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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
haltcatchfire
Senior Member
Way too much brown blank ground level wall on that Bridgeland one. Nice landscaping though
Cyric
Active Member
I got momentarily excited yesterday afternoon when I saw that 11th ave SE from 4 st SE to the bus barns was all fenced off with construction equipment on site and that the old chain link fencing had been removed. I then clued into the fact that it is likely just utility relocates.
darwink
Senior Member
I think this proposal is already a round 2, after the last one wasn't 'in character' with a town full of single family homes.
Rollerstud98
Active Member
Lots of the complaints I saw were about the cost. And it was no where near as ambitious as this version.
Calgcouver
Active Member
They have really flexible land use districts to work with in downtown airdrie but the $psf is super low for multi family there. I don’t see a market for it as prices are like $250psf for multi product, and airdrie has no draw or jobs for the most part. Pessimistic I know, but at least Airdrie has sky high domestic violence rates and loads of anti masker conspiracy theorists.
gsunnyg
Senior Member
LOL man Calgary's satellite cities are so trash compared to other cities in North America. Cochrane is the only proper one I can think of, but still nothing incredible from an urban standpoint. All the cities around Calgary literally feel like extensions of a suburban community or a quadrant. I'd love to see a toll tax slapped onto vehicles entering Calgary. I've had friends and coworkers from Airdrie that love to complain about Calgary's property taxes and whatnot yet they drive in every day to Calgary and use the Cities services and infrastructure. With Calgary's unanimous dominance in the area, a Mon-Fri commuter toll would really put the satellite city residents against a wall and generate some good tax dollars for Calgary.
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UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
High River is quite lovely. After the city was wiped out by the flood, they rebuilt their entire downtown, it's walkable, pedestrian friendly, and even closed off to vehicles for much of the summer. From what I've seen, it's superior to even Cochrane's little downtown, despite being less than half the population.
gsunnyg
Senior Member
Hmm well, I guess gotta make a trip out to High River, it been a very long time. I forgot High River was even in the CMA, it's further past Okotoks. Over 50km past Calgary downtown, in Europe that's considered another country
Urban Outdoorsman
Active Member
I think of all the town's around Calgary Cochrane probably has the best bones. A bit of a facelift and a couple midrise developments would go a really long way.
My least favorite by far is Chestermere... It's literally like a suburb broke off of the city and floated 10km east. The city doesn't have any real amenities and probably less than a dozen local businesses.
My least favorite by far is Chestermere... It's literally like a suburb broke off of the city and floated 10km east. The city doesn't have any real amenities and probably less than a dozen local businesses.
Chowda7
Active Member
Another 200,000 sq ft of production space being developed for the film industry. Things are really picking up steam.
calgaryherald.com
Family-run development group Emcor setting stage for local film industry
Emcor Development Corp., a family-run enterprise founded by Carlo Simonelli, has over the years become a successful business that has built up a large…
calgaryherald.com
darwink
Senior Member
The "calgary film cluster":Another 200,000 sq ft of production space being developed for the film industry. Things are really picking up steam.
Family-run development group Emcor setting stage for local film industry
Emcor Development Corp., a family-run enterprise founded by Carlo Simonelli, has over the years become a successful business that has built up a large…
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Calgary's regional dominance in housing has stayed remarkably stable despite the growth of the communities around. If I remember correctly, Calgary takes about 85 - 95% of all population growth on any given year for a few decades at least. All cities get more poly-centric (from one major activity/jobs centre to multiple and many clusters) as they get bigger, but Calgary's uni-city, aggressive annexation approach has probably kept some of this transition less visible as much of it is happening within the boundaries. Major secondary clusters such as universities and major hospitals are all within Calgary, for example.
Industrial /warehouse jobs is a different story. The Balzac effect seems very real and cheap large format land next to the provincial highway network is hard to compete with for land within the city. Industrial land is taxed far higher than residential so it's more lucrative for municipalities to have within their boundaries. I would expect lots of competition and fights over industrial and employment market share between Calgary and the other actors in the region. Whether anyone - Calgary included - can actually influence industrial location choice is another matter.
The lengthy history of inter-municipality competition has very mixed results and is likely pointless at the regional scale. It's a clear benefit to get a job to move from Vancouver to Calgary, but less clear when it moves from Rockyview into the city a kilometre away. Sure - there's property tax benefits on paper, but Calgary may have to give such a deal to compete with cheap regional land that Calgary might not get that benefit anyways. It's a classic race-to-the-bottom issue that probably doesn't create much value for any municipality.
Airdrie may find it has the same problem to develop an office cluster from nothing within it's core - it's a good idea on paper and I am sure there's some local demand for accountants or dentists that could cluster there, but the competition in the region from Calgary's existing clusters remains enormous.
In the longest run, I see no reason Airdrie, Cochrane and others don't go the same way as Abbottsford first then Laval or Mississauga later. They'll keep growing, developing more and more jobs and local activity but remaining fully integrated and dependent on Calgary and the parent region. If the region ever gets to 3+ million, it'll become less useful to talk about Calgary v. the other towns as everyone will be mixed in together.
ByeByeBaby
Active Member
Downtown Cochrane, perhaps does have good bones. But the rest of the town is the most dendritic, cul-de-sac off the freeway, auto dominant forever, terrible suburbia in the region.
UrbanWarrior
Senior Member
It's not in the CMA, but Calgary's CMA makes zero sense as the CMA ends at the southern border of the municipality, none of Foothills County is included according to StatsCan. The Alberta Government defined Calgary Metropolitan Region includes it though, as do most people. Even including all of Foothills and the western third of Wheatland counties, our CMA is still smaller in area than the current Edmonton CMA, yet several hundred thousand larger in population.Hmm well, I guess gotta make a trip out to High River, it been a very long time. I forgot High River was even in the CMA, it's further past Okotoks. Over 50km past Calgary downtown, in Europe that's considered another country