Okay, I spent too much time on this, but here's my take on what I like in a community and where they stack up. What I want is:
- Groceries - walking distance to a good supermarket that won't gouge you
- Dining - some variety; I want quick takeout for the night I don't want to cook, and a date night place and everywhere in between
- Walkability - As few car sewers as possible, especially the roads with the amenities
- Parks - Local, interesting parks that are easily accessible; I want a 5 minute walk to an interesting half-block green space here more than a great park that's a trek.
- Paths - High quality bike infrastructure connecting to the best paths in the system; I don't want my workout to be 40% over before I get to a nice path.
- Downtown access - Walking distance, easy walking if possible
- Transit - Frequent, reliable service; ideally multiple high quality options.
What IMO these communities need to be better:
Beltline - Can't mess with the best. Taking a lane off Macleod in each direction; adding sidewalks and a cycle track would be the biggest help especially on the east side.
East Village - For me, the Superstore opening was the difference-maker (without it, EV would be maybe 10th ranked); it now just needs some more dining options
Kensington - The only real issue here is that the closer you are to dining and the downtown, the further you are from groceries and the LRT.
Mission/Cliff Bungalow - Similar to Kensington except the LRT is less accessible. Redoing Elbow Island park was a recent good move.
Eau Claire - If it had a supermarket and less rich jerks, what a great spot.
Downtown West End - The car sewers kill it; if you could take a lane off every road and rebuild the bottom two stories of every building, it would be perfect.
Lower Mount Royal - A lot of the vitality benefits of the Beltline, just a little far from the downtown. Better transit along 17th would help; so would better cycle tracks on 11th.
Lower Tuxedo - I think this area has a lot of potential; there could be better local green space and the main roads suck especially 16th Ave.
Bridgeland - On paper, you're near the LRT, near the downtown, near a nice emerging main street. In reality, you're only ever near one of those. Also needs groceries.
Inglewood - The NIMBYs are out of control; there's no less dense community this accessible to downtown -- if there was some more density, the area could support a real grocery store. Wish the sidewalks didn't roll up at 5 PM.
International Ave - Good variety in dining; the area needs public realm improvements and more reliable transit. (Max doesn't mean anything when the headways are 20 minutes.) But there's value here.
Marda Loop - The most overrated IMO; there's just not enough there there yet if you think about dining versus Kensington. Crowchild cutting off expansion to the west doesn't help.
Montgomery - The #1 bus needs improvement out this way, and there needs more activity here as well.