How Did Calgary Get Its River Parks?

How did Calgary get its river parks? They certainly were not there to begin with. They weren't there as the city grew. They had to be built. As this paper shows, they were constructed relatively recently, and only after an astonishingly close brush with modernism, in which the land might have b...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inUrban history review Vol. 34; no. 1; pp. 28 - 45
Main Author Nelles, H. V.
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Toronto Urban History Review / Revue d'histoire urbaine 22.09.2005
Becker Associates
University of Toronto Press
Subjects
20th century
Banks
Cities
City councils
City planning
Downtowns
Environmental aspects
Environmental protection
History
Mayors
Municipal parks
National parks
National parks and reserves
Nature
Parks
Parkways
Politics
Public participation
Riverbanks
Urban environment
Urban history
Urban planning
Alberta
Bow River
Calgary Alberta Canada
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Summary:How did Calgary get its river parks? They certainly were not there to begin with. They weren't there as the city grew. They had to be built. As this paper shows, they were constructed relatively recently, and only after an astonishingly close brush with modernism, in which the land might have been dedicated to other dramatically different uses. Calgary's river parks appeared following a wrenching act of negation that bitterly divided the city in the mid-1960s. The organized women's movement of Calgary allied with urban elites, and the new planning bureaucracy and philanthropists combined to push the project forward—but not without the active co-operation of the river itself. The citizenry became so attached to their newly designed river that they were prepared to entertain a higher risk of flooding to keep it green. The result could have been quite different, and almost was. This paper maps a profound but nonetheless contingent shift in popular and political attitudes towards the river in urban life in Calgary that mirrored broader cultural reconsiderations of the environment and nature.
ISSN:0703-0428
1918-5138
DOI:10.7202/1016045ar