Quote:
Originally Posted by Marshal
This retort is not aimed at MolsonExport alone. I don't understand this dumb attitude to an urban form that has simply been produced by the circumstantial history of the city in question. So we all like dense big cities. So what? Pointing out an obvious trait of Calgary over and over again . . . does this have an interesting point to it? Everybody can see it for themselves.
Calgary is what it is. What I actually find interesting is watching this city grow into the low density areas that surround the massive office dominated core. Calgary has begun building larger buildings with a broader range of uses than in the past. It seems to be this that is propelling the expansion of the larger scale into these singular traditional small city neighborhoods. This is a process that hasn't happened, in quite this way, in any Canadian city before. We should all look forward to what will result in the years to come. Calgary has no choice but to evolve in ever more interesting ways.
The Surrey photo is very cool. That view and the one you get while driving around on its streets are quite different. This might be no more than a mental construct, but it looks so much richer and complex from the air.
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I do understand the insistence on optimism, as even a forum of "wow, another hit for Edmonton" or whatever would probably be better than one full of sniping and backbiting and regional angst.
To resolve that our choice is this binary, though, is a bit unambitious. Negative comment has its place. We are not the cities we live in or identify with, and as such these entities should be able to absorb even pointed criticism without people flying off the handle.
If you like big, dense cities of a traditional sort, a skyline shot of Calgary or for that matter Los Angeles or Nizhny Novgorod is not going to be a portrait that prompts unalloyed praise.
While we all understand the many forces that produced the North American single-family home neighbourhood, from colonial English tradition to cheap gas and including many others, the idea that this understanding should supercede aesthetic criticism of cities made up of this dwelling-type at the expense of others is one whose essence lies in thin-skinned boosterism.
That photograph of Calgary shows a dramatic, contemporary skyline whose impact (in terms of signalling the presence of a large, complex city) is undercut, for me, by the thinness of its surrounding houses. The circumstances, all easily graspable, that produced Calgary have left it wanting in the area of residential vernacular.
Maybe it will improve – if so, great. Maybe it is improving – if so, I am curious. But there is nothing wrong with commenting negatively on things as they stand.
I understand the forces that coalesced to produce Warhol's soup can, too, but I still prefer Goya and Caravaggio. Others don't.
There is something wrong with the idea that strong negative comment is bad. This is a forum.
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