Calgarians are emotionally attached to the city's quadrants. But why?

If you live in this city, you know that the letters that follow your address aren’t just letters — they’re the quintessential pieces of the puzzle that, when put together, form a picture of the Calgarian identity.

Whether it’s N.E., N.W., S.W. or S.E., Calgarians seem to have a special attachment to these abbreviations. Unless you’re staying right on Centre Street, you’re probably hanging out in one of the four slices that make up Calgary’s geographic, quadrant-flavoured pie right now.

But why do Calgarians get so sentimental about which side of the river we come from?

Diane Richardson is a real estate agent here in Calgary. She says there’s an emotional connection to whichever fourth you find yourself in. She’s even experienced it herself, when she first moved to the city years ago.

“One day, I had to make a delivery to a home office in Killarney, and I went, ‘This is my neighbourhood, these are my people, this is where I want to be,'” she told Anis Heydari, host of the new CBC podcast, This is Calgary, where this week’s episode delved into the question of quadrants and set out to answer what makes them so infatuating.

Richardson says she was actually looking for a home in the northeast when she fell head over heels for the southwestern community of Killarney.

Then, some years later, she wound up living in Tuscany to be closer to her northwest-dwelling sister.

“[We thought] this was just going to be perfect,” she said. “We lasted less than nine months.”

A rainy day in the community of Forest Lawn in southeast Calgary. (Ose Irete/CBC)

Over the years, Richardson has certainly taken various bites of the aforementioned quadrant-flavoured pie, moving around Calgary quite a bit.

Personal experiences aside, she says her 15-year career as a realtor taught her that it’s mostly lifelong Calgarians who are totally rigid when it comes to those two letters.

“There’s no flexibility, especially those northwest people,” she said, adding that, as a former northwesterner herself who struggled to vibe with the quadrant, she still loves those loyal N.W. address folks all the same.

“But the northwest people want to stay in the northwest because they want to have that proximity to the mountains. They want to be able to have that quick getaway.”

Plus, for those born-and-raised Calgarians who feel tied to a region, Richardson believes where people choose to live in this city is heavily impacted by the company we keep.

“I mean, with me, it was my sister. She lived in the northwest. If that’s where your family is, you want to be close to your family.”

Do people still care about quadrants?

Of course, proximity to schools, jobs, amenities and activities are all reasons that contribute to the allure of an area for house hunters — and with over 200 neighbourhoods, Calgary totally has options.

But as the municipality grows and new members from all around the country hope to build a home in Alberta’s largest city, are quadrants even a big deal anymore?

Richard White is a regular commentator and critic on cities and urban planning, and he also writes a blog called Everyday Tourist. He’s been living in Calgary for the past 40 years, and he thinks our quadrant obsession might become ancient history thanks to new technologies.

“No longer are you writing an envelope and putting northwest or southwest,” he said. “Our address becomes almost irrelevant because the way we communicate today is different than we did 100 years ago.”

The newest episode of CBC’s This is Calgary podcast delves into Calgary’s weird obsession with quadrants. (Shutterstock)

Yet even as digital communication dominates the way we exchange words, the maps app on your cellphone still makes use of our quadrants. White says part of our obsession with this four-quarter format could be the design of the grid-like system itself.

“It’s easy to figure out,” he said. “Once you know the nomenclature, you know where your address is going to be.”

However, our city isn’t necessarily blazing any trails with our quadrant system. Our northern neighbours in Edmonton operate a somewhat similar city layout, as well as a variety of other townships and cities across the Prairies and beyond.

Where you are, who you are

So if the logical layout isn’t unique to Calgary, how can we explain the pride that comes with our corner of the city? Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet?

Echoing some of Richardson’s points, White also believes that where you are can be part of who you are. The urban planning commentator says there is something unique about the love affair between Calgarians and our quadrants.

“Even before I lived in Calgary, people would talk about, ‘Well, I’m in the southwest, I’m in the northeast.’ There’s that loyalty that we hear from people in Calgary,” said White.

“It goes a little bit beyond just the sort of practicality that we see in Prairie towns.”

A view of downtown Calgary from the intersection of Memorial Drive and Fourth Street N.E. (Ose Irete/CBC)

Maybe you love to shop at Chinook Centre, or you need to be close to the airport for your jet-setting job, or perhaps you like to dine at the various restaurants sprinkled along International Avenue. Or maybe, in some of the city’s suburbs, you crave to be away from the heart of downtown. The region you reside in might even be correlated to your political values.

“I think people feel a certain emotion to who their neighbourhoods [are], what the culture is. The northeast has traditionally been a place for new immigrants … people used to go to Little Italy or they’d go to Chinatown, or a lot of the northwest was British,” White said.

As the city expands outwards, White says the “boundaries change.” It’s no longer just about the way the Bow River or Deerfoot Trail divide the city. He believes Calgary’s obsession with location is much less about quadrants, and instead, it’s much more about community.

“There’s a certain affinity that people have with people who think and feel like them in many ways.”