Quote:
Originally Posted by isaidso
I visited Calgary for the first time last month and have to say I had mixed feelings about it. The residential areas on the outskirts looked very pretty although I didn't drive into any of them. I only saw them from the highway. The skyline was quite good, but coming from Toronto felt small. That's not really fair as Toronto is such a big city; my expectations were unrealistic. I suppose Toronto would feel small to someone from Shanghai.
The new bits are very impressive (the Bow, Eighth Avenue Place) and I loved the old bridge with the lions on it and that pedestrian mall. That said, I found downtown rather uninspired architecturally. The public realm was quite ugly and cold. There was too much hum drum office and so little 'high street'. It was uninviting from a pedestrian point of view. Downtown could do with lots more residential. With that will come more stores, cafes, restaurants on the street, and fewer blank canvasses of concrete.
That said, I did sense that Calgary was rapidly going in the right direction. I think it's only now blossoming and all that money and affluence will start being reflected at street level. Calgary's not there yet, but it could start feeling like a bona fide big city in 15-20 years. Currently, it felt like a work in progress. I haven't been to Vancouver, but perhaps I'd feel the same way about that too?  |
I agree entirely, except that the downtown area is a financial core currently and not meant to be our high street bloor-type area. The Beltline does pretty well for the population we have. We definitely are a work in progress.
Vancouver is absolutely leagues ahead of us and, in my opinion, every other city in Canada (except I haven't been to/lived in Montreal like I have all of the other major cities so I don't know personally). However, people in Calgary have made projections for what it will take, and how long it will take for our Beltline to become as dense and busy as Vancouver's West End. I don't exactly remember how long they said it would take, but it required a doubling of the Beltline's population. However, this will be achieved rather quickly, over a decade, but within 20 years hopefully
KW5150 is right.
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