Whats wrong with the town centre concept?
 

Or main street or high street or whatever you want to call it.

A new neighbourhood goes in and it gets a strip mall. Or something gets redeveloped into a strip mall.

Why not build a downtown or town centre or whatever instead? It would look more pleasing I think. Have some character. Let it happen "organically" even and let it grow even more character.

I'd rather shop in a place like that then a strip mall where I park my car and see all the same stores that the mall in the next neighbourhood over has.

I suppose it comes down to parking doesn't it.

The parking has a lot to do with it, I think. Another thing is that, when designing these activity nodes, the guys doing it like to separate their uses with roadways. We can't have those SFHs right next to a commercial strip, after all!

I think this is the key here, you need to have uses mixed throughout a community not just at the edge or in a couple spots within the community.

While Seton is going this way, it still segregates the higher density housing and retail from the SFH across Seton Blvd. Granted I don't know the plans for south of the existing developments and these may be more SFH/Town home developments.

I would love to be able to jump on the LRT and have every suburban stop be in the middle of a 'town centre' of the local community where you might just get off the train to see what's happening.

Mackenzie Towne fits the bill doesn't it RWin?

I was going to mention that as well. Or the retail portion of Garrison Woods although that one is slightly different than a greenfield development.

I feel that High Street in McKenzie Towne falls a bit short of being a town centre. The angled parking-lane-median-lane-angled parking kinda kills it. I think that Market Street in the Woodlands, TX is a much better example of what can be done with this kind of concept.

Lazy planning. Much easier to plop down big box stores in a sea of parking lots and cookie cutter sfh than coordinating solidly designed, expansive mixed-use projects. Luckily this is changing in a big way here, planning department has been undergoing a huge transformation from what I hear.

I think the main problem with Seton is although it sort of will act as the 'downtown' with shops, office, and high density residential to the SFH communities which will surround it, there will be limited pedestrian access to the area from those SFH communities. From Auburn Bay to the north it won't be so bad, ped access every 300 or 600m, but from Cranston to the West some people will need to jump in their car and drive 2km to get 200m across the Deerfoot. They should add a few ped overpasses.

Cranston does get the shaft. I have seen people use the sidewalk on the deer foot overpass many times before though. Also worth noting there will be a second access point from Cranston south of Seton blvd. in the future. Seton will also have fairly solid access from mohogany and the future sfh neighbours to the south.

I think it comes close for sure. It doesn't seem to be the norm though.

It seems somewhat planned - which I suppose it is. Real character takes time. On the scale of years (probably even decades). No one is patient enough to wait that long. It would be nice if things just happened but thats probably asking for too much.

Mega builders build mega developments for mega clients (commercial) that have mega demands.

Keep in mind that although they may not look like it now, many urban nodes and high streets of the pre-war era were not built organically.

Isn't Country Hills going to be a "town centre" style community? From what I've seen of the plans, it looks like it will be more like a 2nd downtown than a town centre though. I think they're even planning for the LRT station to be underground.

Additional reasons why town center concept does not work:
- There is no anchor tenant for the retail center. In strip malls the anchor tenant is a convenience store, gas station, coffee shop, or other retail that brings in lots of traffic on an hourly basis.
- To support a town center concept, the community needs to be quite large likely upward of 8,000 homes and/or near some workplaces to have a decent catchment area.
- Grocery stores need lots of parking and very large catchment area to work. Alternately there needs to be a barrier to exit the community (e.g. limited access, far away from other retail centers) and keep/incentivize residents to staying within the community.

In Country Hills? Where is this planned? Got a link?

Why would you need more homes to support one type of shopping district over another?

On that note, how much retail is too much? Sometimes I wonder if we already have more than the city can support. There must be a lot of competition for our dollars and not everyone is going to make it.

On this note, you need a lot of density to support walkable retail. Even in the Beltline there is high vacancy in the new retail bays that are going up with every new tower. On 1st SW, supposedly a high street, has a couple of empty retail bays, and several retailers on that strip appear to be struggling. Forget about 1st SE - half of those retail bays are still empty and have been for years!

I know it's anthenema on this for to say it on this forum, but we need more towers WITHOUT retail bays in the beltline.

As nice as it might be to go shopping in your own building, I agree with you on this point.

One thing that Calgary needs more of is small character office space. Not for giant oil companies, but for start ups and small companies who want something interesting. I know when I was looking for something like this, there wasn't much to go around in Calgary. I think it's a bit of an underserved market.