The Core downtown is a wonderful place. It doesn't feel like a mall. More like and indoor Steven Ave. It is so bright and open that you don't get that dungeon feel. Even at lunch hour when it is packed it doesn't feel full of people.
I associate Mission, Kensingten and 17th as part of downtown. If you think of downtown vancouver it is a bunch of different districts connected by tall buildings. Yaletown, Gastown etc. The thing is in Calgary we started with a larger "downtown" footprint and our smaller population hasn't yet reached the point where there has been demand to infill it. We also didn't do a good job of mixing residential with commercial.
We also always compare calgary with Toronto, Vancouver, Seattle. All places with significantly greater pop. For a city of a million our downtown is pretty good. Compare it with Edmonton, Salt Lake City, and Winnipeg and we are by far the best. The problem is we always compare up.
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