Is Calgary a beautiful city?
According to 100 of my twitter followers, the answer is yes — but why does it matter?
As Calgarians embark on a debate about community character, access to sunlight and greenery, alongside a myriad of features allegedly endangered by higher densities, it seems timely to discuss what makes a beautiful city — or an ugly one — and the values driving our perception of either.
One thing that seems to bring Calgarians together in what makes our city beautiful is nature. We’re lucky to have plenty of urban parks where we can forget we’re in the midst of a sprawling city: Nose Hill, Fish Creek, Bowmont Park, Prince’s Island Park, and the Bow River Pathway. Access to parkland within walking distance is one of the most precious experiences our city has to offer.
The beauty of nature is so generous that the presence of a few trees and shrubs can make a modest bungalow look stately, or gaudy mansion seem less grotesque.
This description is, of course, subjective. Based solely on the taste an architectural education afforded me, and an upbringing in a somewhat cultured milieu, this characterization is also a signifier of class: I, an educated individual, have the ability to recognize beauty.
We all do this. All the time.
And not even nature is free from class-based evaluations. Dandelions and other weeds, noxious or not, are often perceived as “ugly” for what they symbolize — disrepair, blight, negligence — rather than for their aesthetic qualities.
One of my earliest Calgary memories is stopping by a field of dandelions to take a picture “of the flowers.” I was promptly corrected by a better-informed individual that dandelions are not flowers — so they can’t be beautiful.
A lot seems to have changed since my first dandelion encounter, and hopefully people are learning to appreciate them as much as I do, though rationalized arguments against dandelions continue to make headlines.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, says the old adage. However, the reason for this tends to be less related to the formal merit of the object we’re evaluating, and more closely linked to the image we, as the beholders, want to project. In other words, our aesthetic values depend on what we want others to know about us, solidifying our social position.
But in a society where a significant share of Canadians identify as middle class, recognizing class divisions is a sacrilege. The transformation of the core principles of beauty — order, balance, harmony — into human scale, sense of place, and environmental justice, reframe the projection of aesthetic values onto the urban realm as an objective, measurable endeavour.
Consequently, we’ve ended up with a myriad of perfectly rational guidelines, plans, and bylaws meant to subtly regulate the ugly out of existence. We need land-use bylaws to ensure our neighbour won’t decide to set up an unsightly shop in their garage without asking for our permission first; or that a new building won’t unleash god’s wrath by allowing more than one nice, middle-class family to live there. Keeping an entire parcel from being completely built out? Somehow, that’s also a rational decision, not at all related to the banality of aesthetic values.
I would prefer not to say this, but Calgary’s blandness is the natural outcome of the successful implementation of such regulations. Eager to forget our city’s working-class past, Calgary has been quick to adopt the newest fads in pursuit of a world class status. Placeless structures designed by renowned firms such as Snøhetta and Allied Works, or brand-forward architects such as Bjarke Ingels and Santiago Calatrava, populate Calgary’s promotional materials, effectively becoming symbols of our city’s progress — and recognizing them as such is an important marker of class.
Scorn for the Peace Bridge and housing density, for example, signifies opposition to the values of progressive urbanites, for whom Deerfoot Trail and single-detached homes represent everything that’s objectively wrong with our city. Both sides act as if social class had nothing to do with their stance, but it does.
The failure of our city’s policies to equitably deliver objectively measured beauty, in the form of walkable streets, or a lush tree canopy, as well as an undeterred focus on providing Calgarians with the illusion of choice, are glaring evidence of the class biases embedded in the regulatory frameworks shaping our city.
Removing the subjectivity of class-based aesthetic values from the city planning process was meant to produce more equitable cities. Instead, it has resulted in the legitimization of socio-spatial segregation processes.
For decades we acted as if populating large tracts of land with copy-paste detached homes was a desirable sight that signified order and progress, demonizing higher density as a source of social ills. Today, we’ve learned to see objective beauty in the spaces produced by participatory design processes. If a public space intervention is driven by volunteers, the result is deemed to be beautiful, regardless of its aesthetic qualities. Beauty is also to be found in the implementation of climate considerations. So producing an urban form that reduces GHG emissions cannot be deemed ugly.
In both cases, beauty and class are seemingly irrelevant, but the fact that merely pointing at these aspects can wreak havoc shows that they matter more than we’d like to believe.
Despite their symmetrical quality and harmonious contextual fit, attached housing is often perceived by some as a sure sign of a neighbourhood’s demise. Perhaps row homes signify something unpleasant for Calgary’s middle classes. Maybe they remind us of the low-income complexes the feds built in 1970s, even if this type of home now caters towards a younger cohort of upwardly mobile Calgarians.
Arguments based on seemingly objective measures such as building heights and traffic congestion, rather than on aesthetic values, obscure the fact that, to a large extent, to talk about housing is to talk about social hierarchies and related aesthetic values.
So, unless we discuss the role beauty and class play in our city-building process, we’ll continue to repeat the same mistakes of the past, and Calgary will remain a placeless, socially segregated city.
Reluctantly yours,
Ximena
p.s. i started writing this thing back in February, but work that actually pays got in my way. I write these posts for you, my dear readers, they’re not essays i didn’t sell. So if you can, pitch in to support my capacity to write this stuff more often. Many thanks to the folks who already do!
Stuff i’ve written since last time
In Calgary, some condo owners cashing out as others climb in
The Globe and Mail
Calgary realtors criticize upzoning move
The Globe and Mail
Are immigrants paying post-secondaries for expertise, or empty promises?
The Tyee
🏠 Would the mighty power of trees make make this house look a little bit less ominous?
Narrator: No, they would not.