The Great Canadian Sprawl Thread!

[SkahHigh]

Originally Posted by 333609543

I would say some of New York City's closer suburbs are quite dense, no? Maybe at the magnitude of Mississauga or less likely Brampton? I found them to be quite dense considering they are suburbs.

Yes, but they're much older. First come to mind cities like Jersey City, Newark, Trenton, Elizabeth, etc

[333609543]

What I'm saying is that Canadian suburbs are much more dense and less sprawled and widespread as their American counterparts. You will see much development within Canadian suburbs that are considerably more dense ex. Metrotown, Laval, and more recently the York region.

[ssiguy]

Funny how families have gotten so much smaller over the years but the houses have gotten so much larger.

[le calmar]

Laval is all but dense, it didn't even have a downtown until now. They are now building what will be probably considered "downtown Laval" around the Montmorency Metro station. Laval's tallest will be built there soon and the density in the area is starting to be interesting, but otherwise the rest of the city is not dense at all with almost all the highrises scattered along riviere des prairies.

[LeTravailleur]

Some Laval's neighborhoods are quite dense, such as Pont-Viau and Laval-des-Rapides (about 5000 ppl/km^2 I think), while a big part of the island consists of farmland or industrial sprawl along highways (especially the 440).

[TownGuy]

Some new Cobourg sprawl that I think is quite alright.


New Amherst July 27 2010 085 by New Amherst, on Flickr


New Amherst July 27 2010 105 by New Amherst, on Flickr


New Amherst July 27 2010 007 by New Amherst, on Flickr


New Amherst July 27 2010 113 by New Amherst, on Flickr



New Amherst - On the Boulevard - Bistro View by New Amherst, on Flickr

[1overcosc]

The trend towards better suburbs, which has arrived in full force in the GTA and is starting to make a dent in Ottawa, hasn't really reached Kingston.

This is our newest suburban area, so new it doesn't even have transit service yet. (Coming in May). https://www.google.ca/maps/@44.26508...BFeA!2e0?hl=en

In terms of ugly suburban landscapes, I'd say John Counter Boulevard is the worst spot in the city:
https://www.google.ca/maps/@44.25949...TjnQ!2e0?hl=en

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by TownGuy

Some new Cobourg sprawl that I think is quite alright.

img]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1350/5107697258_6c7afda690_z.jpg[/img]
New Amherst July 27 2010 085 by New Amherst, on Flickr

img]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1202/5107541992_c42c181640_z.jpg[/img]
New Amherst July 27 2010 105 by New Amherst, on Flickr

img]https://farm5.staticflickr.com/4110/5107519216_aa7cd5df77_z.jpg[/img]
New Amherst July 27 2010 007 by New Amherst, on Flickr

img]https://farm2.staticflickr.com/1378/5107547696_7c34e95c60_z.jpg[/img]
New Amherst July 27 2010 113 by New Amherst, on Flickr


img]https://farm6.staticflickr.com/5287/5382520186_2ba80ec72d_z.jpg[/img]
New Amherst - On the Boulevard - Bistro View by New Amherst, on Flickr

That looks way better than the inexcusable dross being put up in Calgary. Partly because of the greenery, which isn't something we can do much about, but I wish brick was used at least some of the time here. Vinyl siding and maybe stucco predominates in Calgary, and our suburbs look horrendous for it.

[Calgarian]

Yeah it doesn't help when people pave over their lawn either lol.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by milomilo

That looks way better than the inexcusable dross being put up in Calgary. Partly because of the greenery, which isn't something we can do much about, but I wish brick was used at least some of the time here. Vinyl siding and maybe stucco predominates in Calgary, and our suburbs look horrendous for it.

Ahhh my eyes!!!!!

stucco is yucko and siding is chiding. Nothing is worse than the unidriveway. Poot poot.

[le calmar]

A zoning bylaw in Laval forbid this. Recently a promoter came up with something similar and was forced to remove the paving and replace it with grass.

[SHOFEAR]

Originally Posted by milomilo

That looks way better than the inexcusable dross being put up in Calgary. Partly because of the greenery, which isn't something we can do much about, but I wish brick was used at least some of the time here. Vinyl siding and maybe stucco predominates in Calgary, and our suburbs look horrendous for it.

This confuses me. Isn't the main concern the anti sprawl lobby has is the density of sprawl? That stuff in Coburg, while very attractive, appears to have a density that is a fraction of the typically Calgary/Edmonton sprawl.

If your concern is land use....who gives a shit what it looks like....you don't live there? Seems like the majority on here will find any reason to bitch about sprawl and move the goal posts to fit their anti sprawl rhetoric.

[niwell]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

This confuses me. Isn't the main concern the anti sprawl lobby has is the density of sprawl? That stuff in Coburg, while very attractive, appears to have a density that is a fraction of the typically Calgary/Edmonton sprawl.

If your concern is land use....who gives a shit what it looks like? Seems like the majority on here will find any reason to bitch about sprawl and move the goal posts to fit their anti sprawl rhetoric.

Anti-sprawl lobby?? Well this is a loaded post. But no, density is only one aspect considered in greenfield development. Land use goes beyond density and does in fact capture other factors. Even developers seem to get that now (or at least are happy to work with it).

FYI Cobourg is still within the Places to Grow plan area and has to meet minimum density targets. The overall density of that new development is probably higher than you think, in the 40-50 persons per hectare. The setbacks are designed to fool you into thinking it's less dense than it is it seems:

http://goo.gl/maps/sgIES

[milomilo]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

This confuses me. Isn't the main concern the anti sprawl lobby has is the density of sprawl? That stuff in Coburg, while very attractive, appears to have a density that is a fraction of the typically Calgary/Edmonton sprawl.

If your concern is land use....who gives a shit what it looks like....you don't live there? Seems like the majority on here will find any reason to bitch about sprawl and move the goal posts to fit their anti sprawl rhetoric.

You raise a good point. Much of the newer sprawl is of fairly decent density - this isn't surprising as it makes economic sense for developers to cram as many people as possible into their subdivisions.

My biggest issues are the ugliness and the layout of the road networks which are not conducive to transit. The latter the city can do something about (though most of the city is now a lost cause), but I don't know how they would fix the former.

We also have to battle the fact that people actually want to live in these hellholes!

[Daveography]

Originally Posted by SHOFEAR

This confuses me. Isn't the main concern the anti sprawl lobby has is the density of sprawl?

Not entirely, no. Just building houses closer together and building apartment and condo complexes in the middle of neighbourhoods without any nearby amenities doesn't solve any issues with spawl. It just increases dependency on personal vehicles which in turn increases demand for more and larger parking lots at the car-centric commercial areas that are supposed to serve these neighbourhoods.

What you end up with is the same or more amount of land given over to vehicle-dependency and nothing any more walkable, sustainable, or even any more attractive than the sprawl that came before it.

[Drybrain]

OKay, some more Calgary, from my trip home for the holidays. This is all brand-new, and you can multiply it by thousands of houses and dozenséhundreds of new streets, every year, ringing the city in its totality.











It's just this endless landscape of grey and beige all around the edge of the city. If the city has a housing bust due to the oil-and-gas slowdown, that's a very, very good thing, to my mind. The city needs some much smarter planning. Every city has ugly suburbs, but Calgary's are completely coming to dominate the built form in every direction outside of downtown and a handful of inner neighbourhoods. And the density isn't even that low--the lots are usually smallish, and interspersed with mid-rises and occasional highrises. But the road networks, with their 500-metre blocks and massive thoroughfares lined with noise barriers and loops and cul-de-sacs, are still entirely designed around cars. Walking is almost impossible.

[WhipperSnapper]

A walkable, urban neighbourhood can be achieved with most of the land use taking up by single family homes with more generous setbacks the what we are seeing in suburbs today. The bigger issue is the design of commerical areas and multi-family that should be built to higher density but, usually aren't due to the majority of the lot coverage being for surface parking. Fix those and our existing suburbs will take on a drastically different character. Of course, future suburbs should follow some sort of modified street grid and lanes. Nothing more homey than neighbourhood kids playing in the street while parents watch over from their porches. Not sure when backyards role changed from being a utility space (garden, waste dump, storage) to being a play pen.

[niwell]

The one nicer new area in Calgary I went through a few times was the collection of new neighbourhoods west of 69th street - Aspen Woods etc. Not perfect, but certainly better than the average subdivision and a decent amount of commercial interspersed, even though none of this is new urbanist. The commercial development at Aspen Landing is actually quite nice too, as far as these things go. There are a number of reasons for this I think:

-Land assembly. Land ownership in the area was always fragmented with lots of acreages and such. When it came time to develop you couldn't assemble massive tracts and throw everything up at once. As a result the development seems more varied and interesting.
-Existing road networks. The major streets (17th ave, 85th st, 69th st etc.) form a relative grid, and had enough existing minor accesses that they weren't suitable for the "mini-expressways with lights) that form up much of Calgary's arterial streets. Bow trail will take this form but that's only one of the arterials.
-Topography. It's hilly and visually interesting.
-Wealth. It's wealthy, people who are rich generally demand higher quality design.

There are still issues of course, and it's far from being walkable in any form, but as far as new developments on the fringe go it's not too bad. Incidentally probably less dense than the examples Drybrain posted, for the reasons I listed.

A big thing Calgary needs to be less afraid of, and what the area above also lacks, is major development fronting arterials. There are plenty of limited access suburban roads in Calgary, no need to keep every development insular by avoiding access onto every single major street.

[SkahHigh]

The burbs are just generally depressing...

[GreaterMontréal]

Originally Posted by SkahHigh

The burbs are just generally depressing...

oui et non, moi ça me prend ma voiture, conduire fait partie des 3 choses que j'aime faire le plus. Donc oui il faut des banlieues, mais non la vie ne tourne pas autour des banlieues. Les house party, la vie de petites villes avec des feux dans les pit de sables, etc la vie ne se résume pas à la grosse ville.