soon she'll sink, but meanwhile, a look at calgary street scapes

[trofirhen]

Originally Posted by Caliplanner1

Maybe it's due to the "Texas/Houston style" big oil (urban design) culture!?

To be honest, I think that DOES play a large role in the mindset, and in the outcome!!

[Vin]

More trees and shrubs, with other landscaping features implemented would improve Calgary's streetscapes tremendously. Downtown Vancouver looks very pretty in part due to the trees along the boulevards/sidewalk.

[Pavlov]

Originally Posted by trofirhen

To be honest, I think that DOES play a large role in the mindset, and in the outcome!!

For us laymen, what is "Texas/Houston style" big oil (urban design) culture?

[giallo]

What struck me in that video was how big Calgary's downtown is for its population size. Seriously impressive.

Yeah, there are no people, but honestly, go down to Pender and Seymour on a Sunday morning, and it's super quiet as well. CBDs are dead on weekends.

I know they are popular given the climate, but I really dislike those enclosed bridges that connect all the buildings together. It totally takes away from the street life.

[giallo]

I've been looking at other "drive through" videos, and found this one of Vancouver.

While it isn't fair to compare pedestrian levels between this video and the one of Calgary (this was shot a month later in May, and it's obviously a weekday), what is cool to compare is the built form of both downtowns. Calgary builds right up to the sidewalk, while Vancouver's buildings are far more set back.

• Video Link

[retro_orange]

Welcome to blandsville; corporate 80s style.

What an amazingly uninspiring and cold feeling downtown, the most colourful building I saw was a blue painted parkade about halfway through. So monotonous and cold looking, I would not wanna live downtown in that city, epicly depressing.

The ominous music makes you feel like theres possibly something amazing around the corner! But to no avail. It's like a metaphor for it's future.

[Caliplanner1]

Originally Posted by Reesonov

For us laymen, what is "Texas/Houston style" big oil (urban design) culture?

Think of ultra conservative businessmen who are not your people sensitive types caring much about catering to the warmer human side of urban development as much as the COLD big oil profit making operations that are embodied in grand (ever taller skyscraper) temples of commerce that are supposed to be bigger than life (as in the edit: "everything's bigger in Texas")!

[Caliplanner1]

Originally Posted by giallo

what is cool to compare is the built form of both downtowns. Calgary builds right up to the sidewalk, while Vancouver's buildings are far more set back.

...and that "set back" in buildings (to which you refer giallo) is part of what I mean (above) by a warmer/softer more human approach to urban design as a missing factor in the Texas/Houston urban landscape where there is an emphasis of being corporate BIG/brash in the built environment as opposed to one that's more intimate on a smaller human scale!

[niwell]

Calgary's towers seem fond of having large corporate plazas, which is similar to Houston. I think this is more due to the availability of land / land prices when many of the towers were built. Downtown Calgary had a ton of wholescale demolition during the first oil boom and not too many historic buildings in what became the commercial core (these were further south). It's a lot harder to make these kind of statements in a hemmed-in urban environment with plenty of existing buildings like you find in Eastern North America. When companies could get away with it they certainly did though (see: TD Centre).

Calgary's downtown is very large for its size, and manages to have an interesting balance of being spread out but with reasonably high built density. It's not extremely dense like the few blocks of Toronto's financial district. It also is somewhat segregated from the inner-city residential districts by the railway tracks and associated vacant land to the south, and the bow river to the north. This has resulted in a much starker divide between the commercial core and surrounding residential areas. Even with new development it would be hard to achieve the more finely grained transitions you find in Toronto/Vancouver/Montreal etc. And explains how dead it can get - people tend not to hang out in any CBD after-hours but you will simply find fewer people passing through in Calgary.

[Caliplanner1]

Originally Posted by niwell

Calgary's towers seem fond of having large corporate plazas, which is similar to Houston. I think this is more due to the availability of land / land prices when many of the towers were built. Downtown Calgary had a ton of wholescale demolition during the first oil boom and not too many historic buildings in what became the commercial core (these were further south). It's a lot harder to make these kind of statements in a hemmed-in urban environment with plenty of existing buildings like you find in Eastern North America. When companies could get away with it they certainly did though (see: TD Centre).

Calgary's downtown is very large for its size, and manages to have an interesting balance of being spread out but with reasonably high built density. It's not extremely dense like the few blocks of Toronto's financial district. It also is somewhat segregated from the inner-city residential districts by the railway tracks and associated vacant land to the south, and the bow river to the north. This has resulted in a much starker divide between the commercial core and surrounding residential areas. Even with new development it would be hard to achieve the more finely grained transitions you find in Toronto/Vancouver/Montreal etc. And explains how dead it can get - people tend not to hang out in any CBD after-hours but you will simply find fewer people passing through in Calgary.

Your points all seem valid niwell. L.A.'s downtown also can be dead after certain hours except for the homeless/street people etc.. West Coast cities (which are newer) in general tend to be (with the possible exception of San Francisco which has an East coast feel/lay out etc.) wide open with bigger streets and sterile downtowns surrounded by suburban sprawl fueled by the automobile culture; a reality more so than found back East (where urban spaces were first conceived on an intimate scale within an older "horse and buggy" urban cultural environment).