Quote:
Originally Posted by Harley613
If you look at Ottawa and Calgary side by side at the same scale, the difference is jarring. Calgary is so dense and contained within or close by it's ring road. Ottawa looks like a random paint accident with very little sense to it's sprawl. The furthest you can walk in one direction and still be within the urban agglomeration is 9 kilometers less in Calgary than in Ottawa, and in Ottawa that extra 9kms is unserviced greenbelt land that we are extending our utilities across.
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The Greenbelt is what kills us when it comes to lack of density, for better or worse. That, and the ridiculous expanse of land, thanks to Mike Harris. Gatineau has some huge gaps as well, with Golf Clubs in the west and nothingness between the airport and Anger, followed by another stretch of nothing to Masson and Buckingham.
That said, the inner Greenbelt to me seems far denser than Calgary or Edmonton. Clusters of towers in quite a few spots. The "urban" downtown neighbourhoods stretch further as well, roughly 13kmx6km, while Calgary, there isn't much outside Downtown and the Beltline (3kmx2km) and Edmonton, a bit more expansive than Calgary (maybe 4kmx3km).
Full disclosure, I've never been to Calgary or Edmonton, but they do seem more like American Cities, with a tower cluster Downtown and a sudden drop to single family outside the core. But yes, they are far more compact as they don't have Greenbelts and they've grown by annexing areas outside town bit by bit instead of amalgamating with rural counties far and wide, which encouraged further sprawl in Ottawa (and Gatineau).
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