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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

I guess this falls under this umbrella although out here in Airdrie, NIMBY's making their voices heard.

https://www.discoverairdrie.com/local/18410-council-holds-public-hearing-on-309-main-street-rezoning

Property in question:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.2936...4!1siYpLljhEIJlLxGRJfE9r8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Directly south of property:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.2936...4!1siYpLljhEIJlLxGRJfE9r8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Makes me laugh the guy they interviewed saying that the neighborhood has historic value. Almost all houses are bi-levels built in the 70's. This area they call "Old Town" is not really old at all. The part of Old Town that still has houses, the houses are all but 1 converted to commercial use. I could somewhat understand saying there is historical significance in the area known as "The Village" as there are at least some homes well over 100 years old now, but even most of those are only significant for being old. Not beautiful architecture or significant for who built them.
 
Same arguement s as everywhere. More concern over where cars sleep than what is for people. Any change becomes anti-historic and changing of character. At least there aren't rental residential units in the building and we didn't have to read racist and classist 'othering'.
 
All in all 49 residents out of a city of 60K oppose it, and as Darwink said, for stereotypical NIMBY reasons...even siting construction debris as a reason. The crazy thing is that it's only 8 units with some commercial, not exactly neighbourhood changing IMO. Hopefully Airdrie council makes the right decision on this. (Nov 20 is the date)
 
Silence&Motion said:
I have very little faith in municipal governments or developers to convert suburban strip malls/big box stores into actual urban neighborhoods. I've never seen this successfully accomplished, though I'd be interested if anyone has some good examples.

As far as developing high-rise neighborhoods in Calgary's suburbs, I would say the area around Chinook LRT station has the most potential. It already has an urban street grid. It's non-residential, so no need to worry about NIMBYs, and it has a lot of pedestrian traffic between the station and the mall.
Click to expand...
Chinook for sure. Brentwood is kinda there already. I'd like to see development on the other side of Crowchild, and some sort of better tie in to the University.
 
Cowtown said:
Chinook for sure. Brentwood is kinda there already. I'd like to see development on the other side of Crowchild, and some sort of better tie in to the University.
Click to expand...

I walked around University City in Brentwood for the first time last week. I found the layout to be very incoherent and hostile to pedestrians. If the proposal for Brentwood Commons to the north gets built, it will just make things even worse. It essentially turns its back to University City, cutting it off from the LRT station. The results is a bunch of high-rises plopped down randomly into a suburban landscape of parking lots, arterial roads, and strip mall retail units.

In my experience, this is how most of these attempts to urbanize the suburbs turn out.

darwink said:
No one has ones old enough for the most part. We can't be too rushed with things. It will be a 50 year process or more.
Click to expand...

There are plenty. Brentwood is an example in Calgary. Toronto's suburbs are filled with high-rise condos plopped randomly into the parking lots of malls/strip malls. I don't know Vancouver well enough, but I'm holding out hope that they have some examples of how this can be done successfully.
 
Vancouver has some finer, pedestrian scaled nodes around key Skytrain stations. Everything still falls apart will large, one developer built masterplans there too.
 
Brentwood Station has the evolving density, but I'm not a fan of the layout either. I believe the area could come together with a main street with wide sidewalks along both sides that traverses the area from west-east. Also a nice open area to the LRT is beneficial.

Silence&Motion said:
I walked around University City in Brentwood for the first time last week. I found the layout to be very incoherent and hostile to pedestrians. If the proposal for Brentwood Commons to the north gets built, it will just make things even worse. It essentially turns its back to University City, cutting it off from the LRT station. The results is a bunch of high-rises plopped down randomly into a suburban landscape of parking lots, arterial roads, and strip mall retail units.
Click to expand...
 
Surrealplaces said:
All in all 49 residents out of a city of 60K oppose it, and as Darwink said, for stereotypical NIMBY reasons...even siting construction debris as a reason. The crazy thing is that it's only 8 units with some commercial, not exactly neighbourhood changing IMO. Hopefully Airdrie council makes the right decision on this. (Nov 20 is the date)
Click to expand...

Here is a rendering:
http://edition.pagesuite-profession...e=&pubid=2c5a51eb-0d24-4373-8999-34bbc4816008

Rendering is found on page 12. Nothing crazy and looks like it would be a nice addition to downtown out here.
 
oh lmao myyyy bad!
 
Rollerstud98 said:
I guess this falls under this umbrella although out here in Airdrie, NIMBY's making their voices heard.

https://www.discoverairdrie.com/local/18410-council-holds-public-hearing-on-309-main-street-rezoning

Property in question:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.2936...4!1siYpLljhEIJlLxGRJfE9r8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Directly south of property:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@51.2936...4!1siYpLljhEIJlLxGRJfE9r8A!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

Makes me laugh the guy they interviewed saying that the neighborhood has historic value. Almost all houses are bi-levels built in the 70's. This area they call "Old Town" is not really old at all. The part of Old Town that still has houses, the houses are all but 1 converted to commercial use. I could somewhat understand saying there is historical significance in the area known as "The Village" as there are at least some homes well over 100 years old now, but even most of those are only significant for being old. Not beautiful architecture or significant for who built them.
Click to expand...
This is too bad, I absolutely despise Aridrie, there is no character at all to that "city", just a suburb of Calgary. We should put a toll on the QE2 for all their "residents" lol.
 
Wha... what?
 
Airdrie suffers from not having had much of any development in the days of character builds. Even the century old stuff here is just your basic house lacking any true character. No longer has small town appeal, just small city with big city problems and a shitty downtown. Hopefully projects like this one can start giving us something we've always been missing. The city does need work but I would never live anywhere else, unless of course I could get my dream home out in Bragg Creek area.
 
Mountain Man said:
This is too bad, I absolutely despise Aridrie, there is no character at all to that "city", just a suburb of Calgary. We should put a toll on the QE2 for all their "residents" lol.
Click to expand...
I don't like it or dislike it, I find it to be what I would expect from a young bedroom community. I would like to see more of a town center or core, and I think it'll come some day despite the Nimbys.
 
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