[CalgaryTiger]

Edmonton's downtown has been facing some challenges. If you go on the Edmonton forum's downtown thread and read through, you can read up on the various issues, but the two main issues are crime and struggling retail. Not enough density and people living downtown is also part of it.

Edmonton's big disadvantage is its layout. They have a valley between their Beltline-like neighbourhood and downtown, we have 9th Ave and the CPKC tracks as our valley. They also don't have the ready-made buildings that can be converted instead they have a lot of parking lots, kind of like Calgary in the 80s. Their downtown could benefit from a low-rise construction, I don't think they need towers, whereas Calgary seems to have a lot more high-rise construction in our core. Granted we are and have been getting some low-rise, specifically thinking about the Library Square twins and that other new one on that end of downtown.

 

[Mountain Man]

Edmonton's version of the Beltline is Oliver (or whatever they renamed it to), it's directly connected to their core. I think of Strathcona as more akin to Kensington here, with Whyte as the retail anchor. Jasper should be a much better street than it is, there are pockets of activity, but also a ton of parking lots and dead zones. There are times when it looked like they would get a condo tower boom there, but it has always fizzled out. Hope they can figure it out, Edmonton has so much potential.

 

[lemongrab]

Edmonton's version of the Beltline is Oliver (or whatever they renamed it to), it's directly connected to their core. I think of Strathcona as more akin to Kensington here, with Whyte as the retail anchor. Jasper should be a much better street than it is, there are pockets of activity, but also a ton of parking lots and dead zones. There are times when it looked like they would get a condo tower boom there, but it has always fizzled out. Hope they can figure it out, Edmonton has so much potential.

Yup, it's just that the size of the areas are flipped; Strathcona+U of A are closer in scope to Beltline+Stampede. U of A adds to the youth+vibrancy, but Whyte+109th=17th+14 St SW, but we also have 10/11/12 Aves, 11 St SW, 1 St SW, and even a bit more south into Mission.

If anything Oliver is probably a little smaller than Kensington. And then we also have Bridgeland and Inglewood, to which they don't really have an equivalent in terms of retail streets (but Edmonton probably has just as many people living in their 'inner donut').

Norquest and Bow Valley College cancel each other out, but Edmonton has MacEwan pretty much in downtown, too. But that hasn't helped 104th Ave be anything other than a big box stroad. Maybe it's a little similar to the west end of 10th/11th as both have a MEC and a couple grocery stores with parking lots, but 104th has way more surface parking and absolutely zero height.

 

[CBBarnett]

Edmonton's version of the Beltline is Oliver (or whatever they renamed it to), it's directly connected to their core. I think of Strathcona as more akin to Kensington here, with Whyte as the retail anchor. Jasper should be a much better street than it is, there are pockets of activity, but also a ton of parking lots and dead zones. There are times when it looked like they would get a condo tower boom there, but it has always fizzled out. Hope they can figure it out, Edmonton has so much potential.

Every time I visit Edmonton, the expression I keep coming back to is "wow if they had another million people, this would be such a great city". The city has great bones, they just need a bit more meat!

They have lots of main streets and historic nodes to build from, have demonstrated more restraint by preventing many inner city streets to be fully converted to car sewers, they have far better public institutions in their scale, location and integration with the city. The giant river valley is a great asset, but would be less noticeably a barrier if each urban cluster in Downtown and Whyte was sufficiently large on it's own.

Calgary's inner city's concentration and relative lack of barriers has served us well and gives the feel of more completeness, vibrancy as a result - downtown feels and is bigger. Most of our urban neighbourhoods can share and build off the population and energy of the ones nearby, really demonstrating the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. Growth has been leveraged and concentrated in some areas to benefit the overall vibrancy and access to the city. More broadly, our infill game is pretty remarkable breathing a lot of life into tired neighbourhoods.

Relative to Edmonton, however, Calgary's weakness is that we weren't established enough as a city to create many of those historic main street nodes throughout the city. The result is a really harsh car-oriented design that's nearly total outside the inner city. Most of our institutions (e.g. Foothills, U of C, Rockyview, PLC, South Calgary) sprawled as part of this and have never demonstrated any real interest in urban integration.

Taking the best elements of both cities would be a great way to go. Calgary needs better urban integration of major institutions and more effort to insert walkable nodes everywhere they aren't today, Edmonton needs more growth around their many nodes and more sustained infill momentum at scale.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

Edmonton will always be at a disadvantage due to geography and climate, but its not hurting their overall population numbers.

I think what's holding up development in the center is that it takes so long to get to, no matter where you come from.

I've seen the old downtown freeway plans for both cities, and agree that they would have been far too disruptive, but at least Calgary still built the memorial and bow connectors.

There's nothing comparable in Edmonton. Every route into the center is slow and involves weird janky roads. It's no wonder development around their ring road exploded...

 

[Mountain Man]

Edmonton will always be at a disadvantage due to geography and climate, but its not hurting their overall population numbers.

I think what's holding up development in the center is that it takes so long to get to, no matter where you come from.

I've seen the old downtown freeway plans for both cities, and agree that they would have been far too disruptive, but at least Calgary still built the memorial and bow connectors.

There's nothing comparable in Edmonton. Every route into the center is slow and involves weird janky roads. It's no wonder development around their ring road exploded...

To me this should inspire more urban living downtown as it's a pain to get to like you said. Edmonton seems to be in a chicken and egg scenario in that they need retail and amenities to bring people downtown, but there needs to be residential to support that retail.

 

[Surrealplaces]

Both downtowns have their pros and cons. Calgary's core is office space heavy and coming with that comes the numerous hostile car sewers. Edmonton's biggest downfall comes down to density IMO. It has less people than Calgary's downtown and is spread out over an area twice as large, but higher density would help increase retail and reduce crime. Their solution is a not an easy one, but it's an obvious one that can be worked on. Calgary has been doing the conversions which is helping change the feel of downtown, but we still need to do something with those one way car sewers.

Both downtowns need some actions to keep things going. Calgary's further ahead in the process, but still needs to address those concerns of the high amount of office space and hostile roadways.

 

[Dkeirle]

Every time I visit Edmonton, the expression I keep coming back to is "wow if they had another million people, this would be such a great city". The city has great bones, they just need a bit more meat!

Adding people isn't a problem, it's getting the people in the right places. Edmonton's been growing almost as fast as Calgary, but so much of it going to suburban areas. The city has added close half a million from when I first moved there in 2012, but the downtown area hasn't changed, and TBH actually feels less vibrant then when I lived there. I don't think it fully recovered from Covid and has been stuck in a chicken/egg cycle. How do you get people to live downtown when there's no retail, how do you get retail there if there if there are not enough residents and office workers are spread out too thinly? There's been new life in places like the Ice District, but the area feels kind of disconnected and is dead outside of event times. Last time I was there I went to the Loblaws City Market at the Ice District, and the area was dead. The store was open, but had only one other customer, which is a shame, because it's a cool little store.

They have lots of main streets and historic nodes to build from, have demonstrated more restraint by preventing many inner city streets to be fully converted to car sewers, they have far better public institutions in their scale, location and integration with the city. The giant river valley is a great asset, but would be less noticeably a barrier if each urban cluster in Downtown and Whyte was sufficiently large on it's own.

I might be in the minority, but the giant river valley was more of a pet peeve for me. It's beautiful and a fun place to do outdoor stuff, but I would have loved the river valley if it was north of downtown instead of between Downtown and Strathcona/UofA. I always like that you can leave work from a downtown Calgary office and walk or scooter your way over to Kensington, Mission or 17th, etc.. Another thing that was kind of a pet peeve was how far down you had to go to get to river. Here, the river is so accessible, probably more so than any city I've visited. People here don't realize how lucky they have it with the river system and pathway.

 

[CalgaryTiger]

we still need to do something with those one way car sewers.

Anyone here ever seen Park Avenue in New York before it became a car sewer?

Nowadays we likely wouldn't create a boulevard park but maybe we should?

And you can't completely get rid of the car sewers, but I think you could get rid certain sections on some.

9th Ave between 1st Street SW and 4th Street SE could have something like a median park. Could be a way to stick back together the institutions along that section of 9th Ave. Do a lot of people take 9th Ave east past 1st Street SE?

6th Ave, between 5th Street SW and 3rd Street SE, and 5th Ave between10th Street SW to 4th Street SW could have a median park. Each of those one-ways could be changed to two-way traffic and use lane reversals on the non-mediated sections for commuting times. I think there can be a middle ground between appeasing commuters while making sections of car sewers better for non-commuters.

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

To me this should inspire more urban living downtown as it's a pain to get to like you said. Edmonton seems to be in a chicken and egg scenario in that they need retail and amenities to bring people downtown, but there needs to be residential to support that retail.

I think the problem has also been exasperated by thinking they could get away with redeveloping 'all the things' when their boom was on. Their municipal airport redevelopment was a huge mistake IMO. Many of those residents are the people who would have bought into central neighborhoods otherwise, and the money spent on new sewers, roads, etc on the airport lands there could have fixed up a lot of things downtown proper instead.

Sort of seems like they might be on a roll again though? The new downtown park looks nice, and I think the new 6 storey wood frame meta is going to be a good fit for them. Get more blank spots filled faster, and things will eventually trend upwards.

In 50 years or so when those buildings are getting clapped from two generations of student renters, maybe the demand for high rises will be there again to replace them.

 

[trtcttc]

Anyone here ever seen Park Avenue in New York before it became a car sewer?

View attachment 709047

Nowadays we likely wouldn't have a create a boulevard park but maybe we should?

And you can't completely get rid of the car sewers, but I think you could get rid certain sections on some.

9th Ave between 1st Street SW and 4th Street SE could have something like a median park. Could be a way to stick back together the institutions along that section of 9th Ave. Do a lot of people take 9th Ave east past 1st Street SE?

6th Ave, between 5th Street SW and 3rd Street SE, and 5th Ave between10th Street SW to 4th Street SW could have a median park. Each of those one-ways could be changed to two-way traffic and use lane reversals on the non-mediated sections for commuting times. I think there can be a middle ground between appeasing commuters while making sections of car sewers better for non-commuters.

Doesn't Park Ave still have a pretty wide median? I think Boulevard parks are cool in concept, like the active living underpass but in reality will be a dud. The population and car ownership rates are so much higher now (not saying it's good), when you take a look at Park Ave today, it's much busier. People would rather go to a real park than be in the middle of a bunch of honking cars, exhaust fumes, etc. When we compare old photos, the city is so much bigger now, that even if the name is the same, it's a fundamentally different city.

 

[lemongrab]

Edmonton will always be at a disadvantage due to geography and climate, but its not hurting their overall population numbers.

I think what's holding up development in the center is that it takes so long to get to, no matter where you come from.

I've seen the old downtown freeway plans for both cities, and agree that they would have been far too disruptive, but at least Calgary still built the memorial and bow connectors.

There's nothing comparable in Edmonton. Every route into the center is slow and involves weird janky roads. It's no wonder development around their ring road exploded...

This is a really good point - I was thinking more about how unusual 104th was and how Calgary doesn't really have an equivalent unless you go way out to the burbs (85 St SW is the closest comp I can think of), but it's also true that Edmonton generally avoided our freeways turning into one way car sewers problem.

But 104th is just a weird stretch; the few blocks between 104th and Jasper are a lot like 13/14/15/16 Aves SW in Calgary. Does Edmonton have an equivalent to our historical aerial imagery website? I'm curious what it was like before? Below is about 1800 meters from Churchill Square - Kal Tire and Jiffy Lube on the left, Safeway, Sleep Country, and Dollarama on the right. A bunch more banks and franchises/chains as you progress

https://maps.app.goo.gl/fUD7gMTntqwDUD177

It's weird to imagine a big box+franchise stroad starting within a similar radius in Calgary:

Edmonton's topography is a gift and a curse. It definitely helped save them from the freeway trap, but I wonder how much this centralized strip of suburbia served to stifle more compact and walkable alternatives?

 

[JWhite]

Both downtowns have their pros and cons. Calgary's core is office space heavy and coming with that comes the numerous hostile car sewers. Edmonton's biggest downfall comes down to density IMO. It has less people than Calgary's downtown and is spread out over an area twice as large, but higher density would help increase retail and reduce crime. Their solution is a not an easy one, but it's an obvious one that can be worked on. Calgary has been doing the conversions which is helping change the feel of downtown, but we still need to do something with those one way car sewers.

Both downtowns need some actions to keep things going. Calgary's further ahead in the process, but still needs to address those concerns of the high amount of office space and hostile roadways.

Calgary sorta lucked out in a way. Had downtown Calgary faced the same office building dilemma 25 years ago it might have been disastrous for the core as a whole, but these past 25 years has allowed Calgary to build up its overall core and be in position for the changes. Years back when the population was half of what it is now, the downtown was heavily populated with workers, I believe the highest percentage of any NA city. This helped get large amounts of retail into the downtown - much more than a typical city of Calgary's size would have. On top of that with downtown being heavily office space focused, the surrounding urban clusters Beltline, Mission, Bridgeland, Kensington, Inglewood and more recently East Village have evolved very rapidly and have never slowed down. The overall core continued to build itself up nicely, but still was at risk of a central core that was empty all hours instead of only after hours.

Today Calgary's core (DT, Beltline, Mission, Bridgeland, Kensington, Inglewood and EV) numbers around 100,000 people. On top of that there are the semi-urban clusters adjacent to main clusters (Hillhurst, Sunalta, Bankview, Capital Hill, Renfrew, and so on) and they're all booming, It's a nice luxury to have of every part of the city's core booming.
With with many of the empty buildings being converted, it's my opinion that we've dodged one main vulnerability the core had, and now only need to stay the course and do some fine tuning. Add some more residents, improve the public realm, improve safety, increase educational facilities, and so on.

 

[lemongrab]

9th Ave between 1st Street SW and 4th Street SE could have something like a median park. Could be a way to stick back together the institutions along that section of 9th Ave. Do a lot of people take 9th Ave east past 1st Street SE?

6th Ave, between 5th Street SW and 3rd Street SE, and 5th Ave between10th Street SW to 4th Street SW could have a median park. Each of those one-ways could be changed to two-way traffic and use lane reversals on the non-mediated sections for commuting times. I think there can be a middle ground between appeasing commuters while making sections of car sewers better for non-commuters.

Airport-DT rail (CADE) should continue beyond grand central station and run elevated down this exact stretch. I don't know that it would improve the vibe at all, but it would at least take away one vehicle lane...

 

[InfrastructureEnthusiast]

This is a really good point - I was thinking more about how unusual 104th was and how Calgary doesn't really have an equivalent unless you go way out to the burbs (85 St SW is the closest comp I can think of), but it's also true that Edmonton generally avoided our freeways turning into one way car sewers problem.

But 104th is just a weird stretch; the few blocks between 104th and Jasper are a lot like 13/14/15/16 Aves SW in Calgary. Does Edmonton have an equivalent to our historical aerial imagery website? I'm curious what it was like before? Below is about 1800 meters from Churchill Square - Kal Tire and Jiffy Lube on the left, Safeway, Sleep Country, and Dollarama on the right. A bunch more banks and franchises/chains as you progress

View attachment 709048
https://maps.app.goo.gl/fUD7gMTntqwDUD177

It's weird to imagine a big box+franchise stroad starting within a similar radius in Calgary:

View attachment 709051

Edmonton's topography is a gift and a curse. It definitely helped save them from the freeway trap, but I wonder how much this centralized strip of suburbia served to stifle more compact and walkable alternatives?

Closest comp to 104av in Calgary would be the western stretch of 9 av. If all the parking lots on the south side had been developed like the staples lot until tower time they'd look pretty similar.

There used to be rail yards north of 104av so having a truck sized road adjacent wasn't unreasonable. Big big ball drop on Edm not reserving some of that rail ROW for LRT though, genuinely have no idea how they let that slide?

Back to the geography / climate thing I suppose. Hard to make and follow up on good long term plans when many of your best and brightest constantly move on to greener pastures..