SkyscraperPage Forum - Urban vs Suburban - 2 styles enter, one style leaves!

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My wife doesn't even bother to sell real estate down there anymore, it's just not worth her trouble.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 240glt (Post 8439869)

We had some issues at my old condo way in the Beltline back in the early 2000's .. 15th Ave & 10th Street, mostly petty stuff like people sleeping in the laundry room or pooping in the stairwells. We had someone set up a little fort on the roof access interior landing once and from the looks of things they were there for a while.. needed to call in a remediation company to clean it up, it was pretty bad. We had the odd needle scattered around the property but nothing too serious. The biggest issue was being so close to 17th so we had a pretty steady stream of people peeing and puking behind the building. I just chalked it up to living in the center of the city but still pretty unpleasant.

Here in downtown Edmonton it's much, much worse. It's absolutely disgusting.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 240glt (Post 8439869)

... people sleeping in the laundry room or pooping in the stairwells. We had someone set up a little fort on the roof access interior landing once and from the looks of things they were there for a while.. needed to call in a remediation company to clean it up, it was pretty bad. We had the odd needle scattered around the property but nothing too serious. The biggest issue was being so close to 17th so we had a pretty steady stream of people peeing and puking behind the building.

That's basically status quo from what we found on various on-line reports. The most amazing thing to me is, some people living within such contexts and still denying that it exists, while knocking other parts of the city. :shrug:

Honestly a person would have to be crazy or stupid or all of the above to want to live downtown or in the Beltline area. I live in the allegedly boring burbs, but I live a good happy life, and in fact that's where I got my username from. I let me kids play in the neighborhood and I don't have to worry about them stepping on needles, or stepping in puke, or having to see some homeless idiot taking a leak in the middle of public. I would never let them go off more than 10' away in the Beltline. Hell, I wouldn't let my pet buzzard roam the Beltline.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suburbia (Post 8440564)

In spite of the issues I did enjoy living down there at the time though. I was in my mid 20's and it was a great place for a young person to be. I should have held onto that condo, it would have been a great city place to have as we're planning on moving to a much smaller town in the BC Kootenays in 5-6 years.

Here in Edmonton we had a condo in the downtown and a house on the periphery of downtown and while we enjoyed both those places they both had a lot of issues. The condo in McKay had a LOT of riff raff around and the inner city house was close to a fairly notorious strip. We've since moved across the river from downtown into a mature suburb and love it. easy access to work and amenities without having to deal with the BS of living downtown. being in our mid 40's now we value different things, like having no shared walls, a nice back yard, a garage and room for our dogs. I do consider Calgary's downtown far, far nicer than Edmonton's though, I wouldn't necessarily have a problem moving back to the center of that city.

Quote:

Originally Posted by 240glt (Post 8441271)

Here in Edmonton we had a condo in the downtown and a house on the periphery of downtown and while we enjoyed both those places they both had a lot of issues. The condo in McKay had a LOT of riff raff around and the inner city house was close to a fairly notorious strip. We've since moved across the river from downtown into a mature suburb and love it. easy access to work and amenities without having to deal with the BS of living downtown. being in our mid 40's now we value different things, like having no shared walls, a nice back yard, a garage and room for our dogs.

You've highlighted an important foundational point here that I think some have tried to reinforce in the past but others choose to ignore. That point is, it depends on where you are in life, and if you have a family with young children. The Beltline in Calgary, and some areas in Edmonton, are not ideal for families with young children, and while they do exist in those contexts', they are relatively few and far between.

Continuing on the above train of thought, while built environment and access to services for the aged seem to map closely to single life, reality is, the social contexts required are different, and as our population continues to age, I wonder what will result for the older extreme of society. It doesn't make sense to isolate, rather keeping within proximity to family is likely important. If they are alone, while it may seem putting them right in the central mix makes sense, they actually become hermits within their buildings, and do not engage with the outside world. Those restaurants and services become marketing, but the actual access is not there because of the other things happening down at surface level.

The tag line of the year lol. :haha::cheers:

Quote:

Originally Posted by thegoodlife (Post 8440973)

Honestly a person would have to be crazy or stupid or all of the above to want to live downtown or in the Beltline area. I live in the allegedly boring burbs, but I live a good happy life, and in fact that's where I got my username from. I let me kids play in the neighborhood and I don't have to worry about them stepping on needles, or stepping in puke, or having to see some homeless idiot taking a leak in the middle of public. I would never let them go off more than 10' away in the Beltline. Hell, I wouldn't let my pet buzzard roam the Beltline.

Exactly. People can live in the Beltline for a few years when they're younger, but everyone grows up at some point, and then you see things more clearly. People who aspire to live in the Beltline are young people with no roots and no plans, and they want to spend all their time in the bar and all their money draining it into the urinals. They wake up when day and realize they need to grow up and it's time to seriously look at other parts of the city.

Quote:

Originally Posted by suburbia (Post 8441336)

You've highlighted an important foundational point here that I think some have tried to reinforce in the past but others choose to ignore. That point is, it depends on where you are in life, and if you have a family with young children. The Beltline in Calgary, and some areas in Edmonton, are not ideal for families with young children, and while they do exist in those contexts', they are relatively few and far between.

Continuing on the above train of thought, while built environment and access to services for the aged seem to map closely to single life, reality is, the social contexts required are different, and as our population continues to age, I wonder what will result for the older extreme of society. It doesn't make sense to isolate, rather keeping within proximity to family is likely important. If they are alone, while it may see putting them right in the central mix makes sense, they actually become hermits within their buildings, and do not engage with the outside world. Those restaurants and services become marketing, but the actual access is not there because of the other things happening down at surface level.

It's a fine line between crazy and stupid, so I'd say all of the above.

Quote:

Originally Posted by thegoodlife (Post 8440973)

I know that many people have talked about great diversity of food being available in the core / Beltline, however, my experience has been that while the centre of the city indeed has a good diversity and density of places, what it doesn't have is the smaller mom and pop places (which are better priced, and often have the best food). Those types of places couldn't get off the ground in the core, because it is of course expensive to have a place there.

Further, when I searched some of the food advisor web-sites, I found that some of my favourite ultra small mom and pop shops out in the burbs were not even listed. It got me thinking that many of the people who put reviews on trip advisor or zoomato (or whatever it is called) are not the types who go to off the beaten path mom and pop shops, and rather are the hip smart phone attached with glue types, and possibly tourists also.

Just putting that out there.

This is where the urban style taps out, and retires for good. I won't say much, as a picture is worth a 1000 words.

Ladies and Gentlemen, The Belltine, or possibly some ghetto in a large American city...hard to tell the difference.

Camden New Jersey?
https://i.imgur.com/JFPzhD4.jpg

South Bronx or the Beltline?
https://i.imgur.com/mV5R5Tm.jpg

Chicago Housing project area or the Beltline?
https://i.imgur.com/lpJMLzA.jpg

East LA?
https://i.imgur.com/E4m0lAZ.jpg

Calcutta?
https://i.imgur.com/rCOIfzm.jpg

Haiti or maybe 10th ave SW?
https://i.imgur.com/aNRqpjV.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/EkNvIyN.jpg
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Ladies and Gentlemen, Aspen Woods
https://res.cloudinary.com/pxpv2/ima...t%3D1543683399
https://assets.site-static.com/userF...eal_Estate.jpg
https://s3.amazonaws.com/mrp-listing...c5ce09be3.jpeg

Latest media article by a Beltline resident

https://calgarysun.com/opinion/colum...s-meth-madness

Quote:

Build it and they will come.

But when many of those coming go under the heading of scumbag we have ourselves a problem.
<>
many people see the area [] as not safe for them, crawling with criminals, a real pain in the butt and sometimes downright scary.
<>
We do not want to become the city’s toilet.

We see the drug dealers, the needles, the addicts sticking themselves with those needles.

We get hassled by the sketchy characters. The local barber tells about how he can’t open his back door because a group of druggies keep leaning up against it, shooting up.
<>
There’s the 276% increase in drug-related calls for service [] compared to the three-year average.

There’s the 63% increase in vehicle crime.

There’s the 47% increase in violence. Assault with a weapon, persons robbed, common assault, assault of a peace officer. You know, the regular stuff you see when you take your chihuahua out for a walk.

And there’s the 45% increase in break and enters.

From the construction thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Chinook Arch (Post 8472634)

- Accessibility to Downtown
- Spend More Time Living Instead of Commuting
- Easy Access to Transit
- Property Appreciation

https://bestcalgaryhomes.com/10-bene...ity-lifestyle/
#1 – Accessibility to Downtown
#2 – Amenities, Everywhere
#3 – Entertainment
#4 – Potential Appreciation
#5 – Recreation and Leisure
#6 – More Time
#7 – Save Money
#8 – Diversity
#9 – Population Density
#10 – Mature, Lush Vegetation

Here's a really good read
https://www.theguardian.com/society/...le-study-finds

Inner-city living makes for healthier, happier people, study finds

Residents of higher-density areas are more active, more socially engaged – and less obese – than people who live in the sprawl of suburbia

Woman charge for throwing chairs and other items from Toronto urban condo tower:
https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/toront...pect-1.4294887

• Video Link

A bit of a bump as I can not remember this news article ever being discussed in this forum and it is quite relevant to the whole urban vs suburban discussion. If anything, I find the news article from 2016 sort of entertaining because I still see urban sprawl happening despite the news article's title "Calgary vs the car: the city that declared war on the car."

Link to news article, content quoted below.

Quote:

On 14 June 2016, as it does once a month, the entire Calgary city council – including mayor Naheed Nenshi – spent nearly the whole day reviewing individual applications for “secondary suites”. If it sounds like a tedious grind, that’s because it is. Secondary suites are minor house alterations – for example, converting a basement into a separate rental unit. The council debates and votes on each one, one by one. It can be a rancorous process, and it’s inevitably far too microscopic in scaleto occupy so much of the time of council of a city of more than a million people.

But Calgary is no ordinary city. As the corporate home of Canada’s oil and gas industry, it has long been particularly friendly to the car. Secondary suites, however, present a challenge to the automobile’s supremacy: they increase housing density, and ease the push to expand ever further into the suburbs.

So when Nenshi came into office in 2010 on a progressive pledge to fight urban sprawl and bring in city-wide secondary suite legislation, a fight was indeed what he found. Twice, city councillors representing the suburban wards have voted down his secondary suite proposal. And so the interminable monthly approval discussions drone on – a routine reminder that Calgary still has a long way to go in its transformation from a city of expansive suburbs and broad, multi-lane expressways into the denser, more emphatically urban place so powerfully symbolised by Nenshi’s ascent to mayor.

Calgary’s battle against sprawl is duplicated in one way or another in every Canadian city. Blessed with abundant space and cheap fuel, the country’s cities grew mostly outwards instead of upwards as they prospered in the decades after the second world war. The aspirational Canadian lifestyle that emerged in those years was a wholly suburban one – a detached home surrounded by a tidy putting-green lawn on a wide curving avenue, with two cars in the garage to drive down fast-moving freeways to work, school and the mall.

Every Canadian city now wrestles with the outsized cost of providing access to those increasingly distant suburbs. Freeways grow ever-more clogged with traffic, and infrastructure bends and cracks under the strain. In Toronto, a pitched battle has been fought over the future of an elevated waterfront highway, leading to a compromise that pleases almost no one. The city council in nearby Hamilton spent the spring arguing whether or not to accept C$1bn (£600m) in funding from the provincial government for light-rail transit (LRT). Last summer, voters in proudly green Vancouver rejected a proposed tax aimed at expanding the region’s transit system. The progressive new federal government led by Justin Trudeau has promised to invest in urban infrastructure with a zeal not seen in decades, but it seems no Canadian city has quite settled on what’s needed to combat the sprawl that so vexes them.

The battle can seem particularly pitched – and urgent – in Calgary. Its traditional image in the collective Canadian consciousness is as a swaggering city of oil riches, outsized cowboy hats and extra-large pickup trucks. It occupies wide, flat prairie, meaning a visitor landing at the airport sees the full extent of the city’s sprawl as nowhere else. (Few visitors to beautiful, densely built downtown Vancouver see much of sprawling suburban enclaves like Maple Ridge and Port Coquitlam, hidden behind picturesque mountains.) And now there is the collapse in global oil prices, a direct threat to the engine of Calgary’s explosive growth.

For all these reasons, Nenshi has come to occupy a larger patch of the nation’s political landscape than might be expected for the mayor of its fourth-largest city. If Calgary can beat back urban sprawl – so the line of thinking goes – surely any city can. This outsized spotlight has shone on Nenshi since the day he was elected. How had those yahoos in Calgary – “a frigid Dallas”, as the New Republic’s Jeet Heer put it, home to a mammoth rodeo, and the corporate capital of Canada’s oil and gas business – somehow managed to elect the western world’s only Muslim mayor? The election five years later of a leftwing provincial government – now the only legislature in Canada controlled by the New Democratic Party – has amplified the sense of surprise.

Nenshi’s 2010 election victory was a shock to many of us who knew him – not because he was a Muslim, but because he was an outsider who wrested victory from hand-picked candidates of the city’s elite. And what really excited us about his victory was not that he was a progressive new face for the city, but that he was a genuine, unabashed policy wonk.

His appetite for wading into the trenches of municipal legislation has made Calgary a surprising pacesetter in Canada’s battle against sprawl. A year ago this month, the city created a downtown network of separated cycle tracks. The three-mile system is a poor cousin of Copenhagen’s or Amsterdam’s, and not yet equal to Montreal’s, but it’s as significant a commitment to cycling as in any other Canadian city – and it was the product of a vicious political battle that went Nenshi’s way. While the leftwing provincial government commits to completing the city’s ring road (at astronomical costs), Nenshi pushes forward with pragmatic centrist plans for new LRT and Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) lines. The battle over the latter has grown so divisive that the mayor had to suspend public meetings to protect city staff from abuse. But Nenshi shows no sign of being averse to a fight. Rather the opposite: in 2013 he was sued for comparing a prominent homebuilder to The Godfather.

Inner-city neighbourhoods, meanwhile, are densifying at a rate not seen in decades. And if too much of the city’s new housing is still built on curvilinear suburban streets at the city’s rim, the centre of gravity has shifted substantially away from business as usual.

Earlier this year, Nenshi did his best to anchor that shift with the weight of law. Declaring he was going to end the “sprawl subsidy”, Nenshi pushed city council to change its “off-site levy bylaw”. Previously, developers of new subdivisions in Calgary had always been required to pay for the roads, street lights and sewers. But city taxpayers were on the hook for the cost of upgrades and expansions of existing infrastructure, such as a new off-ramp on the freeway or the upgrading of sewers to meet the greater demand. For decades, the city had quietly subsidised growth at its perimeter this way, to the tune of tens of millions of dollars.

There was no acrimonious public debate about the off-site levy changes, no grandstanding about ending sprawl. Instead, Nenshi quietly built support among city councillors, officials and developers over many months. The new bylaw was passed with little fanfare. Nenshi himself, however, has described it as “one of the most important decisions of our term”. It’s only a small step away from the wasteful, energy-intensive status quo, but taken together with everything else Calgary is doing, it’s a substantial leap for a city whose name was long seen as a synonym for sprawl.

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