WHEN IT COMES TO URBAN EXCELLENCE, DIVERSITY BEATS DENSITY EVERY TIME
Montreal makes it clear what we lack in downtown Calgary, Richard White writes.
While Calgary’s downtown density looks similar to Montreal’s with hundreds of high-, mid- and low-rise buildings, the diversity of buildings is significantly different. In Montreal, especially near Ste-Catherine Street, every block has a good mix of office, retail, residential and hotel buildings.
OFFICE BUILDINGS KILL URBAN VITALITY
Calgary’s downtown is dominated by a 50-plus-block area from Centre Street to Eighth Street S.W. and from Ninth Avenue to Second Street S.W. that is almost exclusively office buildings. There are 135 of them, in fact. Some blocks have three or four office towers. Even in Montreal, the streets next to their major office complexes were dead on evenings and weekends.
It was only where hotels, residences and shops are located next to each other that you find urban vitality in the evenings and weekends. Montreal’s downtown benefits from having 75 hotels (including five five-stars) compared to Calgary’s 14 (with no five-star hotels).
In addition, unlike Montreal, almost all of Calgary’s urban residential buildings are on the periphery of the downtown core, each with its own pedestrian streets to eat, shop and hang out on evenings and weekends.
HUGE STUDENT POPULATION
Another huge difference is Montreal’s city centre being home to several major universities (Universite du Quebec, 66,000 students; Universite de Montreal, 55,000 students; Concordia University, 44,000 students; and McGill, 32,000 students). Montreal has more students than Calgary has office workers. Many of these students also live in and near the city centre, making it their place to live, learn and play — not necessarily in that order, and not just weekdays from
7 a.m. to 7 p.m. like office workers in Calgary. Montreal’s downtown cafes and shops are full of students all day, every day.
In comparison, Calgary’s city centre has just two postsecondary schools — Bow Valley College (14,000 students) and University of Calgary’s downtown building, which primarily offers non-credit general interest and professional development courses. Neither has a student residence, as most students leave the downtown to homes in the suburbs at the end of the day just like office workers.
TOURISTS LOVE DOWNTOWN MONTREAL
Montreal is also a tourist destination, with much of its tourism downtown-oriented. Its $9.2-billion tourism industry (nine million-plus visitors, 7.7 million hotel room nights) blows away Calgary’s $1.7-billion tourism industry (four million visitors, 3.1 million room nights). And, in the case of Calgary, most downtown tourists are weekday business travellers, or those en route to Banff — they are not here to shop and play in downtown.
Montreal’s Palais des congres convention centre was shortlisted in 2015 as the world’s best for hosting the most international events of any North American facility. It annually hosts more than 300 events, attracting more than 800,000 visitors.
Calgary’s Telus Convention Centre hosts only 41 events, attracting 250,000 visits of which only 50,000 are non-residents.
In addition, Montreal’s Ste-Catherine Street retains its longstanding reputation as a popular shopping street with locals and tourists, while Calgary’s Stephen Avenue is mostly an upscale restaurant row.
By nature, restaurants don’t generate the same street vitality as shops as they are used mostly at lunch and evening with patrons staying inside for longer periods of time. Shoppers, on the other hand, are frequently and continuously moving in and out of the stores, giving the street more vitality.
IMHO
Calgary’s downtown core has limited street vitality in the evenings and on weekends not because of the Plus-15 system (which is also empty), but because it is dominated by office buildings that are empty in the evening and weekends. Even on weekdays, street vitality is limited to noon hours as office workers are inside working, not out playing like tourists, students and residents.
Vibrant urban streets like those in Montreal are created by a healthy diversity of building uses — residential, hotel, office, post-secondary education, shopping, cultural and government.
If Calgary wants to foster more vitality in its downtown core, we need to focus less on the mega office towers and find ways to encourage more projects like the Le Germain building ( hotel, office, residential and restaurant at street level) or Telus Sky (office, residential and retail at street level).
SOMETHING TO THINK ABOUT?
Imagine, if instead of two office towers — Bankers Hall, TD Square, Eight Avenue Place, Western Canada Place — each had one condo and one office tower. How would the dynamics of Stephen Avenue change? Perhaps the un-built second towers at Brookfield Place and First Canadian Centre on Seventh Avenue should become either downtown’s next hotel or condo tower. Perhaps some of downtown’s vacant office space could be converted to a new post-secondary school for Calgary. Great cities have lots of universities and colleges.