The striking part of the linked story is they didn't ask anyone why they don't want to live there, or why they moved away, etc. Just "tax rates always go up and after redevelopment rents will go up even more and I have no idea why nobody is here".
Maybe they have a severe crime problem, or the commute is unbearable, or there's no public transit, or the city council makes bars close at 8pm so young adults can't party. There's plenty of examples from other cities of how to kill a downtown, I'm just curious what Calgary did specifically. Every city in the world has tax problems and redevelopers pushing rents upward. Whats special about Calgary is ... (maybe answer is 'nothing' which is itself the problem?)
Everything shuts down at 5pm and people move back to the suburbs after work. It's fairly dead downtown after rush hour. Finding a coffee shop open at 8 or 9pm? Very few of them.
Art isn't a priority here. Public art installations are ridiculed as a waste of money (though some are accepted over time). Museums and galleries here are minimal.
Music is sterile and many groups skip playing in Alberta. It has gotten better, but Alberta had a reputation for chasing away "immoral" acts in the 90s and 2000s.
Politics are toxic. The current government was elected under a cloud of electoral fraud, does not play well with the opposition and is laser-focused on oil and gas.
Alberta is designed for cars and public transit is a bolt-on, expensive afterthought. This isn't unique to Alberta but it doesn't help. We do have a growing set of bike lanes and support for that has surprised me pleasantly.
Alberta is rich from oil money and if you're in that club, life is good. If not, you're not important to the conversation.
I was lucky to spend a lot of time travelling to the Bay Area, Seattle and other places to see what culture a town could bring beyond "being close to the mountains". I really wish this place would focus on it, but at times it feels like the province is allergic and negatively responds to having any sort of culture.
Being downtown even in the afternoon when there are people there is horrible. There is so much traffic and noise that you don't want to even bother exploring or checking things out.
I avoid downtown.
> I really wish this place would focus on it, but at times it feels like the province is allergic and negatively responds to having any sort of culture.
"culture' doesn't fill your campaign coffers and provide 'incentives' to local politicians.
If you avoid downtown and like suburbs it's a nice city.
Calgary used to have one of the highest concentrations of head offices in Canada. The tax rates here were minimal.
I had some friends who did presentation and multimedia development for those companies who were suggesting I move here in the early 2000s since they were swamped with work.
Tax rates fell in other provinces and those head offices relocated to take advantage of the new rates as they tend to do.
People want to blame the oil prices and covid but there was a shift in head offices out of Calgary well before either event.
The main driver was that other provinces beat Alberta to the 'race to the bottom' in terms of tax rates.
It is an indicator that development priorities are ass-backwards. We try to attract big corporations thinking they will bring jobs instead of making cities liveable and attracting or building smaller businesses that will actually stay and help keep the city and the province economically feasible.
You can get a bit creative with this too: e.g. dedicate some floors of the new apartment skyscraper as co-working spaces, and try to plan it so that everyone who rents in the building can use the co-working spaces for "free" as part of their rent and still have some leftover capacity to sell co-working memberships to others nearby as well.
There was some reasons for leaving it in place, and to be fair a major renovation would have to run into these hurdles either way. But it's probably going to be quite a bit more costly then you're imagining.