Calgary has an incredible skyline for it's population. Here's why I think that is:
-massive corporate booms between 1980 and present day. This is the era of international style architecture (steel and concrete, glass curtain wall, floorspace! Floorspace! Floorspace!), and historically high liquidity with great access to the financial tools skyscrapers need. Earlier skyscrapers don't have nearly as much glass, and had our primary growth occurred before 1900, we'd have expensive stone and brick buildings in the way of modern booms.
- Suitable geography (level, appropriate depth to bedrock for cheap excavation and stability, no earthquakes). Calgary is also a bowl with many locations to catch an incredible view of Downtown. Also, there's no substitute for those beautiful turquoise waters of the Bow, lush trees on Prince's Island, and the sunset serrated by mountains. If your buildings are going to scrape the sky, may as well be a beautiful Alberta sky being scraped.
-"Island" effect with strong commuter access to millions of acres of residential land. Thank the 1970s pioneers of the +15 system, the LRT, bonus density system, and the calgary parking authority. This, in my opinion, is truly a proud part of Calgary's history that other modest prairie cities ought to emulate. We've invested in some incredible bridges, especially the Centre St Bridge and the Peace Bridge, that offer great foreground subjects in skyline photos and functional gateways to the dense core.
- I also think there's something else that happened in the 70s about the perception of what uses are acceptable on one side of the tracks. It's like at a certain point every planner, resident, investor, and renter altogether accepted that downtown was for corporate buildings. Life in low/medium density residential buildings between 4th and 12th ave not only became unaffordable but undesirable, and the more these attitudes became common, the easier it was to offer the commercial highrise as solution. This phenomenon happens in some neighborhoods in some cities, but I think it's stifled in areas where the existing tenants have a strong voice, deep pockets, or media connections - think of the Annex in Toronto where even 2 subway lines and the threat of the Spadina expressway were not enough to lure many highrises. On this note, Calgary as a whole has been quite proud of its skyline. We love to compare ourselves to those cities like Toronto and Vancouver and countries like the US that have dominated our media. It makes us feel important to have such beautiful temples to our corporate gods (I kid! ... sort of).
- A singular, centralized municipal government. Calgary's planning is relatively uncomplicated by neighbours. Since 1900, finance, retail, transportation, and governance has been oriented around downtown. Even our addresses reflect this.
I'm in favour of continuing the centralized unicity model as far as we can, not just for the aesthetics of a beautiful skyline, but the functional benefits of reducing travel times, preserving greenfield, and providing services. Calgary is now at the threshold where people cannot commute much farther, so it will be tempting to develop bidirectional travel and more peripheral hubs. This makes sense sometimes, so long as those hubs are still connected to downtown and don't just generate ever more sprawl. Stay beautiful, Calgary!