[pepper24]

Originally Posted by josh white

That situation is extremely rare in any Calgary subdivision - most streets have at minimum a sidewalk on one side of the street. Residential densities, housing mix and inclusion of commercial uses (although they're still in strip mall or big box form like in Tuscany) makes Calgary's subdivisions relatively well planned. Most areas of the city have or are slated to be served by LRT. There is also no leapfrog development in Calgary.

The thing I dislike about Suzuki's comments are, as is pointed out he needlessly singles our Calgary, when in Edmonton - why not point out that Edmonton's pidly transit system gets hardly any use, while Calgary's C-Train gets more ridership than Vancouver's Skytrain - despite serving only half the population!!!!!

Also Calgary's getting pretty agressive with intensification and sustainability initiatives:

Downtown growth - thousands of condo units and office space (calgary has the most concentrated - ie least sprawled employment pattern in North America

Transit oriented development projects like Bridges, Brentwood, Chinook, Anderson, Lions Park, Banff Trail.

Brownfield redevelopment like East village, Railton, Ramsay Exchange, Quarry Park

LRT expansions on WLRT, NWLRT, NELRT and in a few years the SE LRT

More dense suburbs like Garrison Woods and Mohogany, both of which are well over 10 upa (very high by any north american standard for a subdivision).

Some of the highest proportion of new LEED certified buildings anywhere.

Plan it Calgary initiative

The list goes on.

So while Calgary has had a history of sprawly, unsustainable development, arguably it is actually DOING more than most to turn it around. That should be acknowledged.

Calgary is catching up but still have years of backwards thinking to get ahead. Your points above are good examples of changing this trend.