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What part of Calgary would you rezone for higher density?

Totally agree. 20 Avenue N could be a great main street, also 4th spot is good food.
20th ave is a natural for a nice main street, but instead is slowly becoming a missed opportunity. I see duplexes and new builds going up, but are set back like the rest of the single family homes.
 
20th ave is a natural for a nice main street, but instead is slowly becoming a missed opportunity. I see duplexes and new builds going up, but are set back like the rest of the single family homes.
They could really just rezone 20 Avenue with mixture of MU-1 & MU-2 and call it a day. Honestly, they could pretty much do that with any main street.
 
20th ave is a natural for a nice main street, but instead is slowly becoming a missed opportunity. I see duplexes and new builds going up, but are set back like the rest of the single family homes.
20th would be a great walkable, urban main street.

It's too bad the city has made it's job harder by eroding the potential of some of the larger streets to become walkable urban corridors through decades of car-transportation-over-walkable-development prioritization on them with little signs of improvement: 16th Ave, MacLeod north of Chinook, 17th Ave west of Westbrook, the dozens of auto-only divided boulevards circa 1960 - 1990s (e.g. 32nd and 24th Avenues NW, most of the NE's main roads etc.) that could develop main streets but aren't even close to being allowed to "urbanize" through a mess of interlinking barriers of land uses, bylaws and road classifications. Can you imagine a University building fronting onto grossly over-built 24th Ave NW? Transportation planners heads might explode!

The difficulty of urbanizing the larger main streets seems to have pushed much of the the potential for walkable urbanism onto smaller streets nearby. Not a bad thing in itself, but runs into the contextual infill issues as many of these streets never had much density or mixed use to begin with and result in missed opportunities like 20th Ave N not developing into more than a denser version of its very much still suburban self. Despite all our growth and intensification over the past few decades, I can think of only a handful of streets successfully / semi-successfully transitioning from auto-oriented traffic sewers to something more "urban":
  • 33rd Ave SW in Marda Loop area (becoming far more urban, minus the walkability part as no new pedestrian infrastructure or traffic controls have been installed)
  • Edmonton Trail in Renfrew (becoming far more urban, but again minus the walkability part as no new pedestrian infrastructure or traffic controls have been installed)
  • 1st Ave NE (only 1 sided retail, still not enough activity/density to create significant activity but great progress and lots of improved pedestrian infrastructure)
All the rest of our density and growth along main streets has gone to strengthen existing walkable areas which is great, notably the big changes in Kensington and on 1st Street SW. Would love to see other streets make the transition.
 
I'd rezone the entire Macleod Trail corridor for high density, would love to see it become somewhat of a Kingsway-style street (a la Burnaby)... as I believe that is the best we could ever hope from Macleod.

Would also love to see Sunnyside and Hillhurst both rezoned for high density. Would prefer to see both as mostly 6 - 10 storey towers, with a couple of 10 - 16 storey towers in there.

Along Centre Street North, I'd prefer to see the entire corridor south of 40 Avenue lined with well-scaled 4 - 8 storey buildings, with the area in the vicinity of the intersection of 16 Avenue including buildings 15 - 20 storeys, with the intersection itself having buildings between 25 and 30 storeys. Everything between that and the Centre Street Bridge would be between 5 and 10 storeys.

I'd also love to see Crowfoot Crossing as an ocean of skyscrapers tapering to the west, offering most of the residents amazing views of the Rockies.

I totally agree UR, especially in regards to Macleod and Crowfoot. I live in Tuscany and would love nothing more than a couple 30 story and a few 20 story residential towers in Crowfoot Crossing. It would provide a neat view for those driving East on the 1A or the Transcanada as well as be a nice anchor at the end of the line to beef up the Crowchild corridor with some more densi

Considering the growth around Seton, a node of medium rise and maybe a couple tall towers would be cool too.
 
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Definitely 10th Avenue SW, west of 14th St, for high rises, and for 20th ave NW I'd entertain it being blanked zoned for row housing with larger developments possible on the corners. I probably wouldn't want to zone it for commercial until Centre st is way better filled in. That said, rowhouses could probably be converted to small commercial at a later date pretty easily.
 
Definitely 10th Avenue SW, west of 14th St, for high rises, and for 20th ave NW I'd entertain it being blanked zoned for row housing with larger developments possible on the corners. I probably wouldn't want to zone it for commercial until Centre st is way better filled in. That said, rowhouses could probably be converted to small commercial at a later date pretty easily.
That's exactly what I would like to see done with 20th ave. I think 4th street NW and Centre Street have good potential for retail corridors...especially Centre.
 

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