Calgary is a driving city with a handful of genuinely walkable pockets — and “walkable” means something different here in January than it does in a milder city.
Meaning: groceries, coffee, a restaurant and a pharmacy on foot, without planning it.
This is the part that catches people arriving from milder cities. A fifteen-minute walk is pleasant in September and a serious undertaking at minus twenty-eight with wind. Communities that feel walkable in summer can be effectively car-dependent for four months.
What actually matters through a Calgary winter:
If not driving is genuinely the goal, walk your candidate route in winter before you buy. Almost nobody does this, and it is the single most reliable way to find out whether a community is walkable to you.
Calgary's regional pathway network is one of the most extensive in North America, and pathway access is a different amenity from walkability. Communities along the Bow and Elbow rivers, around Fish Creek Provincial Park, Nose Hill, Glenmore Reservoir and Confederation Park have exceptional pathway and green-space access without necessarily having a walkable high street.
Worth separating the two when you search: "I want to walk to coffee" and "I want to run ten kilometres from my door" point at quite different communities, and a few — Hillhurst and Inglewood among them — happen to offer both.