[Regular_John]

I was ruminating on the density conversation a few months back when the residential speed limits were being voted on by city council.

The fact is, Calgary was built for cars. While we can’t start from scratch and undo that design, I do think we could get creative in how we layout our current mess of ‘Cookiegreen way/crescent/circle/drive/street/manor’ we see in much of the burbs.

Let’s consider Cranston/Auburn Bay/Seton, what if instead a mess of big box stores (with their giant parking lots) we split the businesses up into something closer to what we see in the Britannia Shopping Centre?

I’m not suggesting every neighbourhood can support a high end kitchen store or a Sunterra the way the inner city can, but we could be striving to make a a few walkable business within 1-2 km walk (note… walk, not as the bird flies) of every home.

What if every 2-3 suburban blocks had a walkable street between them?

Or if we mandated that a certain % of every neighbourhood be true “grid based” street designs?

And yes… for what I’m suggesting we may have to drop a few houses, and sacrifice some street parking to make these things happen. But I think we’ve taken the “miles and miles of roads” thing about as far as we can, before we start dropping apartment buildings into suburbia… let’s try making the current suburbs less pedestrian hostile.