Urban vs Suburban - 2 styles enter, one style leaves!

[Ramsayfarian]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Outside the core, parks are for kids:
http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/police-inv...park-1.1937186

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they just find a body floating in a pond in a park outside the core?

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Ramsayfarian

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't they just find a body floating in a pond in a park outside the core?

Tell me more - but perhaps in the Calgary Crime thread.

I think they did just fish one out that was seen around St. George's Island that was finally caught around the zoo. Kind of a bad string, given the two inner city murders over the weekend.

[Ramsayfarian]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Tell me more - but perhaps in the Calgary Crime thread.

I think they did just fish one out that was seen around St. George's Island that was finally caught around the zoo. Kind of a bad string, given the two inner city murders over the weekend.

You probably sub-consciously missed this murder as it didn't happen in the inner-city. I've noticed that you suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to reporting crimes in YYC.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...647/story.html

[PlanZ]

Originally Posted by suburbia

Outside the core, parks are for kids:
http://calgary.ctvnews.ca/police-inv...park-1.1937186

What community do you live in?

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Ramsayfarian

You probably sub-consciously missed this murder as it didn't happen in the inner-city. I've noticed that you suffer from tunnel vision when it comes to reporting crimes in YYC.

http://www.calgaryherald.com/news/ca...647/story.html

That's horrible, but looks like no foul play involved. Were you wanting to start a new thread on deaths not from crime?

[Ramsayfarian]

Originally Posted by suburbia

That's horrible, but looks like no foul play involved. Were you wanting to start a new thread on deaths not from crime?

No foul play? I sure hope your kids have better reading comprehension than you do. Let me cut and paste the very first sentence for you. I will bold the pertinent part for you, so you don't have to tax yourself.

"An 18-year-old Calgary man who went missing on July 4 was murdered, police confirmed Friday evening."

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Ramsayfarian

No foul play? I sure hope your kids have better reading comprehension than you do. Let me cut and paste the very first sentence for you. I will bold the pertinent part for you, so you don't have to tax yourself.

"An 18-year-old Calgary man who went missing on July 4 was murdered, police confirmed Friday evening."

Missed that. I believe it was part of the updated article only.

[Spring2008]

The Suburbs Move to City Centre in Calgary

I have lived in Calgary's city centre for over 20 years and observed the evolution of the different communities from cottage houses to new urban communities with a mix of residential homes. During that time I have also visited many city centres in cities across North America from Portland to Ottawa from Vancouver to Miami. While I have seen some infill homes (the removal of an old cottage home to create one or two new homes) nowhere have I seen anything on the scale of what has been happening in Calgary's city centre.

In every community within 10 km of the downtown Calgary there is an infill under construction on nearly every block. Literally hundreds of new homes are being built in the city centre, in addition to hundreds of new condos in mid and high-rise towers.

The infill homes are on the same scale as the homes in the suburbs starting at 2,000+sf of living space and two car garage. More and more young families are moving into the communities revitalizing them. I recently looked at the civic census and over 4,500 children and teens live in the north-side city centre communities alone where a lot of the infilling is happening. These communities have great access to elementary Jr highhigh schools and three post secondary schools, as well as major hospital and children's hospital.

While Calgary is often criticized for its large carbon footprint is probably the most contiguous urban region in North America with few edge cities and one of the most dense city centres with respect to commercial and residential development.

The following are some photos I took on my morning walk today.

Pics below:
http://everydaytourist.ca/blog/2013/...tre-in-calgary

[Surrealplaces]

^ Good article. I've noticed a marked increase in the number of kids on my street. When I first moved into my place there were no kids at all on our street. Now there are quite a few.....Including my house, there are 4 houses in a row with kids, and 3 of 4 houses across from me have kids.....all of the kids are young.
One advantages of living in inner city communities with kids is the number of schools available within walking distance. My son can walk to three different elementary schools....a regular, a Catholic, and a French immersion school...all less than 5 minutes away. Two of the three options are available within walking distance for Junior High, and all three of those options are available within walking distance for High school.

[Spring2008]

17,000+ housing starts forecasted this year and these guys are talking about layoffs? How about giving your head a shake and pick up what everybody else is doing - infills!

ENTERTAINMENT
Ideological dogma leads to layoffs
Myke Thomas
Today at 4:05 AM

It has been an interesting summer for the home-building and land-development industries, with some highs and lows.
On the high side, the 2014 City of Calgary census showed the city had record-breaking net migration of more than 28,000 people over the past year, the main driver of housing demand.
Builders are working hard to meet that demand, being on pace to break the record for new home starts in one year — 17,046 set in 2006.
Also on the high side was, ah, lemme see, er, nope, it looks like the starts story is pretty much it.
The lows?
There were several, but without a doubt the lowest is the fact people in the industry got laid off from work over the summer and more layoffs are pending.
It is ridiculous that, in an industry that is as busy as it possibly can be with no reduction in demand in sight, people are losing their jobs.
Why is it happening?
From where I sit, you can blame ImagineCalgary and PlanIt Calgary, two documents that reek of ideological elitism that influenced, and effectively became, the Calgary Municipal Development Plan (MDP), which essentially is the manual for growth in the city.
The MDP stipulates there will be less suburban development and more development in established neighbourhoods in Calgary and higher densities everywhere.
However, the MDP is such a complicated, ill-thought out, bureaucratic document, it appears no one at city hall could, or can, figure out how to interpret it.
As a planner in the city told me last spring, “The MDP was written improperly. The MDP is a catch-all document that has as many policies and objectives within it to support growth and densification and as many policies that actually give arguments to not support growth and densification, based on the context of the neighbourhood and context is not just architectural style, it’s also existing densities.
It’s a real challenge.”
So, whether it was on purpose or it was because city planners and administrative staff weren’t given clear instructions by city managers and members of council on how to implement the MDP (assuming the latter knew how — big assumption) the city has essentially been in a suburban development freeze for three or four years.
The result is a lack of available land ready for new development and the consequence is people have lost their jobs because of the decisions made five years ago at city hall.
Sadly, it is not a temporary situation.
By the end of this year, the available serviced lot supply will be at its lowest level in recent history and it’s not something that can be rectified quickly.
It takes anywhere from three to five years to get new land development approvals, so if builders don’t have land on which to build homes, more builder staff members, trades and suppliers will be laid off from their jobs.
Those who decided in favour of the MDP, some of whom are unfortunately still on council and some still in administration, should be hanging their heads in shame.

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http://m.calgarysun.com/2014/09/05/i...ads-to-layoffs

[Allan83]

Originally Posted by Spring2008

17,000+ housing starts forecasted this year and these guys are talking about layoffs? How about giving your head a shake and pick up what everybody else is doing - infills!


http://m.calgarysun.com/2014/09/05/i...ads-to-layoffs

Surely you're not expecting truth from the Sun? This is called "politics".

[Spring2008]

I believe the Sun's only revenue streams are car-dealership/bankruptcy ads and suburban developer lobbying. I don't doubt that some of these dinosaur developers will fight the losing battle to the end though without even attempting to shift their business models. Too bad for them. Lots of the better developers seem to be stepping up their urban divisions more and more.

[DizzyEdge]

Notice that the article is in the "ENTERTAINMENT" section.

[RyLucky]

All those 28,000 new Calgarians are going to be awfully sad when they get here and learn there are no new openings at Shane Homes.

[Spring2008]

I'm not a big suburbs guy, but just checked out Quarry Park over the weekend. Place is already massive with lots more u/c. Good job overall with mixing of retail, office, res uses. The quality of the buildings and landscaping, including many fountains, abundant greenspace etc. makes this the nicest suburban office park I've ever seen before. Great use of a former contaminated industrial site, now get the lrt out there!

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by Spring2008

I'm not a big suburbs guy, but just checked out Quarry Park over the weekend. Place is already massive with lots more u/c. Good job overall with mixing of retail, office, res uses. The quality of the buildings and landscaping, including many fountains, abundant greenspace etc. makes this the nicest suburban office park I've ever seen before. Great use of a former contaminated industrial site, now get the lrt out there!

You see amazing things when you get out! Glad you made it without getting run over by an SUV.

[Spring2008]

Originally Posted by suburbia

You see amazing things when you get out! Glad you made it without getting run over by an SUV.

Yeah, it's really not that horrifying venturing into gentrified neighbourhoods, you should try it sometime.

And btw I like most of these new mixed-use nodes/communities.
They're becoming much better designed. Our planning department has made big strides.

Still prefer the core, can imagine the gridlock there with no lrt access. Not bad for peeps in the field though, construction workers, engineers etc.

[speedog]

So a discussion in the "Chestermere to Become Alberta's 18th City" thread in the "Alberta & British Columbia" section got me wondering what would be considered a suburban community versus an urban community in Calgary. I'll pick on central-north/NW Calgary because I've resided in that area for the past 28 years -so the communities I've lived in or am currently living in below, are any considered suburbs or are they urban communities...

1 - West Dalhousie (west of 53rd Street NW) - I'd consider this a suburb.
2 - West Hillhurst (23rd Street NW south of Kensington) - some would consider urban but the honest truth is there's not much of convenience close to this area.
3 - Rosemont - urban, suburban? What is it, no local conveniences to speak of really, zoned R1 for the most part?
4 - Mount Pleasant - probably urban although there are certain things that are not within an easy walking distance (some schooling). Some blocks have probably seen most of their housing almost completely replaced in the past 10 years.
5 - Highwood - urban, suburban? More convenient things for a family within a easy walking distance as compared to Rosemont even though it's farther out from the core. Zoned mostly R2 but not seeing a lot of sub-dividing of lots yet and actually seeing more of the mid-50's bungalows either being renovated or torn down and replaced with a new bungalow.

So because I own and live in a mid-50's bungalow on a 60-110 lot in Highwood, is that considered to be a suburb just because of lot size along? I certainly got the impression from another forum member that that was the case but there are a number of communities that are quite close to the core where one can still own a nice sized older bungalow on a very large lot - Highwood is barely over a 5km drive from the core as is the very nice community of Southview (under 5 km), Mayland Heights - under 4km.

So are communities such as these three suburbs or not? Interesting also because the array of services/amenities in these communities is as good if not better than in some communities that some would consider urban? I have all three levels of public schooling, a community operated outdoor swimming pool and skating rink, a community center all within 5 blocks of my home. We've got a very good variety of restaurants within a 10 minute walk of our home as well as a great variety of services as well including grocery shopping, drug stores and even hardware stores/vehicle maintenance places within a 10 minute walk of our home and yet many would consider Highwood to be a suburb?

So help me understand what is a suburb and what is not in Calgary - what are the qualifications or factors that go into this determination?

[suburbia]

Originally Posted by speedog

So because I own and live in a mid-50's bungalow on a 60-110 lot in Highwood, is that considered to be a suburb just because of lot size along?

This is a point I had made many, many years ago. It seems that the biggest definer of what people consider suburban is low development intensity. Reality is, however, 1960's neighborhoods have the lowest residential density. Your lot is twice the size of what you'd find in new green-field developments.

In the US, what is generally called suburban is communities like springbank and bears paw. For us they are virtual commuter communities, but that's suburban in the USA. Commuter communities in the USA are places like Canmore, which blows me away. Anyway, the reason I mention all of this, is that you'd have to go out to places like bears paw to get lower density than you currently have in the 1960's "inner city" you live in. That gives legitimacy to the suburban trashers in the USA, but becomes illogical in Calgary because there is a disjoint.

[speedog]

I'm not sure if I agree because I can look north of me into Thorncliffe, Huntington Hills and even Beddington and find very generous sized lots and some of those communities were still being built out in the late 70's and maybe even 80's and all of them are still relatively low in density.

Maybe the definition is more around the average commute time or distance to the core - difficult to peg down. As an example I can look at Lynwood, Kingsland or Ogden and see way more density than Highwood and yet they are communities that are farther out from the core. So are these three communities suburban or not? Altadore/Marda Loop is probably considered urban by many and is about as far out from the core as Highwood, Cambrian Heights or Rosemont - what's the distinction?