Quadrants and Universities

Getting into this, I really knew nothing about Calgary, and the different neighborhoods.  If you look online, you tend to get vague information to the effect that "SW" is best, probably followed by "NW", "SE" (so long as it's S enough), and then "NE."   It's funny what the quadrant system does.  I mean, in Edmonton, there are definitely better and worse neighborhoods, and even entire sections of the city that seem to have more poverty and crime than average, but there is none of this tarring of the whole quadrant with one brush business.

Anyway, D is working in the NE, so the NW seemed like the natural place to begin investigating, just across the Deerfoot from there.   Also I thought that living near the university might be good.  In Edmonton you can't go wrong living somewhere in the general vicinity of the university.   Even if the neighborhood is a little frayed around the edges, it's generally frayed in a good way.  And I thought it might be walkable and historical and things like that.

But the university area in Calgary is quite different to that in Edmonton.  In Edmonton, it's centrally located in what is essentially an old neighborhood, adjacent to Old Strathcona, on the riverbank, and directly across the river from downtown.   So it's a city-centre university in character.  But in Calgary, the university is newer and less centrally located.  It's more in a car-island, and less integrated with the surrounding neighborhoods, which are more 1960's vintage and newer.

So it was clear that the basic approach of "living near the university" would not produce the same end result in Calgary.