BEVERLY A.

SANDALACK

Sense of Place and the City

As a means of helping to mark the 2005 Centennial of the Province of

Alberta, a celebration of Sense of Place was conceived. This project was the
culmination of over five years of debate and discussion regarding tbe nature
of place. It consisted of an exhibition, a continuously running series of
videos exploring place and placelessness, several excursions into some of the
geographies of Alberta—the mountains, foothills, prairies, as well as tbe abo-
riginal landscape. A significant portion of the project dealt with the city, and
the urban landscape of Calgary. Included were a symposium dealing with
urban design in the western Canadian city, two book publications, several
speakers and panels, and two graduate-level university courses.
While any city has an identity, what seemed to be at issue in such
forums was authentic identity—the identity that gives rise to a sense of place.
This authentic identity was seen to arise from responsiveness to certain local
and regional factors, to local environment and to cultural process and form,
over time. Tbe sense of place was not only personal and experiential, but
something that had numerous definitions and expressions. Calgary is essen-
tially a city of newcomers, established only in 1884 (most of Calgary's popu-
lation bas come from somewhere else), and there are many ways that the city
is experienced by this population, just as there are many ways that an identity
and sense of home are constructed. In a city famous for its perpetual new-
ness and relative lack of cultural and physical anchors, what is the nature of
placemaking? What is this city? What should it become?
Calgary is one of the richest cities, in the richest province, in one of the
richest countries in tbe world; however, despite that privileged position, most
discussion about urban life and urban form centers on the mundane issue of
traffic, which ignores larger issues of urban form and quality and is much
less important than discussions about tbe kind of urban life that its citizens
might want. The battle of shortening commuting times can never be won.
since it has been demonstrated tbat more and better roads inevitably lead to
more traffic. It is an endless cycle, which also points to the extreme folly of
the continued land-use planning practices of tbe past fifty or so years.
Calgary is really just a teenager in city age, and the question is bow to
encourage it to mature into a civil adult. The challenge of the future is not to
build roads, but to build society, and to create a city that expresses its context
and setting in a meaningful way.

The Components of the City

In order to understand this challenge, it is useful to review tbe compo-

48 WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW

 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

nents of the built environment, and to consider how they work together to
contribute to a sense of place. The built environment is composed of several
interrelated "layers." Each layer represents a degree of permanence.

Least Peimanenl

Eigure 1: Concept by B. Sandalack (2000), re-tlrawn by Erancisco Alaniz Uribe 2005.

Layer I: Tbe land, and landscape character, is tbe most permanent

aspect of the built environment, with tbe greatest potential to contribute to a
sense of place. Urban design can be one of the best ways to express good
conservation practices, and to create places tbat have a relationship to the
landscape. At the scale of tbe neighborhood, careful attention to the connec-
tions between topography, natural features, and the view can help to create
memorable places with a strong foundation in the landscape, Good urbanism
is good environmentalism, and this can be expressed in highly urban ways.

Figure 2; The Cainpo in SionLi. widely kni^wn as a superlative public space, has deep cotinec-
tions to landscape. The arc of the street and the slope of (he pla^a derive from the original
topography, and from a pilgrimage route that followed the curve oi'the land.

WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW 49

 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

Calgary was originally sited at the confluence of the Bow and Elbow Rivers,
in the shelter of the escarpments. The city form had a direct relationship to
the rivers and topography. Calgary's natural landscape is very diverse, and
ranges from arid prairie to riverine forests. Landscape design and develop-
ment can contribute to the sense of place by reflecting the conditions and
constraints of tbe natural environment, rather than treating all sites as equal.
Tbe universal cult of turf grass and horticulture has created, unwittingly, a
homogeneous landscape that says little about the particularities of place.
Calgary has the additional distinguishing characteristic of being a winter
city, with four seasons. Landscape and built form can celebrate these sea-
sonal changes.

Figure 3: South-facing slopes along the Bow River are distinguished by prairie, while the
moister north-facing slopes allow the evolution of a more diverse forest ecosystem. (AU pho-
tographs in Ihis essay: B. Sandalack)

Layer 2: Most of our everyday urban experience occurs within the

shared city space made up of streets, sidewalks, parks, squares and plazas.
Collectively this is known as tbe public realm; the city space where all citi-
zens can be by right. It constitutes tbe next most permanent component of
the built landscape. The street, most agree, symbolizes public life. In
Calgary we have been developing a high-quality private realm {our houses

50 WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW

 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

and apartments are. by world standards, relatively luxurious), but the infra-
structure—more important than roads—of tbe public realm has been neglect-
ed. The street has become primarily a structure for moving traffic, rather
tban the multi-purpose instrument that it used to be and still is in the best
cities. Al! neighborhood streets should be places of quality, and deliberately
designed parts of the public realm. It is mostly from the pedestrian space
that we experience tbe city. How many of us have explored Rome, New
York, London, Paris or Quebec City by car? Urban experience is necessarily
pedestrian.
Calgary has only a handful of great streets, such as H^h Avenue, 4'*^
Street, and Kensington. They are what sociologist Richard Sennett calls
streets full of life (150) and places full of time (169). These few streets are
high-quality public places—supported by local residential populations of
higher density than Calgary has recently built for—and they have evolved
over time. These are physical as well as metaphysical spaces, and have actu-
al and symbolic value, helping to define the character and sense of place of
the city. In Calgary, perhaps the best-loved public space is the river-path
system. Although this system is relatively new (The Urban Parks Master
Plan, in which the path system was designed, was developed in 1994), the
path system has an air of inevitability about it, probably because it is so
closely linked to the city's rivers and topography.

i
Eigure 4: Calgary's river-path syslem is notahic for ils conned ion lo hoth landscape and urban
form.

City-planning has a strong influence on the framework of the city, and

changes in planning ideas can have a profound effect on street pattern and
urban structure.

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 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

Calgary's original plan was a grid network of streets—typical of towns

and cities built on the Western Railway. The first commissioned city plan
was prepared by Thomas Mawson in 1912. Mawson envisioned a system of
streets, civic spaces and squares, focused on the rivers, and modeled after tbe
City Beautiful movement (an approach whose original aims were to improve
the social and economic conditions of the industrial city through reform of
the urban structure and its aesthetic properties, as expressed in Beaux-Arts
style architecture and formal, classical arrangement of spaces). It was first
expressed in North America in tbe 1893 World Exposition in Chicago, and
eventually made its way west to Calgary in Mawson's plan. Mawson's work
was an expression of its moment in time, and reflected the cunent societal
values and architectural forms. While the classical buildings (the element
that critiques often focus on) may not have suited the Calgary context, tbe
emphasis on public spaces and their arrangements was perhaps the strongest
potential contribution of the plan. The Mawson Plan was clearly based on a
strong vision of the public realm and its importance, but it was never carried
out due to an economic downturn and the First World War. and also because
some of Mawson's architectural ideas weren't considered appropriate to the
Western Canadian context.

Figure 5: Thomas Mawson's plan emphasized public access to the w\ kOll^l' of a

strong framework of public streets and spaces.

In the middle of tbe twentieth century city development radically

changed, as modernism, corporate development, and the invention and insti-
tutionalization of methods for town planning coincided with tbe period of
economic growth following tbe Second World War. History, tradition, and
local and regional identity were thought to be anti-progress and old-fash-

52 W E S T E R N H U M A N I T I E S REVIEW
 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

ioned—huge pieces of many North American cities, towns and landscapes

were destroyed to make way for "progress." Much of Calgary's growth took
place during this period. So while, for example, Halifax was established dur-
ing the 1800s and has a downtown fabric that still expresses that, and
Winnipeg acquired an extensive and rich fabric of warehouse buildings from
the early 1900s. much of what distinguishes Calgary was built during the
I960s-198{)s. This, of course, was a period in which the International Style
(an approach developed during the 1920s and 1930s in Europe, and later
imported to North America, that attempted to express a style of the time, and
that eschewed regional characteristics and non-essential decoration) domi-
nated architecture; zoning and urban renewal were the main planning tools;
the emphasis was on the single-family house (a relatively new idea); and the
impact of tbe car was gaining momentum, evidenced in the construction of
inany freeways and suburban malls.

Eigure 6: The 1966 Plan

for downiown Calgary
was based on a rational,
runclional view of city
form, and included plans
for a multi-lane freeway
that would encircle the
downtown, incidentally
wiping oul much of the
warehouse dislricl and
several residenlial neigh-
borhoods.

IHE CONCCPT

Time and space are now arbitrary. They are no longer the result of func-
tional requirements or of cultural constraints, but are more often determined
by tbe marketplace. Anything is possible—which means that design and
planning are really more difficult, not less. New settlement types have
emerged that express very little about their context.

Figure 7: This develop-

ment, northeast of
Calgary, is dependent on
the car, and does not
conform to any defini-
tion of neighborhood.

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 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

Layer 3: Buildings are the most visible part of tbe urban environment,
and they sit within the infrastructure of the public realm. Several generations
of built form will come and go within the life cycle of the urban structure;
however, if the frame of the public realm is intact, then tbe built form bas a
sense of continuity and meaning over time. The outside of the building
forms the inside wall of tbe public realm, and all buildings have this respon-
sibility to help shape space. Making a good street is difficult when the edge
conditions are not supportive.

I iguiv K. I he [lliiiio ml the left shows a residential street conceived and designed when idea.s of
the street as a public space informed typology, and where the buildings supported the street.
The photo on the right shows a more recent residential street, designed according to a Irans-
portalion model rather than typtilogy. and where the public role of the street has been neglected
and is unsupported by the building edge. (Photos of Roxboro and Lake Chaparral in Calgary,
B. Sandalack)

Figuiv 'I ^• '•-'• • I .iiiiovli.il I-. ,<[i iiiipuriani moiiiiitient situated ai the terminus of the Impor-
tant axis ol' \~' Suect SW. The building has a strong relationship to the city structure and to the
ptiblic realm. It Is also a building that rewards pedestrians as Ihey move closer, providing more
dotai!, richness and reinforcing the entry.

54 WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW

 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

Layer 4: Each individual building, if it has a resiliency of form, may be

used for various activities or programs over its lifetime. The robustness of
built fonn contributes further to the establishment of a sense of place through
continuity of form, rather than continually rebuilding in the name of new-
ness.

Figure 10: Two low-rise apartment buildings—the one above can gracefully accept a multitude
of other uses in addition to residential, due to its design and the way it addresses the street

Figure 11: This one would have difficulty being anyiliing other than an apiirtment building,
effectively rendering it obsolete, should the demand or land uses change, and missing the oppor-
tunity to provide continuity in the urban fabric over time.

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 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

Layer 5: The least permanent aspects of the built environment, and of

design activity, are transient and ephemeral trends and fashions. While these
frequently add the qualities of delight and contemporariness to the built envi-
ronment, there is normally a built-in obsolescence to them, and they should
be understood as the least permanent, although not necessarily the least
important, aspects of urban design.

Figure 12.: Calgary's

ranching heritage is
expressed in a delightful
restaurant door...

...while ihe Egypttan imagery on the Chinook Mall

expansion is puzzling.and the structures recently
installed on Stephen Avenue...

...in the city's downtown are sym-

bolically irrelevant and have clut-
tered one of Calgary's best streets.

Good urbanism requires a certain density and intensity that urbanists

advocate, but wbich is difficult to put in place, partly due to the persistence
of now-outdated land development and planning practices.

WESTERN HUMANITIES REVIEW

 BEVERLY A. SANDALACK

Place, Time and Culture

Currently, it seems as if more design intent is applied to individual

buildings, to programming, and especially to trends and fashions than to the
most permanent elements of a city—the public realm and tbe landscape. The
less permanent elements come and go, but the public infrastructure—the inte-
grated system of public space—persists and can give a sense of continuity
and quality to a place. What has been neglected has been design at tbe city
scale, and the public realm has too often fallen between the cracks. This has
led to a focus on purpose-built structures where the continuity of urban form
and structure is less likely. Lost is the once cohesive relationship between
built form and the urban landscape, and the language of the city and of pub-
lic space. This language is what once provided the vocabulary for conceptu-
alizing, designing and realizing a coberent and high-quality infrastructure of
public streets and spaces that expressed notions of place, time and culture.
Calgary has the opportunity to live up to its potential and become known
for its distinctive places and memorable spaces, rather than for its car-orient-
ed strips and suburbs. However, we will need a clear vision that identifies
the city's physical and cultural anchors; that is. the aspects of urban develop-
ment that are non-negotiable, and the qualities that will help to develop a
sense of place. But. unlike the past, development of this sense of place, to
paraphrase Michael Hough (2), is now a question of choice rather than of
necessity, and is therefore a matter of design.

WORKS CITED

City of Catgary Planning Advisory Committee. The Future of Downtown Caigary.

Calgary: City of Calgary. 1963.
Hough, Michael. Out of Place: Re.storing Identity to the Regional Landscape. New
Haven and London: Yale UP. 1990.
Mawson. T. H. and Sons. The City ofColgary: Pa.st. Present and Future. Calgary:
City Planning Cotn mi s.s ion of Calgary. 1912.
Sandalack. Beverly A. and Andrei Nicolai. The Calgaiy Project: urban form I urban
life. Calgary: UofCalgaryP, 2006.
. "Urban Design: a re-newed approach to Environmental
Design Education," Association for Collegiate Schools of Architecture
International Conference Proceedings (2005).
Sennett, Richard. The Con.fcience of the Eye: The Design and Social Life of Cities.
New York: Norton. 1992.

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