just out of interest: a comparison of Vancouver and Calgary

[logan5]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Until this I thought you were a pretty fairly educated/informed person. Making such a grossly generalized and misinformed statement is beneath you.

This thread is pretty ridiculous. The idea is nice, but with so few of you ever having been here and clearly knowing little to nothing about the city, it's just a waste of forum space.

So most of us aren't qualified to make the comparison between Houston and Calgary because most of us allegedly have never been to Calgary, but you have most likely never been to Houston. Who are you to say they aren't similar then? I recommend that you lie through your teeth and say you've been to Houston plenty of times so as to not look like a complete tool.

You are by far the rudest person in this forum.

[Procrastinational]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Until this I thought you were a pretty fairly educated/informed person. Making such a grossly generalized and misinformed statement is beneath you.

This thread is pretty ridiculous. The idea is nice, but with so few of you ever having been here and clearly knowing little to nothing about the city, it's just a waste of forum space.

I've spent some time in Calgary, so I'd say I at least know something about the city... I'll be perfectly honest, the first time I drove into Calgary, the first thing that jumped to my head was "Wow, this looks exactly like an American city". Now mind you, that's referring to the outskirts of town, with the sprawling housing developments, and freeways with massive grassy right of ways and medians.

I understand getting offended, but other than the city centre (which I think has been developed very nicely and has an urban feel), Calgary is a blob of sprawl, and feels just like the suburbs of any big American city. I don't think Houston is an accurate analogy, but I found it reminded me a lot of Denver.

The city has improved a lot in the last few years, but much of the city has a LONG way to go, and I think if the city is going to improve, it's important that people living in Calgary are willing to recognize and accept its faults, rather than go on the defensive and flat out deny them.

[ssiguy]

Originally Posted by Porfiry

Calgarians like pickup trucks, guns, cattle, driving fast, big suburban malls, etc. If you like the Fraser Valley you'll love Calgary.

Vancouverites are just a bunch of poor people who go in debt to buy a BMW to impress their friends, they love heroin, shark fin soup, Metrotown etc. If you love Beijing you'll love Vancouver.

[Hourglass]

^^ at the risk of diluting the sarcasm in that post, I will say the Beijing part is more true than you know...

When I visited Calgary a couple of summers ago, I was a bit surprised by how quiet it was -- even downtown. I recall driving around downtown and later walking around Chinatown and thinking 'where is everyone.'

That said, there are some top notch attractions (Glenbow, Calgary Zoo) worth visiting.

Not wanting to generalize, but a big difference to me between Calgarians and Vancouverites seems to be simply in what they want their city to be when it grows up...

[trofirhen]

One question that springs to mind is; just how car-dependent will the Calgary development of low density suburbs and a dense downtown, make the city?

[Pinion]

Originally Posted by ssiguy

Vancouverites are just a bunch of poor people who go in debt to buy a BMW to impress their friends, they love heroin, shark fin soup, Metrotown etc. If you love Beijing you'll love Vancouver.

This sounds accurate.

[GlassCity]

Originally Posted by Hourglass

^^ at the risk of diluting the sarcasm in that post, I will say the Beijing part is more true than you know...

When I visited Calgary a couple of summers ago, I was a bit surprised by how quiet it was -- even downtown. I recall driving around downtown and later walking around Chinatown and thinking 'where is everyone.'

That said, there are some top notch attractions (Glenbow, Calgary Zoo) worth visiting.

Not wanting to generalize, but a big difference to me between Calgarians and Vancouverites seems to be simply in what they want their city to be when it grows up...

I'd be interested in hearing you expand on your last paragraph, sounds interesting.

[SpongeG]

my friend just moved from vancouver to calgary, he seems to regret it. his observations are it lacks the life/vibrancy of downtown vancouver it feels dead in comparison, he wonders where the people are, he drives everywhere and finds it easier to go shopping in okotoks a town outside of calgary and uses his vehicle much more than he ever did when living in vancouver.

i've only been passing through the airport a few times the last few years, the sprawl you see from the plane is pretty imense and looks disconnected from being a whole place, but the network of roads looks decent.

[GlassCity]

The problem doesn't lie so much in form of development, but in the street layout. 80% of Calgary looks like below. With streets like that, intensification and mixed use will NEVER happen. Terrible for transit too. That's why they need to build big park and rides at all their LRT stations, because bussing there is just too much of a hassle most of the time.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transportation_in_Calgary

[vanman]

Having never been to Calgary I can say that the first vid trohifen posted was a bit of an eye opener. Inner city Calgary looks extremely lush, dense and overall very attractive. I actually want to visit the city quite a bit more now than I used to.

[Chadillaccc]

Originally Posted by SpongeG

my friend just moved from vancouver to calgary, he seems to regret it. his observations are it lacks the life/vibrancy of downtown vancouver it feels dead in comparison, he wonders where the people are, he drives everywhere and finds it easier to go shopping in okotoks a town outside of calgary and uses his vehicle much more than he ever did when living in vancouver.

i've only been passing through the airport a few times the last few years, the sprawl you see from the plane is pretty imense and looks disconnected from being a whole place, but the network of roads looks decent.

I didn't like Calgary anywhere near as much as I did Vancouver when I first moved here. It took me a good 6 months to even start liking the city, but now looking back on everything and my life now, the only city I've lived in (I've lived in a lot of cities in Canada) that I miss more than I enjoy living in Calgary is Vancouver. Any time friends of mine visit from Vancouver or Toronto and expect Calgary to be as busy as those cities, I say "duh, what the hell did you expect? You're comparing a city of 1.2 million to cities of millions!" Not to mention that Vancouver is the most densely populated city in the country, so comparison on that scale is useless. People just need to get some perspective.

The changes that have gone on in Calgary in even just the three years I've lived here are immense and noticeable even on a semi-yearly reflection. When I first moved here, downtown was quiet all the time past 5 pm and on weekends. By quiet, I mean you'd be lucky to pass somebody on the street. Now it's busy even on cold weekends and evenings (busy by the standard of a city this size, remember), but especially between April and November. The injection of around 10 000 people into the Downtown/Beltline/Kensington/Bridgeland core area over the past 3 years has certainly helped that a lot, but so have the policies of our mayor in bringing events downtown and promoting it as a place to bring your kids and hang out to see all the great stuff.

On top of that, there are several suburban district proposals which will finally give Calgary a more multi-nodal feel. The Currie Barracks proposal at the western edge of the city is the redevelopment of an old military base with a bunch of heritage buildings, the plan calls for 12 000 people on the 59 hectares of land (density over 20 000/km2) with several sites allowing building heights over 100 meters right next to Mount Royal University. While the Westbrook District proposal has yet to be revealed I have heard it will also be very dense. It is centred around our first subway station and the first phase has already been completed (our current tallest suburban tower at 98 meters). The first phases of Brentwood Village have also been completed, with no further solid plans yet revealed.

Also, as was mentioned in a previous comment about our immense park and rides, many of the park and rides have area redevelopment plans in place. The first of them will be revealed this year for Anderson (by far the largest park and ride), and likely followed by Fish Creek, Whitehorn, and Brentwood Park and Ride lots after the review on their futures. For reference, Park and Ride users only account for 10% of transit ridership, per Calgary Transit.

I'm not saying Calgary doesn't sprawl like hell, but I am saying that we're making great strides towards mending that error. Our development share has gone from 10% intensification/90% greenfield to 35% intensification/65% greenfield in a matter of only 4 years. Also, sprawl is hardly a trait uncommon to Canadian cities. Last time I checked, Montreal was the exurban sprawl capital of Canada, Surrey, Langley, Maple Ridge, Delta, etc are all part of Metro Vancouver, and somehow Vaughan is getting a subway Calgary is just the whipping boy for sprawl because we're the only city in the country that follows the Unicity Model of annexing all communities which come into contact with the borders of our urban area. It's not a policy I support, but not much I can do about it.

[ssiguy]

Calgary has come a long way in a short amount of time.

Does it sprawl too much? Of course it does but all NA cities sprawl. Anyone who has been in the Fraser Valley {or Milton or Laval} in the last decade can attest to that.

Vancouver has made a lot of good and certainly some bad planning decisions over the years like all cities but overall the city is a very liveable and pleasant one. That however does not mean Calgary doesn't also have a lot to be proud of. From the best transit for a city it's size in NA {yes I stand by that and would like to know other cities that have better systems}, transit planning, centralized employment, good roads, excellent bike system, vibrant inner city neighbourhoods, and the most vibrant pedestrian only street in the country.

I get tired of the Calgary bashing. There are some very legitimate complaints about the city but it has a lot to be proud of for having just 1.2 million.

[SpongeG]

my friend moved from gangnam seoul to vancouver previously so 1.2 million is like riding the seoul subway for him lol, i think he probably misses the asian feel vancouver has and access to asian supermarkets and stores that are plentiful in vancouver

[SpongeG]

if i go to a city now its edmonton cause its the closest, anyway i work with all east coast people from cape breton and newfoundland and they al say the same thing about edmonton, they are so scared of downtown, its so scary, the people are so sketchy and scary and they are scared of going downtown edmonton and i asked two of them the other day - does everyone on the east coast go around hugging each other and passing out daisies or something? lol downtown edmonton is not scary

i wonder what downtown calgary must be like for them, i can't wait to go calgary one of these days

[Chadillaccc]

Having been to Edmonton a lot, I can see how they feel. I don't like walking downtown Edmonton late at night(though I still do every visit). Even though I know it's not that dangerous, it's the sort of place where you feel like you could get stabbed for no reason, and there is literally no one around to ask for help if something happened most of the time. Plus everyone is always wearing sweatpants, day and night. Strathcona is a different story though, Whyte Ave is probably the best street in Alberta.

That said, if they're THAT afraid of downtown Edmonton I'd imagine they would be petrified of downtown Calgary, considering how much bigger it looks/is.

[MasterG]

Cities are not static.

Calgary has the same population now as Metro Vancouver did in 1981. Vancouver had already developed the West End in the prior decades into a modern high-rise community, but most of the False creek era was large surface parking lots, warehouses etc. Vancouver took advantage of much older building stock (pre-suburban era of the 1950s - 2000s) which had higher densities, less car-oriented designs; a great feat. It had efficient transit - for the time, for it's size and for North America - but no rapid transit or anything of the sort.

Calgary today has one large disadvantage. It's disadvantage is that the city did not grow significantly until the suburban era, creating a city that appears weighted to the suburban style of development. Large swaths of the city are hard to retrofit, as the dominant form is the classic sprawl of that is found in Surrey, Edmonton, Toronto, Montreal and hundreds of other cities.

Unlike almost all American cities - and why Calgary is not analogous to Dallas or Houston - Calgary maintained a core inner city with density, population and lack of highways. This core urban area never suffering the exodus that the American cities had that decimated their populations and vibrancy. That core in Calgary is now booming - don't get distracting by all the pretty pictures of the office towers - the surrounding neighbourhoods are where the action is. Condos, infills and urban culture has sprouted here at a rate few cities can challenge.

An interesting nuance that no one has mentioned is comparison of the two cities at around the same size. For example in 1981, if you walked from Broadway to Downtown would you pass vacant lots? Would you pass areas that were ghost-towns? What are some of those routes and corridors like today?

Calgary has just begun this urban renaissance in the past 10 years. It has a well developed LRT network that is very highly supported and utilized. It has many strong, booming inner city neighbourhoods that are densifying and developing off an already strong base. It has some of the best park space in North America stretched through the densest part of the city. It's corporate core is continuing it's dominance as a centre of jobs and transportation, a trend that continued despite years of suburban focus (unlike Houston, Dallas or countless other cities).

Currently Calgary does not have the vibrancy of Vancouver. Nor does Vancouver have the vibrancy of Montreal. But why would we expect it to? Even a 1981 Vancouver to present day Calgary is a weak comparison with the amount of changes overall society has seen (crime rates, demand for single family homes etc.)

Calgary's biggest advantage is a strong will to experiment and challenge itself to be better and grow. All the important pieces - strong demographic trends, a well developed (and supported) LRT network, highly desirable inner city neighbourhoods, emerging condo culture, booming arts and festival scene etc. - are there. Add in a splash of oil money (our version of Vancouver's overseas investment) to help slick the wheels of development and things are looking very good. It will be an exciting few decades ahead for Calgary.

If you don't value change and seeing a city develop before your eyes but want all the vibrancy a city can offer? Calgary probably isn't for you. Neither is Vancouver. Everyone should move to Montreal! (and it's cheaper)

[Canadian Mind]

Originally Posted by Chadillaccc

Until this I thought you were a pretty fairly educated/informed person. Making such a grossly generalized and misinformed statement is beneath you.

This thread is pretty ridiculous. The idea is nice, but with so few of you ever having been here and clearly knowing little to nothing about the city, it's just a waste of forum space.

I got to throw my weight behind this as well. Klazu, I would have thought you of all people would have looked into it more before making such a generalisation.

The large medians are for developing an express-collector style system, integrating LTR in the future, and to have somewhere to put all the damn snow.

The ring road would still be a highway even if it were all crammed together. Remember, this is a prairie city with freeways to multiple destinations branching from every direction. The purpose of the ring road is to allow intercity traffic to bypass the city core, as well as provide a more efficient means of travel for those who don't work downtown.

Frankly, the plan is brilliant. I get the knee-jerk reaction is "No transit so it's bad," but transport trucks don't ride LTR. Once the population around the ring road has built up enough, the LTR will come, just like it has everywhere else in Calgary.

[Xelebes]

I moved this thread to the ABBC parent forum because I felt this was a more appropriate place for this thread.

[s211]

Perhaps would be better to just shut the thread down. It already has more than its share of unfortunately typical civic chest-thumping and hyperbolic vitriol.

[Porfiry]

Originally Posted by MasterG

That core in Calgary is now booming - don't get distracting by all the pretty pictures of the office towers - the surrounding neighbourhoods are where the action is. Condos, infills and urban culture has sprouted here at a rate few cities can challenge.

Great, except the Beltline has a population of maybe 20,000, or about 1.5% of the total population of the city. There are nice areas, yes. However, most of the population lives in the suburbs and spends their days stuck in commuter gridlock.