{"id":3128,"date":"2014-02-13T13:00:49","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T20:00:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/?p=3128"},"modified":"2025-03-04T14:46:35","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T21:46:35","slug":"edmonton-streetcar-urban-form-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/edmonton\/2014\/02\/13\/edmonton-streetcar-urban-form-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"The Edmonton Streetcar and Its Urban Form: Part 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jasper Avenue, Whyte Avenue, 124th Street, Alberta Avenue, 95th Street, 97th Street, 109th Street. \u00a0What do all of these streets share in common?<\/p>\n

The quick answer is their likely inclusion in most Edmontonian’s top list of favourite streets or avenues to eat, shop, wine, dine, and take in arts, culture, and festivities. \u00a0They arguably contain the most diverse range of the city’s small independent businesses: \u00a0small ethnic and specialty grocers, high-brow coffee and low-brow diners, bakeries, bistros, theatres, cultural associations, neighbourhood pubs and bars, community services, festivals and markets. \u00a0They host and express established and emerging cultural and sub-cultural identities of our neighbourhoods: take Chinatown or Little Italy, or the resurgent energy and diversity of Alberta Avenue, as examples. \u00a0They are streets and avenues where young entrepreneurs and new Canadians perceive a community demand or desire and try to fill it while making a living.<\/p>\n

These streets and avenues do indeed share a meandering list of good things in common, but a historic thread of urban history weaves these and other interesting streets and avenues of Edmonton\u00a0together:<\/p>\n

They are all former streetcar routes.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Although harder to fathom when wedged between massive trucks aggressively tailgaiting down the Henday, Edmonton like most Canadian cities, was first and foremost a streetcar city.<\/p>\n

There is a renewed academic interest in the role the streetcar played in the urban form of today’s cities. \u00a0In Vancouver, it is widely acknowledged that its most popular public walking streets coincide with historic streetcar routes. \u00a0Despite the many decades since the streetcar last operated, it is credited with giving Vancouver its ‘good bones’. \u00a0Patrick Condon,\u00a0Chair of Urban Design and\u00a0Landscape Architect at the University of British Columbia, author of Seven Rules for Sustainable Communities<\/a>, <\/em>is an\u00a0outspoken planning advocate for\u00a0“the streetcar city”. Condon notes:<\/p>\n

“the streetcar established the form of most U.S. and Canadian cities. That pattern still constitutes the very bones of our cities — even now, when most of the streetcars are gone. […] Virtually all of the city of Vancouver\u2019s richest social settings are on streetcar arterials. While the high-rise neighborhoods of Vancouver are justifiably famous, almost all of the rich street life of the downtown core still occurs on the streetcar arterials of Granville, Robson, Denman, and Davey Streets. Beyond the core lie miles and miles of very active streetcar arterials. These streets are typically thronged with pedestrians, in numbers that rival the much higher density areas of New York City. “
\n<\/sup><\/em><\/p>\n

I spent ten years in Vancouver’s West End walking mainly its former streetcar arterials\u00a0without the\u00a0connection. \u00a0As a returnee less informed\u00a0about the history of my hometown, I was curious to know if the same urban paradigm applied to Edmonton: what is the extent of Edmonton’s historic streetcar system, and does it share the same relationship to urban vibrancy today?<\/p>\n

Leaning heavily on Edmonton’s Electric Transit, The Story of Edmonton’s Streetcars and Trolley Buses\u00a0<\/em>from our fabulous\u00a0EPL<\/a>, I recreated digital versions of Edmonton’s streetcar system (by the specific years published in the book), and overlaid them on the contemporary road and rail network. \u00a0Published first today on Spacing Edmonton; the results are intriguing:<\/p>\n\n\t\t