Thanks for your response, Dane!
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Originally Posted by _Citizen_Dane_
As a life-long Edmontonian, I’ll say it’s a city that doesn't photograph well — least of all in streetview — but it does have some places that work in-person. Oliver’s the big one I think. Looking at it, it’s this weird — and at times downright ugly —mix of pre-war Foursquares and ‘50s walkups, and contemporary towers, yet it’s actually a really nice community to walk through. It might not be the best urban neighbourhood in Canada — it could be denser, a little less run-down in spots, have more businesses inside the community and away from Jasper Avenue, etc. — yet it’s decent, and lively in its own way. But my opinion may be coloured as someone less-traveled.
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Hell, even Jasper could use more businesses and amenities. I know it's improving with the new streetscape but what an abomination of a main street it is west of 109th. But the residential parts of Oliver? They're great. Strolling down 102 Ave or 100th Ave is quite pleasant, even if there's a lot of ugly to contend with. It do agree Edmonton doesn't photograph well, and it is better to see/experience in person.
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Having said all that though, I agree with everything you’ve said. Edmonton’s biggest weakness is its lack of urban cohesion. We have blocks or stretches of blocks that almost work, but nothing more (perhaps with the exception of Whyte). As ue mentioned, there’s places like 104th, a great urban street that just isn’t as lively as it ought to be, or places like 124th, which is nice enough but has plenty of gaps in it. What’s more pressing to me though is how we can have a stretch of historic buildings or smaller-scale storefronts that just give way to downright inhospitable stretches the next block over.
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124th is quite disappointing. There's been efforts to turn it into an alternate Whyte for
decades now and it still hasn't really taken off. Sure, there's more stuff happening than before, and some infill, but it's not as far along as you'd have expected given all the time. I'd argue Whyte Ave's transformation over the past 20 years has been more dramatic, and Whyte Ave 20 years ago was already plenty vibrant. It doesn't help that 124th (and 118th Ave) are exemplary of the ways that Edmonton have a random nice building or two and the rest of the block is just so unappealing to look at. 124th I feel is worse because it is much more incohesive, despite not running as long as 118th does.
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My mind’s always drawn to the 97th Street area. Along Jasper you have this great collection of Edwardian buildings — by Edmonton-standards it could really be something special — but twist your head forty-five degrees and you’re met with the hulking mass that is Canada Place. Or down 97th itself. Again, great pre-war buildings, but turn around in any direction and you’re met with the ass-end of the Provincial Law Courts, an old C.N.R. underpass, and the Brownlee Building.
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When I brought up 97th Street earlier, I was mostly referring to the part in "Chinatown North", north of the tracks and all these abominations you mention. There, it is a pretty decent main street. Not as busy as you'd hope, but cohesive, even pretty, and with some of the best food in the city (and in nearby streets). South of the tracks, 97th is like the Berlin Wall, a strong buffer between the overscaled downtown and the gap-toothed Boyle Street.
97th Street north of the tracks (I know you know this, this is more for everybody else):
And south:
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Most of our ills can be explained away due to the history of Alberta’s booms and busts (as much of a cop-out as that may be). Prior to the Great War the city was blooming into something beautiful, and we developed a surprisingly dense downtown core for a city of our size. But then a real-estate bust came in 1913, then the Great War, then an exodus of 20,000 people, then the Great Depression, then the Second World War. Edmonton’s population stagnated and the number of major buildings erected between 1914 and 1939 could probably be counted on two hands. It’s not hyperbole to say the Edmonton of the early 1940s was a time-capsule.
Anyways, all this is to say that when oil was discovered in ‘47 there was a rush to modernize the entire city. Most looked at the forty-year-old core and decided it needed ‘updating’ and update it they did until the late ‘80s when the next major bust came around. In its wake it left dozens of demolished heritage buildings, undeveloped lots, monolithic towers, and nothing in between. Some thirty-plus years on we’re still dealing with its effects.
There has been progress in recent years, of course, but that mid-century clear-cutting of the downtown core will always plague us. It’s sad to me, but at this point the best downtown Edmonton could really hope to be in terms of a defined urban-form (and we’re talking decades of work out here) is something more akin to Yaletown in Vancouver. Maybe not in style, but in spirit. Something that’s been built from nothing, and while it’s something urban, decent to look at, and maintains a sliver of its past and character, is something that’s still overall pretty soulless and plain, if that makes any sense?
I’ll end my ramble here.
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Thank you for illuminating this part of Edmonton's history in particular. It really gives a macro scale to the overarching trends of boom and bust in Edmonton's history. I think it's also important to note how sparse and gappy the pre-war urbanism in a lot of Canadian cities was until the 1950s. This was very noticeable in Alberta, where the Edwardian-era real estate bubble caused a frenzy of speculation, leading to closer in empty lots being too expensive for workers, so houses would be built further out, either within the city and just on cheaper land, or outside of it, where land was both cheaper and unregulated (water pipes are good but expensive!). It explains why, in Edmonton, an "old" neighbourhood will have some 1910s/1920s Four Square and the rest of the block a mix of 1940s homes, '60s bungalows, '80s-'90s front car garage abominations, and recent skinny home infill. It wasn't that the old stuff was torn down (though the recent infill is often teardowns of postwar bungalows) - the blocks were often just that empty before the postwar boom.
I won't embed the photograph because it's very high resolution, but this satellite image of the Alberta Ave and Parkdale area of north central Edmonton in 1924 shows this very clearly. Look closely at the blocks and you'll see often less than half the lots on a block are filled in ->
https://cityarchives.edmonton.ca/upl...73_Frame45.jpg
In the 1910s speculative bubble, many new subdivisions were surveyed and roads laid only for them to sit empty for a generation until the population began growing again in the 1940s.
But, if you ignore the issues of modernist and post-modernist urban design, and look squarely at the architecture, there is some nice buildings from those eras, if you can appreciate their styles. The CN Tower, Coronation Pool, the Baker Clinic, Manulife Place, the "new" City Hall, etc. Something broke in Edmonton after the early 1990s that the city's still slowly recovering from the nadir of the late '90s/early '00s. The city threw good design out the window and when it started trying again, it didn't know up from down. So you get these projects where architects, developers, the city is clearly
trying, but it's a swing and a miss. I don't get why, because it can't be for lack of boom now, as there's been plenty of money flowing into the city for the past 15 years (and it fared better than Calgary during the recession) and Edmonton does historically have the stronger arts community. It honestly perplexes me.
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. Anyway, yes, there are issues with poverty in Winnipeg that do relate directly to Canada's history of colonization, racism, and classism. Winnipeg bears the brunt of a lot of that, more than probably any other city save Vancouver. Obviously none of that is good and it would be better if Winnipeg didn't have these glaring issues. However, the solution of the city has, time and time again, to sweep it under the rug, push these communities and their concern aside, and prioritize the interests of the business class. This happens elsewhere, obviously, but I think it is often overlooked in Winnipeg because it isn't an "expensive" city like Vancouver and Toronto are.
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