The Familia
Senior Member
I hope the mural goes right to the top…almost seems to be cut off abruptly with that horizontal line.
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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion
- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Roaring Flames
Senior Member
I really like what they've done with the podium of that building too.
Here's what it used to look like for reference:
Here's what it used to look like for reference:
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adamyyc
Active Member
Definitely an improvement. There are a lot of similar concrete apartments that could use a similar treatment on the main floor.
jhappy77
Active Member
Just curious - does anyone have any good articles on why Calgary stopped expanding westwards and instead decided to go for the deep south and far north?
I've heard there were troubles with Rocky View County, but I don't know any of the history and to what it extent it was the county itself opposing it versus individual property owners.
I feel like intuitively, building new neighborhoods 25km away from the core instead of 10km away is a huge waste both to our finances and the environment. (and all this to benefit rich mansion owners who don't even pay Calgary taxes)
I've heard there were troubles with Rocky View County, but I don't know any of the history and to what it extent it was the county itself opposing it versus individual property owners.
I feel like intuitively, building new neighborhoods 25km away from the core instead of 10km away is a huge waste both to our finances and the environment. (and all this to benefit rich mansion owners who don't even pay Calgary taxes)
Roaring Flames
Senior Member
I always assumed the reason we expanded north and south was because of Deerfoot Trail and Macleod Trail. There aren't really any large transportation routes in the inner city going east and west aside from Glenmore Trail and 16th Ave.
Rollerstud98
Active Member
SW up against the reserve land, west you’ve got the Glenbow Ranch Provincial Park, Springbank and Bearspaw which are probably prohibitively expensive since areas to buy out and develop. East, north and south -southeast you have a lot more open farm fields, easier development.
Land cost and the county are two big reasons for sure. Land is quite a bit more expensive in the Springbank area compared to deep south and out by the airport, Nose hill, etc.. I also know that land owners in the Springbank area are much more organized and have more power.
1875
Senior Member
specifically the land west of 69th st was all 5 acre lots, it took a long time to assemble the land and the costs were higher as many werent looking to sell. southeast was just sections of land at a time at a much lower cost.
darwink
Senior Member
Not even west of 69th, but west of Sarcee. In 1975 there was no city west of Sarcee. At the same time the south was developed nearly fully up to the boundaries of Fish Creek, the reserve, and the Bow River.
Servicing costs plus the general willingness of land owners to sell I'd bet. Managing all that water costs money There was also limited acreage style development in Coach Hill and a bit but not much in Signal Hill. Much less than west of 69th.
Might have been some class issues we just don't consider these days, with much of the central SW dedicated to military purposes. Plus relatively poor road connectivity and not much amenity wise (the military looked after their own which denied the area the population base), with low reputation schools.
Calgcouver
Active Member
City panel rejects Osteria tower plan, weeks after alleged threats at hearing
Calgary Planning Commission rejected a restaurant owners’ plans for a 10-storey tower on their Kensington corner, two weeks after the hearing was cut…
calgaryherald.com
FCC1982
Active Member
Be nice if they could add a mural to the west side as well
FCC1982
Active Member
I’ve heard that expanding to the east of Calgary has been restricted due to natural gas wells.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
If you are interested in some background, a very detailed dialogue about how Calgary grew and where is here:
https://www.aupress.ca/app/uploads/120152_99Z_Foran_2009-Expansive_Discources.pdf
Amazing that the author was interested enough in this stuff to get into the level of detail they did. I can't imagine anyone else bothered to write all this down and organize it into a narrative. Huge urban development nerd award winner for sure.
In addition to what's been said by others, the utility infrastructure and hills are a very big deal. Pumps, pipes and reservoirs are super expensive and the preference is always use gravity wherever possible. It really only became practical to build at the higher elevations to the West and Northwest once the city was larger, wealthier and had some major infrastructure investments to move the water up the hills. So the patterns of North and south expansion, rather than east and west expansion was influenced by that early on.
Infrastructure has a momentum on this as well due to incremental costs - because we build a pipe or a road in a particular direction, it's often easier/cheaper to keep extending in that same direction. So if a pattern of southward expansion is triggered, it's hard to ever stop it because it's incrementally cheaper to just add a bit over and over again to what you have built rather than build a whole expensive separate axis of pipes, pumps and reservoirs in a different direction.
Same incremental logic applies to highway expansion and other sprawl factors. It's always cheaper to just add a lane than build a brand new train system from scratch. Takes real leadership and major pushes to break this incremental cycle. There's lots of vested interest in status quo and incrementalism too.
Combined with the ever-competing interest of different stakeholders, the outcomes are a city that was incrementally coherent (e.g. it makes sense at the time for each decision given the options of which way to build) , but collectively incoherent (e.g. each incremental decision added up results in a giant car-dependent high cost, inefficient sprawling city).
artvandelay
Active Member
Others have touched on this, but the main reason the City hasn't expanded westward is fragmented land ownership. It's a heck of a lot easier and more cost efficient to develop a quarter section on one title vs. doing a land assembly of multiple small holdings with haphazard servicing and utility infrastructure already in place.
Eventually the land value will increase to the point that these areas will see redevelopment, but it will be a slow, piecemeal process directed by small developers and homebuilders.
The County hasn't been the obstacle, in fact I'm sure that Rocky View would love to offload these expensiveto service, low tax revenue yielding acreage subdivisions to the City of Calgary.
artvandelay
Active Member
This is a great read for urban development nerds!
I had the good fortune of being able to take a few courses with Dr. Foran back in the day at U of C including one that was structured around the content of this book as he was in the process of publishing it. He's a wealth of expertise on the historical development of Calgary and propably one of the all-time best professors at the university.
His book on the Stampede is also really fantastic as well as the one about the decline of Victoria Park as a neighbourhood. EDIT - also the book about how the CPR has shaped Calgary's development is really interesting.