Calgary's Downtown Dilemma

[Albertasaurus]

Kingston, Ontario has 6 penitentiaries. If penitentiaries cause a huge spike in crime, shouldn't Kingston have a sky high crime rate?

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Kingston, Ontario has 6 penitentiaries. If penitentiaries cause a huge spike in crime, shouldn't Kingston have a sky high crime rate?

It's just more kope/kvetch from one of the most brain drained cities in the anglosphere.

If current trends keep up, I think some day in the not so distant future we're going to have to have grown up conversation on whether some Canadian cities really need to continue existing in their present form.

If Canada is going to maintain an environmentally responsible path, then were going to have to evaluate whether expending the resources required to maintain a settlement of over a million people in a dismal, energy intensive climate is the responsible thing to do.

Other than the refineries and arguably the airport, what other assets are there that couldn't be better located in places with better climates, like Kamloops, Lethbridge or Regina?

Not picking on Edmonton here, many of the same arguments could be made for Ottawa too. Or any
cities that have simply outlived their intended usefulness.

 

[trtcttc]

It's just more kope/kvetch from one of the most brain drained cities in the anglosphere.

If current trends keep up, I think some day in the not so distant future we're going to have to have grown up conversation on whether some Canadian cities really need to continue existing in their present form.

If Canada is going to maintain an environmentally responsible path, then were going to have to evaluate whether expending the resources required to maintain a settlement of over a million people in a dismal, energy intensive climate is the responsible thing to do.

Other than the refineries and arguably the airport, what other assets are there that couldn't be better located in places with better climates, like Kamloops, Lethbridge or Regina?

Not picking on Edmonton here, many of the same arguments could be made for Ottawa too. Or any
cities that have simply outlived their intended usefulness.

That's how you get ghost cities built in the middle of no where. Amazing traffic management, clean streets, modern buildings, beautiful amenities, but no people. Cities are more than just people living in buildings, and not something you can just relocate somewhere else.

 

[thommyjo]

It's just more kope/kvetch from one of the most brain drained cities in the anglosphere.

If current trends keep up, I think some day in the not so distant future we're going to have to have grown up conversation on whether some Canadian cities really need to continue existing in their present form.

If Canada is going to maintain an environmentally responsible path, then were going to have to evaluate whether expending the resources required to maintain a settlement of over a million people in a dismal, energy intensive climate is the responsible thing to do.

Other than the refineries and arguably the airport, what other assets are there that couldn't be better located in places with better climates, like Kamloops, Lethbridge or Regina?

Not picking on Edmonton here, many of the same arguments could be made for Ottawa too. Or any
cities that have simply outlived their intended usefulness.

lol. Most of North America would say the same about Calgary…

What an asinine comment.

Yeg and yyc are both about 36% bachelor degrees… so where’s the brain drain?

And suggesting a city of 1.6mil should shutdown, then naming a bunch of towns with 5-10% of the population… like what?

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Yeg and yyc are both about 36% bachelor degrees… so where’s the brain drain?

More like 41 vs 33 according to this link, and I'm guessing the gap widens when filtered for STEM degrees.

The Most Educated Cities in Canada 2025

Canada’s brain drain has a new direction—into its own cities. Fresh census tables reveal that knowledge workers are clustering at record speed, reshaping local economies from coast to coast. The Most Educated Cities in Canada

www.universitymagazine.ca

Interestingly, ignoring Ottawa/Gatineau as their stats are skewed due to lack of industry, the top 3 most educated cities are Vancouver, Victoria and Calgary.

If you don't want to bother scrolling down that far, Edmonton is #15

And suggesting a city of 1.6mil should shutdown, then naming a bunch of towns with 5-10% of the population… like what?

What part of environmentally unsustainable wasn't clear? Think of all the energy and electricity that goes in to heating and lighting a city of that size that dwells in frosty darkness for so much of the year.

That's electricity and energy that could be used by data centers to create AI videos of cats doing funny things instead. Are you really trying to say that a million people stubbornly sticking it out in the cold is more important than that???

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Amazing traffic management, clean streets, modern buildings, beautiful amenities,

I don't think we're talking about the same city..

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Back onto the actual thread topic, I think it would be a reasonable near term goal for the city to break up the drop in center into smaller facilities dispersed in the quadrants, and demolish the building by the time the arena is complete.

Plenty of other pieces to the puzzle, but that facility is holding back development in the area too much, and separate facilities could help a lot with triage of people into more specialized support programs.

As for the housing / relapse problem that was seen in medicine hat, I think the missing ingredient there was purpose.

Giving someone down on their luck a safe place to live is great, but without a renewed sense of purpose, the despair slowly returns and bad habits are easy to resume.

I suppose at one point a solution could have been getting the people who qualified for government housing support jobs with public works or the like, but now that everything is contracted and subcontracted things get trickier.

Maybe government construction or maintenance contracts could come along with a requirement to hire <X> number of people from the subsidized housing pool?

 

[UrbanWarrior]

It's just more kope/kvetch from one of the most brain drained cities in the anglosphere.

If current trends keep up, I think some day in the not so distant future we're going to have to have grown up conversation on whether some Canadian cities really need to continue existing in their present form.

If Canada is going to maintain an environmentally responsible path, then were going to have to evaluate whether expending the resources required to maintain a settlement of over a million people in a dismal, energy intensive climate is the responsible thing to do.

Other than the refineries and arguably the airport, what other assets are there that couldn't be better located in places with better climates, like Kamloops, Lethbridge or Regina?

Not picking on Edmonton here, many of the same arguments could be made for Ottawa too. Or any
cities that have simply outlived their intended usefulness.

Lmao! What the fuk did I just read?

 

[potatopizzafan]

Lmao! What the fuk did I just read?

Some fantastic satire

 

[darwink]

8. Mandated annual wage increases for people making under 60k per year, pegged to the cost of living index.
9. Rent control.
10. Doubling the amount of mental health resources available nationwide.

Rent control would mean rents would have to increase by inflation (or another cost index, every year). And never go down (or have the ability to catch up if they did). It is such a significant change from what has enabled Calgary's rental market to be so dynamic.

 

[Surrealplaces]

I think you guys are misunderstanding. Prisons are obviously paid for by the province and Feds.

But many of the prisoners aren’t from the city. They come in from elsewhere. But when released, they end up in the city.

So the policing, fire for ODs and arsons, vandalism, disorder, shelters/social services, etc all land on the municipality.

In Edmonton’s case, we have the highest concentration of prisoners in canada. The majority aren’t from Edmonton. It’s unfair and places a HUGE burden on locals. Which is why the province and Feds need to both give Edmonton more funding than Calgary who doesn’t bear the burden, and also why all future prisons need to be built in other cities, like Calgary, to more equitably carry the burden.

Here’s an article: https://edmonton.citynews.ca/2024/12/19/inmates-edmonton-report-prison-jail/

Here’s an example of the unfairness…
“In addition to the eight federal and provincial detention centres in Edmonton, inmates from Bowden Institute, just one hour north of Calgary, are driven two hours to be released in Alberta’s capital.“

No offense, but the “it creates jobs” arguement is so tone deaf. You think a few hundred average paying jobs is worth us having 3x the criminals released back into our city with a high reoffending rate?

And sure, there’s dozens of other categories we can argue about in terms of funding equity as it relates to education taxes, universities, grant programs, which city had 300mil given to them for an arena and which didn’t, etc. But on the topic of homelessness, crime, and disorder, Edmonton is getting screwed by the current setup.


Another article: https://edmontonjournal.com/news/cr...han-any-other-big-city-in-canada-stats-reveal

“Edmonton has a disproportionate number of parolees, the Correctional Services Canada numbers suggest. The city is home to around 2.5 per cent of Canada’s population, but 7.15 per cent of federal inmates who are serving part of a sentence outside prison. It has double Calgary’s number of offenders per capita (31 per 100,000), and more than Toronto (19), Ottawa (27), Winnipeg (49), Vancouver (44) and Montreal (53).”

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Okay, I see the point, and in this case it looks like it's not fair to Edmonton, but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty minor. Edmonton also gets to be the capital and have the vast majority of provincial government jobs. We'd be glad to take the prisons, but we'll want the legislature building to come along with them

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Okay, I see the point, and in this case it looks like it's not fair to Edmonton, but in the grand scheme of things it's pretty minor. Edmonton also gets to be the capital and have the vast majority of provincial government jobs. We'd be glad to take the prisons, but we'll want the legislature building to come along with them

Extending satire to thought experiment, I got to wondering where a good spot for a government district in Calgary would be, and quarry park seems like it'd do the job nicely.

Some of the residential properties close to the river would have to be expropriated to make space for the relocated legislature building, but I think it would all turn out quite nicely.

Given the age of most of the AB gov office space in Edmonton, many workers might be pretty happy with the new imperial campus, and there's still lots of room for expansion. Could even have space for the feds and get rid of the harry hays bunker downtown!