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Calgary's skyline compared to others?

Your favourite skyline in Canada?


  • Total voters
    54
Nothing against Edmonton, but I got the opportunity to go up there for a concert recently and the downtown still seems quite underwhelming although their arena is a beauty. Its definitely lacking density. Apparently their Holt Renfrew is shutting down next year along with rumours of Hudson's bay closing down as well which has some concerned about the future of downtown shopping at City centre/Manulife place. Sticking fancy tall buildings is great and all for post cards but your core area needs some substance too. It'll definitely take a few decades for Edmonton to catch up in terms of Calgarys density of buildings, population, employment, and retail situated in its core region.

Bigger and fancier skylines don't always mean better, best examples are Vancouver and Montreal downtown which are more booming and bustling even though a quick glance at their skylines would say otherwise to a stranger. With that said, I would still be hella hyped if Calgary was to get a 300m+ tower?.

 
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Some people up there are quite excited that their downtown is booming finally, but they need about 20 years of boom to just catch us.

Yeah, like a couple decades to catch up to us even if we didn't build anything between now and then. As it currently stands, Calgary currently has 13 towers 35 meters or higher UC downtown right now, while downtown Edmonton only has 8. While city-wide, Calgary has 22 highrises UC, and Edmonton has 10. Delving deeper into the numbers, of their 10 UC, 5 of them will be finishing construction this year, while in Calgary of our 22 only 7 will be wrapping up this year. So really, whoever said that is delusional... even empirically speaking.

Sources for my numbers:

Edmonton: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=5&z=13&status=1
Calgary: http://skyscraperpage.com/cities/maps/?cityID=3&z=13&status=1
 
Nothing against Edmonton, but I got the opportunity to go up there for a concert recently and the downtown still seems quite underwhelming although their arena is a beauty. Its definitely lacking density. Apparently their Holt Renfrew is shutting down next year along with rumours of Hudson's bay closing down as well which has some concerned about the future of downtown shopping at City centre/Manulife place. Sticking fancy tall buildings is great and all for post cards but your core area needs some substance too. It'll definitely take a few decades for Edmonton to catch up in terms of Calgarys density of buildings, population, employment, and retail situated in its core region.

Bigger and fancier skylines don't always mean better, best examples are Vancouver and Montreal downtown which are more booming and bustling even though a quick glance at their skylines would say otherwise to a stranger. With that said, I would still be hella hyped if Calgary was to get a 300m+ tower?.


Great video gsunnyg! I liked at the end you could see good progress on the SWRR.
 
Some guy on the Edmonton Forum commenting on the Quartz Residences -
View attachment 185237

Edmonton's Skyline is nice, but it doesn't come even close to Calgary's. Definitely not Toronto's. Even with this new 280m Tower, Calgary's skyline is way larger, taller, more diverse, and denser.

You’re right, I think Edmonton skyline is improving, but it still a ways to go before it’s better than Calgary’s. Calgary’s skyline is nice from pretty much all angles and is much more filled out. Edmonton’s skyline looks good mostly from one angle. There are some angles where it doesn’t really look like much of a skyline at all.

For example here’s of a picture of it from my hotel room. It still has a ways to go.

40BD1A71-732D-4F51-919C-58DBF87F0FA1.jpeg
 
From a couple of angles, Edmonton's skyline looks really good with the Stantec tower, but yeah, seems to be only from a couple of angles. Most angles I find it looks awkward with Stantec dwarfing the other buildings. It went from a nice balanced skyline, to Oklahoma City's skyline.
 

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