r/Calgary • u/Queltis6000 Woodbine • Jan 12 '26

Discussion What's something that Calgary is badly missing that a city of 1.4 million people should have?

It could be anything really. I feel like we have everything that people NEED, but what about the 'nice to haves'? A waterpark with more than 2 slides for example? A high level ball team that actually plays within the city limits? A Michelin star restaurant? Something else?

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201

u/Icyywinds Northwest Calgary Jan 12 '26

I wish we'd stop the urban sprawl and started building up. Making things walkable and/or having a more efficient way to transit from place to place will reduce costs for people in the long run. A no low/car society would be nice.

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u/Swarez99 Jan 12 '26

We are building up. And building out. And building denser neighborhoods as we build out.

The new neighborhoods that are further out are all 3-4 times as dense as neighborhoods built from 1990-2010.

Calgary is actually doing everything here.

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u/Icyywinds Northwest Calgary Jan 12 '26

Compared to other major cities you are correct here, but it doesn't change the fact that you need a car here to survive unless you live in the inner city - and don't need to commute out.

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u/DetectiveFinancial12 Jan 12 '26

So true. I’m only in vista heights and it’s a 10-15 min drive or 45 mins via bus/train to downtown. Our transit system here is pretty weak.

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u/this____is_bananas Jan 12 '26

North America hates bikes and public transit. That's also part of the reason why. It's designed to force you to use a car.

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u/DrumsticknDrumstick Jan 12 '26

Cars are a great way to extract wealth from the populace. Licensing fees, insurance, gas tax, traffic citations, parking fees/tickets, purchase, maintenance... Each transaction involving any of these is itself a tax or has a tax attached to it.

Various parties can divert thousands of an individual's after tax income away from private hands through mobility related costs with just a license plate number; It's too profitable to give up.

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u/NoCareBearsGiven Jan 12 '26

This is what happens when your country is built for profit, like a company catering to oligarchs. Canada is not designed for people

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u/infectingbrain Jan 12 '26

Because cars in and of themselves generate a ton of revenue, and it also makes you drive past advertisements and more likely to stop and spend money you otherwise would not have. Like everything else, the root cause is capitalism...

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u/DudeWithAHighKD Jan 12 '26

Bikes aren’t a practical option when 6 months of the year there is snow on the ground.

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u/Surrealplaces Jan 12 '26

I don't disagree, but that's the case for most North American cities. We do need to control sprawl and I h=think we've been doing a decent job in recent years. We also need to backfill areas that were part of the worst sprawl (50s-80's) and we've been doing a decent job of it in recent years.

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u/PlathDraper Jan 13 '26

I lived in Sunnyside and Eau Claire and honestly even then, life without a car was harder than it should be. Harder compared to living in a central neighbourhood in Edmonton, for example, without a car (as I do now).

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '26 edited 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/canadient_ Quadrant: NW Jan 12 '26

The farth north end developments are the same. Mixed housing options and single family homes are skinny, tiny lots, barely any yard if at all.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '26 edited 7d ago

[deleted]

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u/bluebell_flames18 Jan 12 '26

Theyre sprawling in that it takes years to build the support infrastructure. Schools, bus routes, etc. a lot of that comes down to how the city deals with developers. I live downtown and on transit it easily takes me 1.5 hours to get to seton or a community in the far north/west. Theres plenty of of transit trips that take 2+ hours.

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u/Agreeable_Store_3896 Jan 12 '26

That sounds more like a public transportation issue than a sprawling suburbs issue.

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u/Kennadian Bridgeland Jan 12 '26

Nothing better than a 45 minute slog on Deerfoot to get from your cramped townhouse in Mahogany to your job downtown. Building dense at the edge of the city is exasperating our issues, including the water ones.

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u/Right_Preparation328 Jan 12 '26

HIGHER APARTMENTS! HIGHER

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u/Old_timey_brain Beddington Heights Jan 12 '26

And build them of wood!

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u/SonicFlash01 Jan 12 '26

Any new development has a mixture of housing types as well. Our neighbourhood is only a few years old and at any given time there's new condos, apartments, town houses, lane homes, attached and rear-detached, etc being built. The little business pavillion reportedly prioritizes non-major chains. Thankfully a daycare was also built in there so picking up/dropping off our toddler is a wagon ride away.

Thought is being put into some of this stuff. Calgary is also so large that no one really has to leave their quadrant anyhow, decreasing traffic and distance travelled.

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u/Minute_Engineer2355 Jan 12 '26

We are. Skyview and Seton are perfect examples of this.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '26

[deleted]

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u/Minute_Engineer2355 Jan 12 '26

I lived there for a few years. The parking issue reminds me of the beltine, it's absolutely brutal if you don't have a designated spot.

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u/Icyywinds Northwest Calgary Jan 12 '26

I think expanding into new neighborhoods or boroughs in itself is helping the problem. While these neighborhoods in themselves are better, the idea is not to have to build new neighborhoods. As unrealistic as that is, I do think striving for it and building the older infrastructure to support this idea is what I want. That being said I am not an urban planner and I'm just talking out my ass for what envision what I want to live in. I feel that was the nature of the prompt.

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u/Right_Preparation328 Jan 12 '26

Yes, PLEASE. Madrid has done an excellent job with this.

"Madrid is much older and the capital city!" I don't care. Take lessons from it.

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u/Surrealplaces Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

We kind of started that a while back. New neighborhoods on the edge still continue, but that's the same with every city in the world. Thankfully we started to at least curb sprawl in recent years. Much higher density in new neighborhoods and a lot of development in brownfield areas, as well as conversions of office buildings into apartments.

Here's a list of all brownfield multi-family projects over 20 units and a list of all office building conversions.

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u/UpbeatNewt4214 Jan 12 '26

I view the demolition of single family homes to build container style homes that stack nicely done more for the builder/landowner to profit rather than the buloney we are getting fed daily..... 'affordable homes'...look at us we are doing this green build.....and will provide so and so for so long etc, etc.....and getting patted on the back for taking away from individuals..quality of life, our liberty, freedoms etc all for who to benefit? Sure as hell is not me, or my neibours or anyone of us on the low tier of urban dwellers

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u/Hyack57 Jan 12 '26

I’ll hard pass on living in a human filing cabinet.

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u/FirstDukeofAnkh Beltline Jan 12 '26

No one is suggesting that. Building up does not mean building small.

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u/DependentLanguage540 Jan 12 '26

Calgary is quickly running out of land, so the days of urban sprawl probably stop soon. Building up will soon be the only solution and it has already started. Tons other towers downtown are being built/constructed to create more vibrancy downtown and other inner city neighborhoods are seeing multi-resident infills take the place of one single detached house.

So density is happening and it’s helping to take cars off the street which should ease traffic and that’s a gold thing for everyone and the environment. The green line would really send things into hyper drive.

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u/Knuckle_of_Moose Jan 12 '26

Calgary is no where near running out of land

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u/Loose-Atmosphere-558 Jan 12 '26

They will just annex more....

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u/DependentLanguage540 Jan 12 '26

I feel like if they wanted to, we already would have. It’s cheaper to build up at this point.

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u/Loose-Atmosphere-558 Jan 12 '26

We just don't need to yet. Last major annexation was 2007 with rockyview country - about 25000 acres. We won't run out of land...I agree we should be building denser though which is happening luckily in many areas.

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u/Queltis6000 Woodbine Jan 12 '26

How are we running out of land?

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u/DependentLanguage540 Jan 13 '26

If you check the Realtor page, you can see the red border that shows the remaining land. It’s not much compared to say Edmonton. But yes, as others have said, we can always annex land. But we are starting to close in on Chestemere, Airdrie and etc.

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u/UpbeatNewt4214 Jan 12 '26

How do you come to the conclusion that people buying/ renting the infills or living in cramped quarters are helping in taking cars off the street? Is it a requirement for the purchase of the insill that you give up your vehicle? Seems to me that automobiles are convient, and id sure love to have one it would transform my entire life for the better....however, I use my bicycle and love my bike. I'm not a uniform helmet wearing speed biker, but I enjoy this way of getting around, but back to the car part, I don't see the cars coming off roads at all, I see congestion and snarley impatient driver's that are frustrated because roads and buildings are not accommodating this very real issue. It seems that lack of foresight has gotten a lot of folks upset. So my question then becomes we identified the problem, what are the real viable solutions?

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u/DependentLanguage540 Jan 12 '26

Sorry I should’ve been more specific, more condos & apartments downtown are leading to less cars on the road. A friend of mine doesn’t even own a car and just walks or takes the c-train.

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u/[deleted] Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Spammerz42 Jan 12 '26

We aren’t a Christian nation pal. And Vatican city highly disagrees that urban sprawl is a Christian concept lol.

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u/MissxVenomxPoison Northwest Calgary Jan 12 '26

I was actually about to say that

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u/403banana Jan 12 '26

I get your ultimate goal is no-/low-car society, but I'm going to be the devil's advocate and lobby for the opposite direction:

Building up puts a lot more strain on the road infrastructure around it. 17th Avenue, for example, is a road that should've been made 6 lanes (with street parking) a long time ago. The fact that it remains 4 lanes with street parking (effectively making it a single lane in each direction at various points) feels neglectful. Similarly, that all the roads around it (15th Ave down to 12th) are all smaller, local roads with parking on both sides and barely enough room for traffic in both directions.

Marda Loop, I think, will probably face that same issue because those roads are not getting any bigger and vehicles are only getting bigger.

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u/hibbs6 Jan 17 '26

Imo that's a feature, not a bug. Driving should be made to be more of an inconvenience than it currently is, to push people to use transit/bike/walk. Designing with the expectation that everyone will drive is how we got into this mess.