Surrealplaces

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Oh wow that's awesome! That's the one at 24th and 5th?
 
It could easily blend into the suburbs no question, but it's not offensive. It's one of those projects that won't stand out in a good way or in a bad way. I'm happy to see the lot get developed and some extra density added to the neighborhood.
 
This one got me thinking.

I don't mind the look - forgettable and blends in, would prefer something of higher quality materials and ground-orientation, but overall okay - however it sucks we lost more old pre-war houses to do so. The density boost might not be as big as it appears given the old houses it replaced had multiple units IIRC (3 houses, 8-10 or so units). Still an improvement for sure.

The housing loss got me thinking about other examples of housing loss in the neighborhood, notably the commercial parking lots along 4th Street Talk about removing neighbourhood character! You could build this developed at least 8 times over within two block if you got rid of those lots (280 units, not 35 units). What I guess happened is the same old story common in all of our main streets due to the post-war auto-oriented boom - Mission's first wave of redevelopment in the 1960s and 1970s did the most damage to the urban form, at a time when commercial parking requirements were very high. The damage done from that era of redevelopment hasn't been repaired yet, 50 years on.

Check out this 2019 aerial between 5th and 4th Streets (left to right), and 23rd Ave and Elbow Drive (top to bottom). Site is circled in red, commercial parking lots are blue. Next to it is the 1948 aerial, pre-first wave of redevelopment.
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For confirmation, here's a population density per hectare graph from 1968 - 2019, uses public census data. While high by Calgary city-wide standards (53 people/ha in 2019), the population density of Cliff Bungalow has actually declined over the past 50 years, despite redevelopment. This is probably due to three factors: reduced family size (1), commercial replacement of residential lands (2), redevelopment insufficient to make up the gap (3).

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Finally, I looked at comparison to Beltline to see it's transition for a reference case. Note that Beltline's density has been "artificially" lower in the data than in practice, largely due to 1/3rd of the community being the stampede grounds with a population of zero - so it feels and acts more dense than the numbers suggest, because the density is largely distributed only to the western 2/3rd of the community. Beltline's story of regeneration and intensification actually began in the 1980s- and accelerated early-2000s, all the while Cliff Bungalow remained flat. This doesn't suggest we need giant Beltline-scale towers in Cliff Bungalow, but gives some context to the degree in which redevelopment and density has been "successful" in each neighbourhood at improving local population to support retail and main streets.

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