![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jamesqI was thinking about high streets. Every town in the UK seems to have one, often named as such, and it's where the local shopping is done. Or rather, was done before the advent of modern shopping malls. Where are Calgary's high streets?
A few caveats:
It needs to be a place where shopping is done.
But not a strip mall (though it might contain a strip mall, provided that's not the majority of its length.
It should be at least two blocks in length, thus eliminating the local grocery store.
By definition, it must be a street and not a stroad, of which Calgary has many.
Right off the bat, that eliminates 16th Avenue North, and MacLeaod Trail.
In Downtown, 8th Avenue is the obvious High Street. Nearby, I'd argue that the Kensington shopping district, Inglewood, and Bridgeland all could be considered high streets for their area. Farther afield, "downtown" Bowness, and Marda Loop.
Some other candidates? 19th st. NW around Dairy Lane might be too small (people might go to a thing on 19th street, but they do not go to 19th street. Or at least, not the way people go to Kensington). The two juggernauts of 17th Avenue SW and 17th Avenue SE are both stroads.
Any other examples?
While doing two minutes of research, I found out that Calgary has both a Main Street and a High Street. They're both in manufactured neighbourhoods in the deep south, albeit not close to each other.
People in Calgary use the term "deep south" to mean neighbourhoods in, well, the deep south of the city. But what distinguishes deep south from plain old south? Is Heritage deep south? Southland? Anderson? The best description I've heard was "anything at or south of Fish Creek park, which passes the smell test. Is there an official definition, or does everyone in Calgary just have an understanding of what you mean, in much the same way people know "big green dragon" if correct and "green big dragon" is not?
At one point, Calgary was built off of a Cartesian grid, centered on Center Street and the Bow River. The four quadrants going out from there. This means that you need to tell people the quadrant, lest they go to the wrong way. This happened to me when my bike was on the fritz and I had to get Murray to pick me up. "10th Street and 5th Avenue" unfortunately sent him into downtown, because he missed the qualifier "north-west". A few observations:
The logical center of the city is therefore the midway point of the Centre Street bridge.
You can have parts of the city that are listed as being in one quadrant, but are actually on the wrong side of the line. Broadview Road NW is south of Riverfront Avenue SW. West Springs, Patterson Heights, and Coach Hill are all south-west neighbourhoods that are north of the logical centre avenue. In fact, there's a 9th Avenue SW in West Springs that lines up with 9th Avenue NW in Briar Hill, despite avenues running east/west.
Similarly, Beddington is both east of Centre street (making it a North-east neighbourhood), and west of the logical centre street. This is because the road veers west once you get north of 64th avenue. In the (deep) south there are similar issues, owing to there being a Centre Street in the south sometimes, but not always, with MacLeod trail (which wobbles a bit) also being the dividing line.
Does anyone else find this stuff fascinating?
A neat game you can play, if you know an address on the old grid (and not the newer neighbourhoods that tossed out the idea of streets and avenues in favour of boulevards, drives, ways, and crescents) is to see what the other three corresponding parts are.
For example, my parent's house was on the corner of 19th street and 42 avenue SW. In the SE, that spot is in the middle of a freeway loop (near the Road King). In the NE it's the Port-o-Call Inn. In the NW it's a parking lot on Nose Hill.
It's easier the closer to the center you are. A friend's house in Mount Pleasant corresponds to residential neighbourhoods of equal age, but differing class in Winston Heights, Ramsay, and Cliff Bungalow. Though gentrification in these four inner-city neighbourhoods are erasing the class differences of each and making them all bougie.
Finally, according to Google Maps, going clockwise around the ring road will take 64 minutes, and you'll travel 99.1 Km. Going counter-clockwise? 99.6 Km. Assuming a perfectly circular city, that suggests the inner and outer lanes are 80 meters apart.
A few caveats:
Right off the bat, that eliminates 16th Avenue North, and MacLeaod Trail.
In Downtown, 8th Avenue is the obvious High Street. Nearby, I'd argue that the Kensington shopping district, Inglewood, and Bridgeland all could be considered high streets for their area. Farther afield, "downtown" Bowness, and Marda Loop.
Some other candidates? 19th st. NW around Dairy Lane might be too small (people might go to a thing on 19th street, but they do not go to 19th street. Or at least, not the way people go to Kensington). The two juggernauts of 17th Avenue SW and 17th Avenue SE are both stroads.
Any other examples?
While doing two minutes of research, I found out that Calgary has both a Main Street and a High Street. They're both in manufactured neighbourhoods in the deep south, albeit not close to each other.
People in Calgary use the term "deep south" to mean neighbourhoods in, well, the deep south of the city. But what distinguishes deep south from plain old south? Is Heritage deep south? Southland? Anderson? The best description I've heard was "anything at or south of Fish Creek park, which passes the smell test. Is there an official definition, or does everyone in Calgary just have an understanding of what you mean, in much the same way people know "big green dragon" if correct and "green big dragon" is not?
At one point, Calgary was built off of a Cartesian grid, centered on Center Street and the Bow River. The four quadrants going out from there. This means that you need to tell people the quadrant, lest they go to the wrong way. This happened to me when my bike was on the fritz and I had to get Murray to pick me up. "10th Street and 5th Avenue" unfortunately sent him into downtown, because he missed the qualifier "north-west". A few observations:
The logical center of the city is therefore the midway point of the Centre Street bridge.
You can have parts of the city that are listed as being in one quadrant, but are actually on the wrong side of the line. Broadview Road NW is south of Riverfront Avenue SW. West Springs, Patterson Heights, and Coach Hill are all south-west neighbourhoods that are north of the logical centre avenue. In fact, there's a 9th Avenue SW in West Springs that lines up with 9th Avenue NW in Briar Hill, despite avenues running east/west.
Similarly, Beddington is both east of Centre street (making it a North-east neighbourhood), and west of the logical centre street. This is because the road veers west once you get north of 64th avenue. In the (deep) south there are similar issues, owing to there being a Centre Street in the south sometimes, but not always, with MacLeod trail (which wobbles a bit) also being the dividing line.
Does anyone else find this stuff fascinating?
A neat game you can play, if you know an address on the old grid (and not the newer neighbourhoods that tossed out the idea of streets and avenues in favour of boulevards, drives, ways, and crescents) is to see what the other three corresponding parts are.
For example, my parent's house was on the corner of 19th street and 42 avenue SW. In the SE, that spot is in the middle of a freeway loop (near the Road King). In the NE it's the Port-o-Call Inn. In the NW it's a parking lot on Nose Hill.
It's easier the closer to the center you are. A friend's house in Mount Pleasant corresponds to residential neighbourhoods of equal age, but differing class in Winston Heights, Ramsay, and Cliff Bungalow. Though gentrification in these four inner-city neighbourhoods are erasing the class differences of each and making them all bougie.
Finally, according to Google Maps, going clockwise around the ring road will take 64 minutes, and you'll travel 99.1 Km. Going counter-clockwise? 99.6 Km. Assuming a perfectly circular city, that suggests the inner and outer lanes are 80 meters apart.
