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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

Screenshot_20220411-142956_Maps.jpg

Anyone know what the deal is with this lot on 17th ave? Seems insane to me that this is just sitting there unused for so long. The lot must be worth a fortune
 
Owner of that site tore down like 11 houses 5 or 6 years ago and tried to turn it into parking (which the city rejected) so it's just sat empty. The City was using it as a staging area for all the utility work on 17th, and that's supposed to continue this year I believe, so likely more staging in the next year or two.
 
Mountain Man said:
Still crazy to me that Crescent Road is for mansions, that should have been a commercial strip. How awesome would a patio there be?!
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Great idea, but we don't even need the redevelopment. Now that's worth closing the road for, have a seasonal beer garden/park extension built between Crescent Heights Park and the edge of the bluff. Do it right and raise up the roadway so it's quality. Better yet divert the pathway behind a beer garden and have it right on the bluff.

1649708480069.png


Ottawa is not known to be a particularly interesting or innovative city, but one thing they nailed is the beer garden in the public park idea, at least in a North American context. They have them all over the place, city centre and further out. They are simple and seasonal, but that's kind of the point. Something like this in Major's Hill Park would be a slam dunk in Crescent Heights:

1649708696553.png


1649708729512.png


Here's another Ottawa example in a far more suburban context. Kind of like Angel's in Edworthy Park, but way more casual with sprawling, temporary patios and pathway oriented:
1649709021478.png


In order for this to happen, Calgary would need to break (at least) 4 very tough mental barriers:
  1. It's okay for uses to mix such as parks/pathways/houses/seasonal beer gardens
  2. All perceived nuisances from mixing uses can be as handled via operational design and enforcement rather than blanket bans on activities (e.g. to avoid noise at night, no outdoor speakers and patio closes at 10pm v. to avoid noise at night, no patios are allowed ever, anywhere within walking distance)
  3. Residents of Crescent Heights (or any neighbourhood) have no unique right to the publicly owned space in their neighbourhood including the park and street
  4. Streets can be things other than for cars all year round and the world won't end
That's a lot to push through.

Normally I would say Crescents Heights probably isn't the place to start with my kind of "radical" Ottawa-style park reform, but the more I think about it it might be a great opportunity. After all, the arguably "more appropriate" places (e.g. a main street, Bow River Pathway etc.) can't seem to overcome these barriers either, likely because they have far more powerful resistors to reform via parks and transportation departments, existing festivals, stronger competing demands etc.

Crescent Heights has proven demand and there's a half block of Crescent Road that's over 100m from any house. Take all that suspicious loitering the community is concerned with, and put it to good work as patrons of a beer garden. Plus a new profit centre for the parks department :)
 
lemongrab said:
It's an interesting one...maybe a case of right-thing for wrong-reasons. I used to live nearby and ride/run it all the time. While there were often people in cars who aren't really 'my kind of people' (can't quite find the right phrasing...I don't mean it in a passive-aggressive boomer kinda way), it was pretty rare that they were detrimental to my experience.

I can imagine it's a different case on summer nights, so restricting vehicle/parking access by time seems like the most sensible compromise to me. I also noticed a lot of people meeting up to exercise or walk - often one or both arriving in vehicles. It would be a shame to discourage that kind of activity.


This sparks a half-baked/hopelessly naive idea: can you create a more 'sanctioned' space for this evening crowd to gather? Like the west zoo lot on St Patrick's Island?
Click to expand...
This sort of thing already happens a lot at St Patricks Island.
 
CBBarnett said:
Great idea, but we don't even need the redevelopment. Now that's worth closing the road for, have a seasonal beer garden/park extension built between Crescent Heights Park and the edge of the bluff. Do it right and raise up the roadway so it's quality. Better yet divert the pathway behind a beer garden and have it right on the bluff.

View attachment 391988

Ottawa is not known to be a particularly interesting or innovative city, but one thing they nailed is the beer garden in the public park idea, at least in a North American context. They have them all over the place, city centre and further out. They are simple and seasonal, but that's kind of the point. Something like this in Major's Hill Park would be a slam dunk in Crescent Heights:

View attachment 391989

View attachment 391990

Here's another Ottawa example in a far more suburban context. Kind of like Angel's in Edworthy Park, but way more casual with sprawling, temporary patios and pathway oriented:
View attachment 391991

In order for this to happen, Calgary would need to break (at least) 4 very tough mental barriers:
  1. It's okay for uses to mix such as parks/pathways/houses/seasonal beer gardens
  2. All perceived nuisances from mixing uses can be as handled via operational design and enforcement rather than blanket bans on activities (e.g. to avoid noise at night, no outdoor speakers and patio closes at 10pm v. to avoid noise at night, no patios are allowed ever, anywhere within walking distance)
  3. Residents of Crescent Heights (or any neighbourhood) have no unique right to the publicly owned space in their neighbourhood including the park and street
  4. Streets can be things other than for cars all year round and the world won't end
That's a lot to push through.

Normally I would say Crescents Heights probably isn't the place to start with my kind of "radical" Ottawa-style park reform, but the more I think about it it might be a great opportunity. After all, the arguably "more appropriate" places (e.g. a main street, Bow River Pathway etc.) can't seem to overcome these barriers either, likely because they have far more powerful resistors to reform via parks and transportation departments, existing festivals, stronger competing demands etc.

Crescent Heights has proven demand and there's a half block of Crescent Road that's over 100m from any house. Take all that suspicious loitering the community is concerned with, and put it to good work as patrons of a beer garden. Plus a new profit centre for the parks department :)
Click to expand...
Some type of food/beer spot up there would be awesome. It would make a killing.
 
This isn't Calgary, or even AB related, but a 42 story tower is breaking ground in Kelowna soon and I just gotta say it's nuts what's going on in that city.

KelownaNow: VIDEO: Kelowna's tallest residential development breaks ground.
www.kelownanow.com

VIDEO: Kelowna's tallest residential development breaks ground

It’s been in the making for just over four years. Construction on Kelowna’s largest and tallest residential development is now unde.
www.kelownanow.com www.kelownanow.com

I worked in Kelowna for a few months this summer and it's unbelievable how much inner city development is going on there. There's so much demand for housing, and virtually no more land left to extend outward to, that the city is building up. It'll be really interesting to see what that city is like in 20 years if these development trends continue.

Besides the obvious issue of affordability, geographic constraints almost seem like the single best predictor of how densely cities develop. Part of me wishes Calgary was similarly constrained around our borders and were effectively forced to build up.
 
Interesting development out of Edmonton. Seems to go far beyond the tweaks we are planning here in Calgary. I wonder if it will make our Council and Admin more ambitious or if the guidebook discussion has left everyone here running scared.

edmontonjournal.com

Edmonton's omnibus zoning bylaw would change entire city and limit development rules

The bylaw would boost density and housing types allowed, like small apartments, rowhouses, garden suites, and supportive housing.
edmontonjournal.com edmontonjournal.com
 
Surrealplaces said:
globalnews.ca

Gates on Calgary’s Crescent Road being considered for master plan and safety issues - Calgary | Globalnews.ca

A popular spot for running, graduation photos and having lunch, Crescent Heights residents also say it comes with noise, garbage, speeding and crime.
globalnews.ca globalnews.ca

As someone who cycles on it a fair bit I wouldn't miss the vehicles, but it does reek of nimbyism.
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I live close from there, but me I think the road should be for allowing for cars. Exception for cars that are loud. Maybe there will be only one direction and little parking? I don't know.
 
outoftheice said:
Interesting development out of Edmonton. Seems to go far beyond the tweaks we are planning here in Calgary. I wonder if it will make our Council and Admin more ambitious or if the guidebook discussion has left everyone here running scared.

edmontonjournal.com

Edmonton's omnibus zoning bylaw would change entire city and limit development rules

The bylaw would boost density and housing types allowed, like small apartments, rowhouses, garden suites, and supportive housing.
edmontonjournal.com edmontonjournal.com
Click to expand...

A few interesting nuggets from the article:
Outside Anthony Henday Drive, residential lots have slightly different rules.
Click to expand...
This part couldn't possibly backfire, right?

Councillors on Tuesday also approved, in principle, another strategy that divides the city into 15 districts and tosses out potentially hundreds of neighbourhood plans.
Click to expand...
Also interesting...I'm sure there's a bit more nuance than that phrasing, but it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.


TIL a few interesting things about Edmonton municipal governance: they renamed their wards to indigenous names, and their ward boundaries seem like they might mitigate polarity between suburbia and -city (though I wonder how that plays out within each ward)? Or maybe it's just that the wards seem less homogeneous than Calgary?


Edmonton-2021-Municipal-Election-Ward-Boundaries.jpg
 
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outoftheice said:
Interesting development out of Edmonton. Seems to go far beyond the tweaks we are planning here in Calgary. I wonder if it will make our Council and Admin more ambitious or if the guidebook discussion has left everyone here running scared.

edmontonjournal.com

Edmonton's omnibus zoning bylaw would change entire city and limit development rules

The bylaw would boost density and housing types allowed, like small apartments, rowhouses, garden suites, and supportive housing.
edmontonjournal.com edmontonjournal.com
Click to expand...

I have no idea whether this will pass or fail but it just seems so much more honest and straightforward than the Guidebook.

Clearly administration wanted to upzone all RC1 and RC2 to RCG, so basically duplexes and rowhouses are allowed everywhere. However, they didn't put that on the table for Council to debate.

Instead, they chose to create a Guidebook that said, we will create local area plans in which the lowest intensity recommended is RCG. And then eventually landowners could use that policy to upzone any RC1/2 lot to RCG fairly easily. I think they imagined that no one would notice that the long-term results would be basically the same as Edmonton's plan. But there were plenty of observant and well-funded people in Elbow Park who saw through this plan.

So, instead of having an honest conversation about the merits of RC1 and RC2 zoning, we had an unnecessarily complex and technocratic proposal that most people viewed with a lot of skepticism about its ulterior motives. And the only interest group that really followed along and made a stink about it were the rich homeowners in fancy RC1 neighborhoods.

It will be very interesting to see what happens in Edmonton. We will probably need a few years of 'cooling down' from the Guidebook before anyone is ready to put forward something similar.
 
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