CBD or not CBD?

[Surrealplaces]

There was some discussion in the Canada skyline thread regarding the vibrancy of Calgary's CBD, so I thought I'd move the discussion here.

Calgary's CBD....an area of roughly 8 or 9 blocks east to west and roughly 6 blocks north to south is mostly office buildings, and other than Stephen Ave, 8th street, and 1st Street SW, it's pretty quiet on evenings and weekends. Do we need to work on getting it more vibrant or is having it surrounded by vibrant neighborhoods the way to go?

Here are my thoughts as posted in the other thread.

100% that cities should develop their cores and control sprawl, I just don't think it's the be all end all that an 8 block by 6 block area of office buildings in the core needs to be vibrant. As long as adjacent neighborhoods like Kensington, EV, Beltline, Mission, Bridgeland etc are vibrant...it's all good.

You could compare Calgary to a city like San Francisco, where you have a financial district that's mostly office buildings clumped in one area but surrounded by vibrant neighborhoods like Filmore, SOMA, North Beach, Chinatown, etc..

That said, I'm not opposed to more residential in the CBD. Eau Claire has an opportunity for much more residential.