Perhaps it's the lack of travel (especially city travel) due to covid, but I was recently in Calgary and it got me thinking about the state of Canadian urbanism in a few different ways. I thought this would be a decent place to articulate my thoughts that arose out of that visit with regards to Prairie urbanism.
It had been a few years since I did a proper visit of Calgary, and so a lot of things really stuck out to me, especially from living in Winnipeg and Edmonton. I'll preface this by saying that Winnipeg probably has the nicest extant urbanism on the Prairies, and in many ways it feels like an improvement upon Edmonton, which has a very gauche urban form.
Now, that being said, things have improved a lot in Edmonton over the past decade. Massive LRT expansions have been undertaken and new landmarks have risen. The new Walterdale Bridge is a great example of a nice new landmark. Despite my grievances over subsidizing millionaires and aiding in gentrification, the Ice District has made downtown busier and the architecture is pretty good. Edmonton now has the tallest building outside of Toronto in Canada. Major brownfield sites on Whyte Ave have filled in and Strathcona in general feels more urban and built up. Legalizing garden suites is adding new forms of density to the city, too. But, there's still a lot of tacky or cheap stuff being built. Manchester Square is probably the most famous recent example.
Calgary, by contrast, feels a step ahead of Edmonton. But it always has, at least in recent memory. And while Edmonton has pushed ahead and made strong improvements, shedding a lot of its parochial qualities, Calgary has also been pushing forward. Perhaps Edmonton has caught up to the Calgary of a decade ago, but Calgary kept pushing ahead.
The first thing that really stunned me in Calgary was being in Inglewood. I've been familiar with the area for a decade or so, but it is markedly different now. 9th Ave is a bona fide vibrant main street now, competing with 17th Ave in the Beltline and 10th and Kensington Rd in Kensington. It is very busy, and maybe that's dramatic because despite the quality of Winnipeg's urbanism, it really does not have vibrant main streets in the same way.
While I do think Edmonton's Whyte remains the best main street on the Prairies, 17th is not very far behind, and has things that remind you more of Vancouver or Toronto than Edmonton, like an urban-format Urban Fare/Canadian Tire combo. As well, Edmonton really lacks areas like Kensington and Inglewood. 124th Street is not on the same level. 104th Street, despite being a lovely street after decades of public investment, isn't that busy outside of events.
And on top of that, Calgary continues building amazing new landmarks. The new Central Library puts Edmonton's to shame. The city has built 3 new premium towers >220m in the past decade, all far more distinctive than what you generally see in Toronto or Vancouver these days. There's the Peace Bridge. The infill in areas like Bridgeland is pretty good, too. The public realm improvements along the Bow River are also really beautifully put together. Outside of the very exaggerated downtown, Calgary doesn't really feel bigger than Edmonton, but it does feel like a more prominent city with a better urban experience.
With regards to Winnipeg urbanism, its edge is really only due to the sheer wealth of pre-war urbanism it has. What it has done in recent decades in terms of urban policy is often quite abhorrent. Closing Portage and Main to pedestrians, turning main streets into quasi-highways, racist pro-development governance, and laughable public transit. If you can never take the bus and simply walk or bike everywhere, Winnipeg is pretty alright if you live centrally. Because of the quality of pre-war urbanism, Winnipeg has a huge leg up, and its urban experience is probably closest to what Easterners would resonate with. You just don't get places like the Exchange, Wolseley, Point Douglas, and Wellington Crescent in Western Canada. Well, maybe you could make some analogues in Vancouver, but that's about it.
Not only is Winnipeg's legacy urbanism great, the broader urban experience is also awesome. By that I mean the feel on the ground, the people that make up the city, and just the experience of being on the ground in the city. The fact that Winnipeg is still an awesome urban experience despite awful policies for decades is both a testament to the breadth of pre-war urban ambition and expansiveness as well as its strong sense of community. While Calgary may be gorgeous and Edmonton certainly.... tries, Winnipeg is cool in a way no other Prairie city is. It's got strong grassroots organizing and a great arts community along with just a lot of cool 🞵🞵🞵🞵 everywhere. I don't know how else to describe it. It also helps that despite terrible urban planning, the contemporary architecture, while usually less flashy than Calgary, is generally a notch above Edmonton.
What's frustrating is that it has all of these perks, in its existing built form and its communities, but the powers that govern it have an extremely suburban, classist, and racist ideology that regularly 🞵🞵🞵🞵 on all of that. Edmonton and Calgary can have the latter two, and Edmonton was very suburban-oriented until recently, but Winnipeg feels more extreme. Perhaps that's because Winnipeg is an extreme place. It has the opulence of Wellington Crescent and the extreme poverty of the North End. The City Beautiful of Assiniboine Park and the stubby South of Portage office blocks.
As I briefly mentioned, Winnipeg's main streets aren't as vibrant as many of Calgary's or Edmonton's Whyte. But it has great cohesive communities like Wolseley, with gorgeously maintained old homes and apartments and the cutesy amenities on Westminster. The closest I can think of in Alberta to this is perhaps Edmonton's Highlands, but, aside from the river valley at its edge (which is more impressive than the Assiniboine), it isn't quite as good, I'd argue. The West End of Winnipeg has decently busy main streets and amazing food that the more yuppie oriented 17th or (increasingly) Whyte could only dream of.
All this said, I think my recent visit to Calgary put into perspective just how far that city has pushed ahead. While it doesn't have the steeples of St Boniface or the pre-war apartment blocks of West Broadway, after a while, the high quality recent investments in infrastructure and urbanism add up. Couple that with that city's ambitiousness and I don't think Winnipeg necessarily objectively offers the best urban experience on the Prairies anymore. In some respects it does, especially if you're looking for a different, more lived-in city, but there's too much that Calgary has done in recent decades that cannot be ignored. If anything, Calgary is evidence that you can have a minimal amount of pre-war urbanism and still produce a nice, attractive, vibrant city. You don't have to be content with a Phoenix-type city.
In Saskatchewan, Regina and Saskatoon are surprisingly nice cities. Well, I think for those in the know, Saskatoon is well-regarded, but Regina, which until last year, I hadn't visited in a very long time, kind of surprised me. It's still probably my least favourite of the 5 "major" Canadian Prairie cities, but it isn't a dramatic drop-off. Transitional is a nice high-density residential neighbourhood with a surprising number of pre-war apartment blocks. Cathedral is cute and exudes some Wolseley-esque qualities. The Warehouse District is kinda cool.
Saskatoon still feels a notch above it, though. For one thing, Regina just doesn't really have major urban main streets outside of the core. Saskatoon, by contrast, has Broadway, 20th West, 33rd West, and Central Avenue. Now, not all of these are super vibrant, but they give the city a lot more to work with than Regina. On top of that, it has new major public investments like the Rivers Landing, including the Remai Modern, which is a fine art museum, something you would not expect for Saskatchewan.
Anyways, these are just my observations from the Prairies. I could also talk about Ontario, Quebec, BC, and Atlantic Canada, but I thought I'd open the floor up to others for their thoughts on the quality of urbanism in various Canadian cities.
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