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Originally Posted by ssiguy
It's great that Edmonton is starting to "fill-in" but I'm curious, how did it get to that state in the first place?
In the US often downtown areas were decimated by white-flight or urban freeway projects but Edmonton had neither. Toronto certainly had huge Waterfront areas that were unpopulated but that was due to both the Great Toronto Fire and the Waterfront was mostly created by land reclamation but again neither of those things apply to Edmonton. Where did all the huge expansive lots come from? Were they always there or were they once urban and were torn down?
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Much of how your describing Edmonton also exists in the eastern part of Calgary's Beltline and along the train tracks, it's just more often hidden only because our buildings are taller and there are more of them. For Calgary, the problem is the train tracks themselves, and the evil organization known as the Calgary Stampede Board. They bought and commissioned the demolition of nearly the entire neighbourhood of Victoria Park (now the East Beltline) for an expansion that never happened. We lost one of our best urban neighbourhoods because those assholes had delusions of grandeur and all we got was an ocean of parking lots (though many have been filled in and almost all have developments proposed). Another area is where the rail yard used to be, just north of the Stampede. It has since been removed and is now a contaminated brownfield, and the primary speculative location for our new Arena, Stadium, and Entertainment district.
For Edmonton, the area on the north side of downtown looks so barren because their train tracks have been removed, leaving behind an ocean of empty lots that seem like they came from nowhere, but that's the reason. They've seen a lottt of redevelopment of that area though including the primary campus of MacEwan University, the new Arena and district, Epcor Tower, and the new Royal Alberta Museum.
Both Calgary and Edmonton lost at least one entire neighbourhood to the wrecking ball in the 70s and 80s. For Calgary it was East Village, and for Edmonton it was the Quarters. Both cities are now actively rebuilding their neighbourhoods as mixed-use high density destinations.
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