Erik Backstrom Profile picture
Urban planner, planning historian, family man and faithful Edmontonian

Oct 15, 2022, 8 tweets

Century Park timeline
2022: a couple of early risers walking their dogs in a grassy area surrounded by apartments, construction materials & equipment and an empty parking lot next to an LRT station just out of view.

2005: architect James Cheng's concept for a walkable, mixed-use, high-density, transit-oriented urban village that wowed planners and helped #yegcc decide to fund extension of the LRT to the site.

1981: Heritage Mall opening day with thousands of cars and at least two boys on bicycles.

1978: farmland being readied for development.

1952: agricultural district.

1884: Papaschase Reserve with "poplar, willow and hazel, a few spruce, birch and tamarack."

1000: bison grazing in aspen parkland.

13,000 years ago: Laurentide Ice Sheet melting. Before that, my memory of the site is fuzzy.

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