Yeah, it's weird. I continually hear how bad things are, although that does seem to be dying down as of late. I haven't seen any news headlines of massive layoffs in the oil patch for a while, and that usually gets the Debbie Downers going. About a month ago I was at Analog, and overhead a guy talk about how Calgary was going to be the next Detroit. Now I'm not at all a violent person, but the guy looked so punchable at that moment. lol.
Something I have repeated a few times, in a few ways - the official
Story of Calgary is very different than the
stories of Calgary.
Capital "S" stories are told by the loudest people in the room - not unfair to characterize Calgary's loudest storytellers as mostly rich, old, white, political, conservative, men in oil and gas - they have set the main stream narrative of what Calgary is, what Calgary thinks, what Calgary does for a few generations. They have the Herald and the Sun blaring their rhetoric non-stop for decades. Many people listen to them.
But they aren't the lower-case stories - they aren't even close to what actually is going on here for the 1.5 million of us. Neighbourhoods, people and our local cultures shift uncorrelated to whatever wrong or right was done to victimize or extoll our storyteller class. Our city shifts regardless of the price of oil. for the majority, none of that matters to hundreds of thousands of people who live here - only 10% of us are rich, only 40% are over 40 years old, only 60% of us are white, only 40-60% vote, only 50% are men, only 5% work in oil and gas. Even more important - only a dozen of us have daily columnists parroting whatever we think in the Calgary Herald.
Focusing it back on the topic at hand, Calgary's city centre is both dying and healthier than it's ever been. It's dying to those that drove downtown to an office and commuted to their suburban houses. But the people that live here know it's more vibrant, populate and engaging than ever. Just as old Calgary was destroyed to make way for the boom of suburban Calgary car commuter from 1970 - 2010, the city is growing back into itself, whether political Herald columnist agree this is good or not. The city centre is changing and has been long before COVID and office vacancies were monthly updates in the mainstream.
If everyone believed Calgary = Detroit, you wouldn't have boring old banks fronting boring 300 unit apartment buildings in the middle of this city. The Detroit reference thing is purely a rhetorical device to take advantage of the idiots for political gain.
Anyone that tries to paint a city of 1.5 million with a single brush is also an idiot.