[Habanero]

I see 11 buildings in that pic that weren't there 5 years ago. Big changes for sure.

 

[Geo_Jedi]

Not sure if anyone has seen this, but this is an updated video on what Seton should look like when complete. I like the looks of the Market Street, and living close by, I can confirm they have done a really good job with their digitization of currently completed buildings so I have hope that this is more of what the final product will be then what has been seen previously.

-Vimeo - RK Visualization

 

[gsunnyg]

Not sure if anyone has seen this, but this is an updated video on what Seton should look like when complete. I like the looks of the Market Street, and living close by, I can confirm they have done a really good job with their digitization of currently completed buildings so I have hope that this is more of what the final product will be then what has been seen previously.

-Vimeo - RK Visualization

The Market Street looks great but other than that, a very overrated design with all those massive parking lots especially when its planned to be located along an LRT. Rather have Currie Barracks move ahead.

 

[Silence&Motion]

I have very little faith in Seton to create any actual urban living. As with all of these "new urbanism" developments, they like to brand themselves as "urban" because it's stylish, but when it comes down to it, they're still planned around car use - and everything else is a distance second. The amenities are scattered over huge distances that will make walking basically impossible for all but a few trips. Most of the buildings are set way back from the street, surrounded by parking lots and lawns.

Market street itself looks nice in the renderings. However, we now have more concrete evidence for what the street is going to look like. The first buildings have been built, and they both look like @#%$: (exhibit A, exhibit B).

 

[Geo_Jedi]

I have very little faith in Seton to create any actual urban living. As with all of these "new urbanism" developments, they like to brand themselves as "urban" because it's stylish, but when it comes down to it, they're still planned around car use - and everything else is a distance second. The amenities are scattered over huge distances that will make walking basically impossible for all but a few trips. Most of the buildings are set way back from the street, surrounded by parking lots and lawns.

Market street itself looks nice in the renderings. However, we now have more concrete evidence for what the street is going to look like. The first buildings have been built, and they both look like @#%$: (exhibit A, exhibit B).

Both exhibit A and B are seen in the video and both look like the video renders in real life, minus some of the exterior colours. Exhibit B is seen at 3:48 in the video and exhibit A at 4:19 on the right side of the end of the fly through portion of the video. The part I am interested to see is the few blocks between these two examples. Again, the renders in the videos, even for these examples, seem fairly spot on except for some colours, so that's why I am still going to be cautiously optimistic about the rest of Market Street depicted in the video.

 

[Cowtown]

I have very little faith in Seton to create any actual urban living. As with all of these "new urbanism" developments, they like to brand themselves as "urban" because it's stylish, but when it comes down to it, they're still planned around car use - and everything else is a distance second. The amenities are scattered over huge distances that will make walking basically impossible for all but a few trips. Most of the buildings are set way back from the street, surrounded by parking lots and lawns.

Market street itself looks nice in the renderings. However, we now have more concrete evidence for what the street is going to look like. The first buildings have been built, and they both look like @#%$: (exhibit A, exhibit B).

There are two ways to look at it. Compared to Sunnyside or Mission, etc... yeah, it's suburban, but compared to other new mixed use developments, Seton has some things going for it. Yes, it still has the parking lots, but unlike, say Crowfoot or Shaughnessy, it at least has a solid looking main street and some other buildings, like the hotel and residential buildings that are involved in some decent streetscapes. The core section of Seton isn't half bad, it reminds me of an urban university campus. Also the tie in to the LRT station is also far better than Crowfoot or Shaughnessy.

Some downsides of suburban development are still there as is the case with all suburban mixed use development, but Seton is a step ahead of the others.

 

[Beltline_B]

I tend to agree with what @Cowtown said. If people are expecting this to be like Inglewood or Sunnyside, it’s not going to be the same. For a suburban neighbourhood development, there are some things I like about it especially around the core of Seton. If the core area turns out anything like the video then it will be light years ahead of the current suburban development that we have.
I also agree with Cowtown‘s point about the LRT station, it looks like it’ll better integrated than any of the LRT stations I’ve seen in other suburban areas.
Could it be better? Yeah sure... most of what would need changing for improvement is the retail big box stores with the parking lots.

Not sure if anyone has seen this, but this is an updated video on what Seton should look like when complete. I like the looks of the Market Street, and living close by, I can confirm they have done a really good job with their digitization of currently completed buildings so I have hope that this is more of what the final product will be then what has been seen previously.

-Vimeo - RK Visualization

 

[maestro]

Call me one totally unimpressed by Seton so far. Big box and wide, lowrise slabs setback from the sidewalk. It's just has more multi-family planned than usual. Who cares.

 

[AJX]

Call me one totally unimpressed by Seton so far. Big box and wide, lowrise slabs setback from the sidewalk. It's just has more multi-family planned than usual. Who cares.

I'm not sure what you mean when you describe 'lowrise slabs set back from the sidewalk'. Almost all the residential they show in the video is close to the sidewalk. At times it looks like a video for The Bridges - same size and style of buildings and not much in the way of set backs.
Big box stores, yes. Lots of that, and I don't see any difference there from any of the other power centre places. Market Street is unlike anything in any of the other suburban developments. You probably don't like suburban developments in general, but for someone even half likes them, this is a notch up IMO.

 

[maestro]

I'm referring to the grass buffer between the sidewalk and the buildings.

It's how they have been hyping this project. You still have compartmentalized zoning. An Office park district surrounded by parking. Lowrise apartments in a park setting create another district. A big box boutique mall centered around a network of private roadways makes another. I'm supposed to be impressed by a short strip of actual mixed use, human scaled development? There's an overabundance of retail planned here. Good luck to that little strip. Everyone has been selling Seton as an urban alternative. It's not. This is the standard for suburbia in several major Canadian markets for the past 5 to 10 years. Putting it on a pedestal is not going to help the sprawlville stereotype.

 

[Silence&Motion]

What is so frustrating is that we know, in principle at least, exactly how to build good urbanism. You'd think that if we're going to allow the destruction a greenfield roughly the size of the beltline, we would make it count. And yet there's so little willpower in both the private and the public sector to stray from the status quo or to inconvenience cars in any way whatsoever.

Even if Market Street ends up looking exactly like the renderings, it will be a measly two blocks (400 meters) in a neighbourhood that's about 2 square-km (again, roughly the size of the beltline). Even worse, it's hemmed in by some incredibly anti-urban structures that look like they should be situated between an off-ramp and an airport, not on the main street of an "urban" community.

 

[Surrealplaces]

You're right, the principles to good urbanism are out there, but Calgary, and other cities can't seem to get on board when it comes to greenfield development and general planning. The Market street portion and parts of Seton resemble The Bridges in Bridgeland and how an inner city urban renewal project might be done......other parts resemble Crossiron Mills.

There are some things that Seton is doing that I like. Developing a denser core to the neighborhood with buildings of mixed use, and having an LRT station in the core of the neighborhood. There are things that are no different than other new subdivisions. The big box stores and the large parking lots. The un-rectifiable issue of the neighborhood being designed as a silo, with no way to connect to it surroundings except by car. That one issue plagues almost all greenfield development in North America.

It's ironic that the new neighborhoods have the density, but no inter-neighborhood connectivity and aren't part of an urban fabric, while the older 50's -60's mid-ring neighbourhoods have the lowest density, but have the continuous roads and inter-connectivity between the neighborhoods. I'm not an expert, but I'm of the opinion that there's more potential in trying to re-zone and change those mid ring neighborhoods, and work on TOD's around existing LRT stations than there is in trying to create an 'urban neighborhood' at the edge of the city.

 

[MichaelS]

What is so frustrating is that we know, in principles at least, exactly how to build good urbanism. You'd think that if we're going to allow the destruction a greenfield roughly the size of the beltline, we would make it count. And yet there's so little willpower in both the private and the public sector to stray from the status quo or to inconvenience cars in any way whatsoever.

Even if Market Street ends up looking exactly like the renderings, it will be a measly two blocks (400 meters) in a neighbourhood that's about 2 square-km (again, roughly the size of the beltline). Even worse, it's hemmed in by some incredibly anti-urban structures that look like they should be situated between an off-ramp and an airport, not on the main street of an "urban" community.

Added to the bold part, don't forget the end consumer.

 

[Habanero]

Added to the bold part, don't forget the end consumer.

I agree. This is a big part of it. People can complain about the new subdivisions and the need to change their design (and I'm not disagreeing), but right now they are designed in a such a way that it makes economic sense to the developer and the buyers. What could we do to re-design this to assuage the complaints?

Issue 1
A big box boutique mall centered around a network of private roadways makes another. This is a very tough issue to tackle, as it isn't feasible for retailers to do an urban format store at the edge of the city. They've tackled part of the issue with Market Street having some retail and street frontage.

Issue 2
The un-rectifiable issue of the neighborhood being designed as a silo, with no way to connect to it surroundings except by car. Another tough issue to deal with, it's an entire road network infrastructure problem and has nothing to do with the developer or even the buyer. It's an issue the city need to take a good look at.

Issue 3
I'm referring to the grass buffer between the sidewalk and the buildings. Is this really a big issue though? It's not being done on the buildings along

Issue 4
As with all of these "new urbanism" developments, they like to brand themselves as "urban" because it's stylish I can't disagree with you there. It's not ever to have the urbanism of an inner city neighborhood like Inglewood, Sunnyside, etc..

 

[Beazley66]

5th street underpass RFP was issued on Friday.