Chaparral fill-in-the-blank
Street naming conventions in new communities only satisfies marketing plans
It's dark and it's raining, and I only have three deliveries left. I’ve been driving around the city for hours and the challenge of finding an address on the map and then interpreting that as an actual physical location has become overwhelming. I have a degree in geography and I know how to read a map; it should not be this hard. When I finally drop off my last delivery, I can't help but curse the devil that started the naming trend in Calgary's new communities.
Take Chaparral, for example, a neighbourhood in the city’s southeast. Within its boundaries there are 23 different streets that have Chaparral in their name. That "something" includes Chaparral Point, Park, Street, Boulevard, Road, Green, Terrace, Drive, Link, Way, Cove, Manor, Bay, Close, Common, Crescent, Court, Estate, Mews, Place, Village, Heath and Circle. Not to mention the adjacent community of Chaparral Ridge that has numerous variations on the name.
A quick phone call to city hall reveals that subdivision and street names are chosen by the developer and submitted to the city for approval. "We prefer that the area carry the name with which it has been identified in the past, providing the name is historically meaningful, for such things as the homesteader's name, historical events, etc." says Vivian Barr of the city's subdivision department. "Although most of the names we receive are based on the developer's marketing plans."
While the city has no real rules for street naming, they do have some guidelines, like avoiding names that are hard to pronounce, avoiding duplication of names within the city and avoiding similar sounding street names. "Theme naming is acceptable, but the theme should be simple and commonly understood and the street names should be clearly associated with the theme," says Barr. For example, all of the street names in the Sundance neighbourhood begin with the prefix "Sun," and all of the streets in Mountain Park are named after mountains. The developer of Chaparral took this concept to a new extreme and didn’t even bother to look for a theme. It seems as though the marketing department took the week off when the street names for this community were being submitted to the city. Unfortunately, Chaparral is not the only community where this trend is evident. It appears, to varying degrees, in almost all new developments in all corners of the city.
A more heartening trend has begun with inner-city neighbourhoods in Calgary. Many areas have recently asked the city to allow for dual name signage that would show the contemporary name, usually a number, as well as the historical name for certain streets. City planner Don Schultz explains that this new program is "an important means of commemorating Calgary’s past." All streets were named by their founding communities until 1904 when the city enacted a bylaw changing street names to correspond with the now familiar grid system. Other areas such as Hillhurst, Mission and Bankview had their street names converted to numbers when they were annexed to the city around 1907.
With the new program, Calgarians will get a taste of civic history while maintaining the ease and simplicity of the grid system. "The [historic] road names in Mission reflect the historic French character of the original Rouleauville settlement, and the dual historic road signs to be installed in Bankview include some given names of members of the Nimmons family, who originally owned, subdivided and developed that community," Schultz says. City hall will help the community design a sign that is in keeping with the historic nature of the area, verify the historical accuracy of the street names and install the signs, but it’s up to the community association to pay for installation, maintenance and replacement of the dual signs.
Usually we don’t give much thought to what our streets are named, but looking closely at them can give us a clue about the time and place in which we live. Calgary’s street names are a testament to our city and our time, with a nod to the past. The earliest street names were descriptors that reflected landmarks – like church, hill, market or water – that helped people manoeuvre around and not much more. These days, new streets are primarily named for marketing purposes and not much more.
Jeff Nield no longer drives a delivery truck, only in small part due to Calgary’s street names. |
