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Urban Development and Proposals Discussion

They all look intriguing. My preferences are probably Raftlands and Returning to the River. Both seem to make good use of the river, which is the main attraction in many ways. I've always felt the should be a central hangout place for the rafters. Ultimately I would to see the rafter hangout made from a small lagoon with residential and retail around it....in particular some pubs for the rafters to grab a beer at. In the summer it would be one of the busiest spots in the city. This proposal for Raftlands has potential to be a busy summer spot too.
 
Not directly Calgary development related, but here’s the view I have from my hotel. Metrotown Station in Burnaby. Seeing this makes me so depressed thinking about Brentwood, North Hill, Chinook etc..
While this TOD setup with ultra high towers isn’t my personal preference (I’m partial to the scale of Sunnyside station) it’s well done in general and tied into the mall and surrounding area very well. I checked out Brentwood Town centre station and some others . Calgary’s so far behind when it comes to TODs 😐
The positive side is that all that parking space might be an advantage. It’ll be easy to develop once the city gets its head out of its ass.

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The problem with Calgary is that 80% of the people who live here don't see that (Metrotown ) as a good thing.

I remember distinctly the uproar about the Anderson station project where anyone living in a 100km radius came out of the woodwork to scream about parking, density, and "character".

Same thing that's happening right now with Glenmore landing.

It's crazy to me how much this city is growing but how few projects are actually happening right now - I was in Vancouver in August and from English Bay I looked across the water towards Spanish banks and there were at least 10 tower cranes just in one concentrated area.
 
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Urban4Lyfe said:
The problem with Calgary is that 80% of the people who live here don't see that (Metrotown ) as a good thing.

I remember distinctly the uproar about the Anderson station project where anyone living in a 100km radius came out of the woodwork to scream about parking, density, and "character".

Same thing that's happening right now with Glenmore landing.

It's crazy to me how much this city is growing but how few projects are actually happening right now - I was in Vancouver in August and from English Bay I looked across the water towards Spanish banks and there were at least 10 tower cranes just in one concentrated area.
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Apples and oranges between Vancouver and here. Calgary has near endless greenfield land to build subdivisions and Vancouver has nearly none. I like what we have in Calgary better. You have options to choose whatever type of residence you want here. The lower mainland your basically limited to high rises if you don’t want to live 100 km from down town or pay a couple million for a single family house
 
Golfing guy said:
Apples and oranges between Vancouver and here. Calgary has near endless greenfield land to build subdivisions and Vancouver has nearly none. I like what we have in Calgary better. You have options to choose whatever type of residence you want here. The lower mainland your basically limited to high rises if you don’t want to live 100 km from down town or pay a couple million for a single family house
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Rest easy bro Calgary is 90% greenfield and it seems you want to keep it that way.

So like I said.
 
Golfing guy said:
Apples and oranges between Vancouver and here. Calgary has near endless greenfield land to build subdivisions and Vancouver has nearly none. I like what we have in Calgary better. You have options to choose whatever type of residence you want here. The lower mainland your basically limited to high rises if you don’t want to live 100 km from down town or pay a couple million for a single family house
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You can't just expand out the city as an excuse for not building density. The single family home neighbourhoods in the inner city need to evolve and densify and the areas around stations are the perfect place to start. Inner cities need to be dense, walkable, and feature multiple modes of transportation to service the people living and working there.
 
It's incredible seeing these images as someone that grew up in Vancouver and frequented Metrotown in the late 2000s, early 2010s. It was just a giant mall with not much else around back in the day. While I think this level of density around transit and malls are popular on a forum like this, this was only possible because of sky high housing prices. The construction costs plus land acquisition just doesn't make sense when condos are a depreciating asset in Calgary and sell for half of Vancouver prices. It's not ideal that good density = high housing costs, but that's just a reality for cities that were never built with that density, which is most of the "newer" cities. We find that density in Montreal, Boston and some older East Coast cities.

Calgary has areas like the East Village, the area directly North of the Event Centre beside a future Green Line station, areas all around Chinook (just some examples) which have land available for TOD. I believe for Chinook, CF have plans drafted but haven't proceeded because the economics just doesn't make sense. With those tradeoffs, lots of people are giving up and leaving these great urban landscapes for a more affordable lifestyle in Calgary
Metrotown station circa 2009
 
I used to work for Shaw back ~2000 and we did a territory swap with Rogers, who had their office building and main head end in one of the office buildings at Metrotown. I spent a fair bit of time there and at the time it seemed like such a built up node lol.
I think the places I think are sorely underdeveloped here in Calgary are Westbrook, Brentwood and Chinook. I think if the city offered up the station parking at Brentwood to developers it would easily get developed.....so long as they put in some sort of timeline condition, so we don't end up with a Westbrook situation.
 
darwink said:
Metrotown started as a reaction to land use restrictions along the Skytrain line within Vancouver proper. Brentwood capitalized on market acceptance of that when the Skytrain expanded.
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Would be an interesting experiment with a form of de-amalgamation if Calgary tried to mirror something similar. We talk about design and housing prices but weird governance quirks also play a major role in whether TOD is successful too.

While Calgary is never out of greenfield land, if we hived off weird micro cities along the LRT lines in the established, they would be. To grow their tax base and compete with other centres in the region, I guarantee some would figure out TOD.

would change many political dynamics too - these cities wouldn’t be making trade-offs between greenfield and established area developers, they’d only be beholden to one.

To be clear, you don’t need the multi-city approach to make good TOD. But a byproduct of a diverse competitive multi-city region could be many different approaches to TOD, some of which may be successful
 
CBBarnett said:
Would be an interesting experiment with a form of de-amalgamation if Calgary tried to mirror something similar. We talk about design and housing prices but weird governance quirks also play a major role in whether TOD is successful too.

While Calgary is never out of greenfield land, if we hived off weird micro cities along the LRT lines in the established, they would be. To grow their tax base and compete with other centres in the region, I guarantee some would figure out TOD.

would change many political dynamics too - these cities wouldn’t be making trade-offs between greenfield and established area developers, they’d only be beholden to one.

To be clear, you don’t need the multi-city approach to make good TOD. But a byproduct of a diverse competitive multi-city region could be many different approaches to TOD, some of which may be successful
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Not directly TOD related but one word of caution with making a bunch of smaller cities is the effect on lower income people and downtown. I have some family in a mid-size US city and it's very common that many recognizable US cities are actually many smaller cities. A big downside to that is the wealthier cities with considerably higher property taxes have much much better schools and amenities than the poorer cities within one region. Calgary being 1 city enables a relatively even quality of life between different areas of Calgary. Furthermore, many US downtowns are struggling because they don't have a wealthy residential tax base, so without commercial tenants, the downtowns cannot fund basic services and the problems get worse. Not saying Calgary is perfect but the municipal structure does have its benefits
 
Surrealplaces said:
I used to work for Shaw back ~2000 and we did a territory swap with Rogers, who had their office building and main head end in one of the office buildings at Metrotown. I spent a fair bit of time there and at the time it seemed like such a built up node lol.
I think the places I think are sorely underdeveloped here in Calgary are Westbrook, Brentwood and Chinook. I think if the city offered up the station parking at Brentwood to developers it would easily get developed.....so long as they put in some sort of timeline condition, so we don't end up with a Westbrook situation.
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I guess it was built up compared to 2000s Calgary. I don't think Brentwood would be that far off. The University is investing in the University Innovation Quarter on the West side, and from the success of UD, there's definitely demand. Brentwood Commons (in some form) would hopefully happen in the next few years followed by the redevelopment of the Brentwood Village. Probably too idealistic but if we're able to keep the population/economic growth momentum, wouldn't be too far out of reach.
 
trtcttc said:
I guess it was built up compared to 2000s Calgary. I don't think Brentwood would be that far off. The University is investing in the University Innovation Quarter on the West side, and from the success of UD, there's definitely demand. Brentwood Commons (in some form) would hopefully happen in the next few years followed by the redevelopment of the Brentwood Village. Probably too idealistic but if we're able to keep the population/economic growth momentum, wouldn't be too far out of reach.
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Agreed. If enough new development happens within walking distance of Brentwood station (and I think it will) I could see the city looking at taking parking away as they would have plenty of non-auto ridership, and can really capitalize with even more riders within walking distance. Especially if they mention only doing this one station. it would make it more palatable to the car crowd. Once it becomes an unmitigated success and people see the logic, they can target a few other stations. Anderson for example. For others stations where the city doesn't own the parking areas, such as Chinook or North Hill, developers will be more interested if they see how successful Brentwood is.
 
I think there doesn't even need to be LRT parking at Brentwood. I can understand the reasoning behind having a large parking lot in 1990 when it was the end of the line, but now it's less than halfway out on the red line (realtors are calling Brentwood "inner city" nowadays), and none of the stations closer in have significant parking. Also it's hemmed in between the Bow river and Nose Hill, so cars coming from more than about 2 km away would be closer to other stations.

I think its proximity to the University office park, and the University itself, would make it a good location for dense residential even if the LRT wasn't there.
 
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