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The landscape of the agricultural southeast is fairly uniform, though with considerable variations in farming practices and density of settlement, while the isolated Peace River block forms a basically agricultural area to the northwest. The foothills are much visited for hunting and other recreational purposes, but their forest cover has been greatly altered by oil and gas exploration, coal mining, clear-cutting for lumber and pulp, and cattle grazing. The vast northern forests, though sparsely populated, also show extensive marks of resource exploitation. The mountain national parks each have small permanent populations and many visitors.
The square pattern of the Dominion land survey dominates much of the rural landscape. The survey established townships with 36 sections, each one mile square (2.6 sq km). From the air, the resulting great square fields can be seen spreading from horizon to horizon, while on the ground the straight roads seem to stretch endlessly.
Homesteading introduced some individuality into this pattern: log huts, elegant frame buildings, and modern houses were often successively occupied on the same farm and may still survive, although rural depopulation has caused many dwellings to be abandoned. Also, First Nations reserves (reservations), Métis colonies, presurvey settlements, and religion-based communal farms make their own distinctive contributions to the landscape.
Groups of highly visible grain elevators, set at intervals along the railways, used to be characteristic sights but are now less common. Most villages grew up around such configurations, usually on one side of the railway tracks. A grid street plan and frame houses are typical, along with small shops, a hotel, and several churches.
Larger urban centres often gain character from their settings rather than from their buildings. Towns such as Peace River, nestled in a spectacular river valley, and Drumheller, set among extensive badlands, are notable but not untypical. Street patterns generally follow a rectangular grid, perhaps elongated along a river frontage or railway.
With the exception of the mining centre of Fort McMurray, each of the major cities serves a large rural area: Lethbridge and Medicine Hat, the southwest and southeast, respectively; Grande Prairie, the Peace River country; and Red Deer, the central region. Calgary and Edmonton have a much wider influence. Among the largest cities in Canada, they have developed typical big-city features, such as high-rise buildings and expressways, while retaining enough parkland to keep them attractive.
Demographic trends
The most-densely populated area of Alberta is the corridor that runs from Edmonton to Lethbridge, through Calgary and Red Deer. The lowest densities, averaging about one person per square mile, are in the north, foothills, and mountain regions, which together occupy about three-fourths of the province. Alberta has experienced a generally high rate of population increase since the end of World War II. Although an economic downturn in the 1980s and early 1990s brought slower growth for a time, by the turn of the 21st century the province was again experiencing rapid population increases.