US equivalents of Calgary?

[JManc]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Re. Dallas and Houston, median income and college attainment are more or less the same. I think they're roughly equally white collar.

Yes and Houston was historically more blue collar and that perception as hung on.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

NS definitely was widely considered the "14th colony" up until the revolution which it just happened to not want to join. Not sure what the "almost" is that you're referring to.

If it wasn't for the heavy British military presence in Halifax, it was entirely plausible that Nova Scotians would have opted for the US. Economic, social, and cultural ties with New England were far stronger than they were with Upper Canada (Ontario) and Lower Canada (Quebec). Support for joining the US was quite strong. It's no shock that Confederation, and the subsequent banning of trade with the US, caused Nova Scotia to crater...... something its only now recovering from.

Maritimers are Canadians through and through but Confederation was a disaster for the region. Maritime Union (with treaties with both the US and Canada) likely would have been the best choice.

[Centropolis]

edmonton is long but calgary is just like this girthy cheese wheel man.

[mhays]

A "girthy cheese wheel man," or do you mean ", man"? Either way, you have me considering possible meanings!

Edmonton and Calgary have great skylines for their sizes, but I notice on google maps that both are pretty pock-marked (US-style) with parking lots, and they don't seem to have great street environments, probably due to pedestrian tunnels, skybridges, and cold. That ring of older highrise apartments in the foreground seems to be mostly buildings that have at least some surface parking. That said, their downtowns still beat US cities of similar scale.

[BG918]

Originally Posted by Docere

while it's hard to really pinpoint the "American Alberta."

Colorado?

[Centropolis]

Originally Posted by BG918

Colorado?

1980s colorado tracked to 2040 via 1998 w/o the california saucers landing.

[JManc]

"girthy cheese wheel" great name for a band or 70's era porn.

[Razor]

Originally Posted by Doug

poor freeway system until recently. Calgary was too small in the 50s and 60s to attract much large scale urban redevelopment. Most of the freeway proposals from that era failed due to xost and neighbourhood opposition. Building freeways into the inner city is challenging due to geography
.

So there is a bonafide freeway running through or past Calgary..Just not near the core?

[Doug]

Originally Posted by Razor

So there is a bonafide freeway running through or past Calgary..Just not near the core?

The first fully complete freeway was Deerfoot Trail in 2005. Construction started in the early 70's and then stalled in the early 80's. It runs a few km to the east of dt. It spans the entire north-south length of the city.

Two sort of freeways enter dt but are not thoroughfares. Memorial Drive connects the river on the east side or dt to Deerfoot. Bow Trail is a short connector from the west side of dt to Crowchild Trail. It has a single interchange.

Crowchild Trail runs a few km west of dt. It started construction in the mid 60s and has started and stopped a few times. It is not continuous as the section north of the river still has lights. It dead ends in the south at Glenmore Trail.

Glenmore Trail runs east west on what is Calgary's north-south acess, about 5 km south of dt. It started construction in the mid 60's and is still incomplete.

A section of Macleod Trail at the south end of the city is freeway for about 7km. One interchange opened in 1982, another in 1995, another in 2000, another in 2002 and the final in 2017.

A short section of Airport Trail connecting Deerfoot to the airport is currently upgrading to freeway.

Calgary's second freeway to actually complete will be the Stoney Trail ring road which encircles most of the city. Its 101 km will be fully free flow and open to traffic around 2022.

Several roads could easily upgrade to freeway, all well outside the inner city: Sarcee Trail, Anderson Road, McKnight Blvd, east section of Airport Trail connecting to Stoney Trail.

Calgary built very few freeway lane miles between the early 80's and early 2000's, and none prior to the mid 60's.

[ue]

Glenmore is mostly complete, just the part around Sarcee I think is left with lights and would be easily upgradeable.

Crowchild would make most sense as the next up to complete as it would be like a Deerfoot analogue for the west side of the city. It's also only really got a relatively short bit incomplete, between 24th Ave and Kensington Road. Build some overpasses at 24 Ave, an interchange at 16 Ave, and some flyovers at 5 Ave and Kensington Road.

You also missed 16 Ave/Highway 1 which acts as a controlled-access road east of the Deerfoot and west of Sarcee and then between Shaganappi and Crowchild.

Edit: Edmonton isn't much better.

The Whitemud was the first complete freeway, and the last overpasses at 17 St were only completed in the 00s. The ring road (the Henday) was completed a few years ago. There's also the short Sherwood Park Freeway. Otherwise, like Calgary, you have small stretches of controlled-access roads, though less complete than Calgary's. Stretches of the Yellowhead, Wayne Gretzky Drive, Groat Road, and an interchange at Connors Road and 98 Ave near downtown (the only piece of a larger plan from the '60s that called for a massive freeway network with a ring around downtown a la American cities). The Yellowhead is approved to be fully upgraded to a freeway in the next 5-8 years. Terwillegar Drive and Ray Gibbon Drive (in St Albert) are also designed to be upgraded to a full freeway at some point.

Then there's Winnipeg, which completely lacks a true freeway. Closest is the Perimeter, which has stretches of controlled access and stretches of lights. There are very incomplete freeways like Bishop Grandin, Route 90, the Disraeli Freeway, Route 59, Pembina Hwy.

And finally, Saskatchewan's cities have freeways, though incomplete (but more than what much-larger Winnipeg has). Saskatoon has Idylwylde, which turns into a major thoroughfare with lights in the centre of the city. It also has Circle Drive which, with the southern leg of Hwy 11 (what Idylwylde merges with in the south), is Saskatoon's 'complete' freeway. College Drive also exists as a freeway for three intersections. Regina has the old Ring Road, which only is a half-circle around the city, but recently completed a 3/4ths ring road known as the Regina By-pass.

Of course Vancouver is well known for lacking freeways, though technically it does in the suburbs and is probably the densest network of freeways in the West, it is rather bare compared to American equivalents. Western Canada lacks the larger, more complete freeway networks that Toronto, Hamilton, Montreal, and Quebec City have.

[mhays]

So, fewer barriers dividing these cities, and streets that people can still bike and walk on. Sounds way better.

[ue]

Originally Posted by mhays

So, fewer barriers dividing these cities, and streets that people can still bike and walk on. Sounds way better.

Yeah, it's better than the situation in most large US metropolitan areas. The only Canadian cities with real downtown freeways are Montreal, Toronto, Hamilton, maybe Ottawa (though the Queensway is a bit south of downtown).

But the transit systems of the Prairie cities, though also better than US counterparts, could be much better. Cycling infrastructure is only recently taking off, too.

[kool maudit]

The urban implementation of the US interstate system was ruinous, but the system itself is an incredible bit of infrastructure.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse

NS definitely was widely considered the "14th colony" up until the revolution which it just happened to not want to join. Not sure what the "almost" is that you're referring to.

"14th colony" is an anachronism. NS was settled around 1605-1630 depending on what you want to count and became a British possession in 1713. So it's older than some (most?) of the 13 colonies that declared independence. Nova Scotia and Quebec legislatures both voted against independence.

Pre-Revolution North America, a bunch of colonies plus Indian reservation land and Spanish possessions:


https://etc.usf.edu/maps/pages/2400/2425/2425.htm

[Docere]

Originally Posted by BG918

Colorado?

Probably the closest analogue. Montana and Wyoming are too rural and unpopulated. Texas is too southern.

[Docere]

The "Mountain West" is a bonda fide region in the US, it isn't in Canada.

In contrast, the Great Plains (Prairies) is a bonda fide cultural region in Canada, separated by a "hard" boundary of the Rockies and Lake of the Woods. That seems to be less true in the US.

[BG918]

Originally Posted by Docere

The "Mountain West" is a bonda fide region in the US, it isn't in Canada.

In contrast, the Great Plains (Prairies) is a bonda fide cultural region in Canada, separated by a "hard" boundary of the Rockies and Lake of the Woods. That seems to be less true in the US.

In the U.S. the Great Plains has a similar hard western boundary at the Rocky Mountains with its eastern boundary either the Midwestern farm belt or the southeastern forests.



https://www.hppr.org/post/our-turn-e...ns-not-midwest

[Docere]

But is it a cultural region?

There isn't really a "hard" eastern boundary though on the US side. The Great Plains seems to be the "empty" zone that separates the Midwest and the West. The eastern parts of SD, NE and KS are where the population is and flow seamlessly into the corn belt (the heart of the Midwest).

[Docere]

So kinda like the Chicago/Toronto comparison (global cities on the Great Lakes).

Vancouver/Seattle is the most natural comparison given that Cascadia seems to be the most genuine cross-border cultural region.

Yes there's some rusty edges of Southern Ontario but it's pretty different from Upstate NY or Michigan. Vermont borders francophone Quebec. There's some similarity between Maine - 02 and New Brunswick, but Canada's "Celtic fringe" (Maritimes/Atlantic Canada) is very different from New England etc.

[Docere]

California is also huge, while BC and Alberta are much more equal in size with rather different identities, so harder for one to "conquer" the other.