Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
It's more accurate to say people in Calgary like the idea of having a house with a yard. In reality, those types of properties barely exist at all in this city. Go look at any random Calgary suburb of your choice on Google Maps satellite view and all you'll see is houses packed together to the minimum distance the building code allows with tiny "yards" that consist of a patch of grass that's barely larger than a typical home's living room. These yards don't even allow for an outdoor activity as quintessential as a father playing catch with his son.
I grew up in the suburbs, so I get the appeal for parents with young children. Here's my childhood neighbourhood in suburban New Brunswick. Homeowners had yards large enough where their kids could play tag and hide & seek and kick around a soccer ball and toss a frisbee or do any number of other outdoor activities. Many of the adults owned ride-on lawnmowers, and this was seen as completely justified given the amount of mowing required to maintain their yards.
Now contrast that with any random Calgary suburb, like this one for example:
What a blighted eyesore of a community. It's nothing but cookie-cutter houses packed tightly together in every direction. Anyone who lives in a neighbourhood like that is a prisoner in their community unless they have access to a vehicle. That's no way to live. I can't imagine what it's like for teenagers and pre-teens growing up in a place like that. When you're still too young to drive, what do you do for fun? Where do you go to hang out with your friends? It's just house after house after house as far as the eye can see. For decades we've allowed our city to be built for the purpose of maximizing profit for housing developers instead of prioritizing the quality of life for the people who actually live in those homes.
And it's not like every Calgarian wants this lifestyle. We've created economic incentives where this is pretty much the only possible housing choice for most families. I personally know no fewer than three different Calgary couples who wanted to stay living in high-density urban communities but had no choice but to move to the suburbs (with regret) after they had kids because there wasn't available/affordable housing stock in the inner city that is suitable for families with children. It's assumed that everyone who wants to live in a high-density urban area is either a childfree adult in their 20s or an older empty-nester, and every family with kids naturally wants to move to the suburbs. That simply isn't the case.
The fact that you can spend 20 minutes walking past nothing but houses is terrible urban planning. We've spent 60+ years building a city to be virtually 100% car-dependent for the vast majority of the population, then people complain about the taxes they have to pay to service this low-density suburban housing model, the most non-economical form of municipal design there is.
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I think this is a modern disconnect. Looking at your New Brunswick photo, all those houses look to be similar size to most inner city Calgary bungalows that cost the same as the new ones you posted of Calgary. They are perfectly fine for families, except that people decided they needed 2400 sq ft instead of 1000 sq ft. This is the choice they are making, but we all grew up in homes of that size, and it was fine. Now suddenly it isn't?