sq-km (all dependent on where you draw the lines). Just takes another step of thinking than just taking the map at face value.
 
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