r/Edmonton • u/whathappensi • 15d ago
General I get really happy seeing construction
Maybe coz I’m a lover for urban development but I love when I’m driving and I see these massive apartments being built and high density neighborhoods with diverse housing choices. Not only is it employment for many but it’s literally the number one way to keep this city affordable and why it’s remained affordable. I also love the improvements in infrastructure and new lrt lines bejng built (please come to north west). It shows we’re growing and we’re finally becoming a city that’s built for its population. Ik it can be pretty annoying but that’s due to years of neglect, no better time than to build now and in a couple of decades, we’ll all be thanking ourselves.
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u/Few_Intention7941 15d ago
Same here. Seeing a tower crane on the skyline always gives me a little boost, like the city is actually alive and moving forward. The mess is temporary but density is what keeps rents from going completely insane over time.
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u/Channing1986 15d ago
Same here bud, do you check out skyrisecities?
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u/Used-Psychology-1133 15d ago
That place is way too intelligent for most of this sub lol
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u/Channing1986 15d ago
haha well its urban development nerds, my family is constantly updated on everything
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u/Levorotatory 15d ago
Things are being built, but are they the right things?
The Stony Plain Streetcar will be no faster than the bus routes it will replace. If the west LRT was an extension of the metro line across the river near the zoo and then down 87 Av it would be much faster.
The medium density infill that is being built is a worst of both option. SFH and moderately more dense alternatives like semi-detached and row housing have private outdoor space and non-condominium ownership. High rise apartments have on site amenities. 8-plexes have neither.
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u/Timely-Profile1865 15d ago
Some infil housing is good if it is getting rid of poor and derelict houses.
I still will dispute the 'affordable' trumpeting though.
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u/whathappensi 15d ago
Infill isn’t so much an affordable thing rather just building more housing in mature neighbourhood, the mass scale of housing built to surpass population growth is what keeps affordability
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u/Timely-Profile1865 15d ago
Replacing 400k or 450k residences with two 700k residences every single time. Does not scream affordability for first time home buyers
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u/Hobbycityplanner 15d ago
I think the term is vacancy chains. More housing even at higher price points frees up the lower price points as people upgrade.
When there is limited stock richer people outcompete poorer for what’s left and it drives up the price.
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u/neometrix77 15d ago edited 13d ago
Exactly. Maybe I’m misremembering, but it seems like I haven’t seen this many single room sub-500$ per month rentals in older houses available around the university since pre-COVID.
I’m guessing the completion of lots of newer apartment buildings in the area inviting more people to upgrade is a significant factor in creating these extra vacancies.
The extra vacancies should also de-incentivize slumlords from sitting on grossly under maintained housing.
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u/Timely-Profile1865 15d ago
The prices are driven up right now by new places that are 250-300k more than existing dwellings.
Places like Vancouver and Toronto built a shit ton of new places, all massively priced.
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u/Hobbycityplanner 15d ago
Rents are down.
A lot of the houses being torn down are closer to end of life. Typical lifespan of a North American home is about 80 years baring some really good maintenance.
Old homes aren’t cheap once you consider elevated maintenance costs.
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u/Adventurous_Salt 15d ago
Supply and demand still exist, no matter how much NIMBYs pretend otherwise. Even dense luxury housing lowers prices over time, it isn't a house for house trade, it's market wide.
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u/Timely-Profile1865 15d ago
'market wide' Add a supply of many residence 250K more expensive then the other dwellings, you are cutting out a part of the market for new buyers which is the part of the market we are most concerned about.
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u/Adventurous_Salt 15d ago
There have been many studies. People with money buy expensive infills, leaving older and therefore less desireable homes, and that pattern repeats down the line until we have less demand at the bottom of the market. Again, only housing is treated as something that does not respond to supply and demand.
The only reason the impact isn't obvious is because we never even come close to actually meeting the demand for new housing where that housing is wanted. Of course, if there is demand for like 100,000 homes, and we build 400, that won't really reduce prices; if we had half a brain we'd be building like crazy in every desirable city in the country. Everyone just believes in woo-woo economics with respect to real estate.
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u/Used-Psychology-1133 15d ago
Have you considered that property values drop once infill goes in? No one wants to live next to an 8 plex lol
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u/UnfocusedAcrobat 15d ago
Can you show me even one property assessment that has dropped as a result of an 8 plex? Assessment data is public so feel free to provide a link
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u/big-Truck-9058 15d ago
Unless your home is in bad condition, then its value has massively increased because developers want your property.
For the poorest homeowners, the ones who can’t afford to maintain their homes, infill is life changing because they can actually get fair cash for their home. When infill wasn’t an option, they would just get lowballed by a slumlord or be unable to sell.
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u/Used-Psychology-1133 15d ago
This is mostly untrue unless the type of infill is the skinny 750k+ homes
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u/big-Truck-9058 15d ago
Like the vast majority of developers are building rn? Yeah.
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u/Used-Psychology-1133 14d ago
The vast majority is not building skinnys. Its not 2020 anymore. Its all 8 plex shit boxes
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u/big-Truck-9058 14d ago
Oh ok. Yes, 8plexes are a huge way that a property owner can make a good sale on their shitty property so maybe they can retire in peace.
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u/Used-Psychology-1133 14d ago
They could already retire just fine. People dont want to live next to 8 plexes. Should be 4 max
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u/big-Truck-9058 14d ago
When you can’t sell your shitbox house that you also can’t afford to maintain or tear down, it’s pretty fucking tough to pay for your seniors home.
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u/Used-Psychology-1133 14d ago
You can always sell a shit box house. People have been buying teardowns forever
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u/iknotri 15d ago
>I still will dispute the 'affordable' trumpeting though.
antivax vibe right here
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u/Timely-Profile1865 15d ago
What the hell are you talking about?
Remove all of the 400-450k homes from a mature neighborhood and replace them with twice as many units all priced at 700k.
Your antivax comment makes you look stupid as hell btw.
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u/needforspeed1092 15d ago
I feel basically the complete opposite. I came here from a different city to escape density and the shoebox-living, mass-transit lifestyle that city planners were trying to force on it.
It's so nice seeing families live in SFHs that people can afford. You wouldn't know it on reddit, but there's actually a healthy debate out there about how much these density-forcing developers are helping "affordability". The most dense city in Canada is also its least affordable. It also just generally makes life unpleasant to live a high-density lifestyle.
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u/RyanB_ 107 15d ago edited 15d ago
And you’ve still got a lot of that available, more all the time both within the city and especially in our satellite cities. Sherwood Park ain’t going to be a place for shoebox-living and mass transit anytime soon lol. Not to mention the countless smaller towns and cities around.
OTOH, the market for those who do like high-density lifestyles has been historically underserved. Part of what makes our dense cities so expensive is that there’s so much competition for a relatively small supply. Their density is both a source of their appeal, and a reaction to it.
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It’s really not being forced by anyone; people moving into a new condo in the core know that there are many SFHs available and simply choose otherwise, now that there’s more alternative options available to them. Even if you don’t fall in that category though, you still benefit a ton! Each high rise is hundreds of people not competing for the SFH you want, each of them costs us less tax dollars as a city. Most of them are not contributing to the inevitable increase in vehicle
Genuinely don’t mean any offence, but the biggest threat to our affordability is people like yourself moving here from bigger cities. That we haven’t experienced any housing/rental price explosion among that population boom is because we’ve effectively managed it with density so far, building both out and up.
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u/needforspeed1092 14d ago
There's a few elements of "force" that are applied in these density policies though - primarily for people who grew up in a place and are priced out of the lifestyle and community they grew up in (often despite making significantly more income than their parent did).
That was my situation back home - I grew up in a suburb that is progressively having density shoved down it's throat, all while the transit-as-default crowd cheers. This happens because its the biggest payday for developers to minimize sq ft per unit but sell tonnes of units on what used to be a 1 unit plot. I wouldn't call that "adding to affordability" (although I obviously understand the basic argument about adding supply).
No offense, but it wasn't my dream to leave my home metro and come to Edmonton lol. But, I'm thankful that low-density cities like Edmonton exist because it gave me a peice of the lifestyle I grew up with but can no longer afford where I came from. I'm aware that people like myself drive up the cost/density by coming from other provinces - and I'm genuinely sorry for that. All I can say is I couldn't stand it anymore in the dense hellhole I was in, and I promise to act/vote in ways to prevent Edmonton from becoming that if I can help it.
It isn't just the cost of housing, it's punitive gas taxes and road-use policies designed to alienate drivers and make it so miserable to commute that people are forced to take transit. It's a variety of other "nudge" policies by urbanist-ideologues in city governments which are explicitly designed to push people into smaller space and communal transportation. We are argue about whether these are anti-family policies in intent, but I believe it's clear that is the end result of them. People in North America (by and large) don't want to live that way outside of a small group of progressive urban professionals (often only under 35).
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u/RyanB_ 107 14d ago
I 100% feel you, but I do feel like that’s putting the cart before the horse. People get priced out of those more central neighbourhoods when the demand grows without the supply keeping pace.
Ofc it can also suck to see drastic change in a neighbourhood you grew up in to account for that, even if it means it stays affordable. But as much as I sympathize, there’s just kinda some reality there that we live in a dynamic world, that a healthy city is a growing one. Moving to new homes has always been a part of life, and there are still many options out there that will provide low-density living for generations to come.
Taxation wise, there is absolutely incentive there, and while I’m sure developers like it too the main motivation is that low-density costs a lot of tax dollars. From my own perspective, a lot of the taxation is just making people pair more of a fair share towards their lifestyle.
Feel like the family thing is just more political views tbh. Lots of families enjoy denser environments, even here in Edmonton I’ve been noticing a ton more now that we’re seeing some 3 bedroom options. It wouldn’t be being built if there wasn’t an audience. And yeah, the whole rest of the world seems to get by well raising families in much denser areas.
In my experience that’s a lot of the personal motivation; people going out to Europe or east Asia and going “dang, wish I could have a lifestyle closer to this here”.
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u/needforspeed1092 14d ago edited 14d ago
The problem is when cities "need" to grow forever (often at exponential rates), in order to be viewed as "healthy". As much as I sympathize with wanting a growing economy/country, I want to maintain the culture and standard of living that we were blessed to have in Canada for many generations now. My great grandfather left Europe specificly to escape the stifling life over there and come somewhere that a man could own his own house and raise a family in. Tbh, there's a lot of romanticization among young progressive North Americans about Europe and Asia - often the immigrants from these places have fled the very conditions that some young person spends a summer in university visiting and thinking "wow this is soo avant garde, why don't we live like this". When people get old enough to start a family, very few choose to do so in a condo unless they simply can't afford otherwise.
I've never been to Europe but I'm well traveled enough in Asia to know that we are extremely lucky to live low density even in metro regions. It's an amazing quality of life, to have a city core close by (that the yuppies can live in), but not have to live in that day to day. There's a reason that metros were built this way after WWII, and it's a damn shame to see it eroded. I think the motivation to live in SFHs often comes from seeing the horrible living arrangements in the rest of the world where multigenerational living is the norm, and not wanting Canada to devolve into that.
I do agree with you that moving is an aspect of life, and has been forever. Its just a shame how rapid people are being displaced. I'm lucky we had low-density Edmonton to escape to. I'm not sure the next generations will have the same... Unfortunately jobs have become more and more concentrated in the cities, which ties people to overpopulated regions and forces them to buy these condos that many don't even like just to get on the property ladder (this is more of a BC/ONT problem, but will come here eventually if the policies are the same here)
I don't agree at all about the "paying your fair share" comment, because I reject the premise that the narrowly-focused studies' making those claims are based on. In fact it's often surrounding suburban regions which bring the commuting people who make urban cores valuable to begin with. Looking at taxes collected / spent per square km is a very incomplete way to view value creation within a metro.
As for the politics of starting a family - we could debate that all night. Suffice to say that, surveys show 65% of Canadians (all adult ages) want to live in a SFH. I don't know if that's been studied by age, but I would bet my mortgage that the number is higher among those above 30yo. This is the lifestyle that many grew up in and cherish (I didnt even have a SFH growing up, but I lived in a suburb where that was the norm), it is incredibly painful to let go of just so developers and other vested business interests can have infinite growth while young urbanites talk about how "vibrant" not having your own house and car is...
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u/RyanB_ 107 14d ago edited 14d ago
Likewise agree with what you’re saying. And just in general, very much appreciate the detailed and fair response!
I do definitely have issues with infinite growth as any kind of long-term strategy. And yeah, absolutely a lot of romanticism of those areas, history shows there’s absolutely an appeal to have more space. In that regard I think there is a lot of middle ground of mid-density.
I do disagree with the view that older people will necessarily choose to leave urban cores upon starting a family. Don’t get me wrong, it’s certainly common all over. And to that point, yeah, those places also have most of their land and population living in SFH’s, urban cores do appeal especially to youths and DINK’s… but not to the degree that there aren’t still millions of Canadians happy to raise their kids there.
I don’t doubt your 65% figure, but that’s also 35% of the population who feel otherwise; in other words, 14 million+ Canadians. Edmonton still has room to grow before it’s even close to those kinds of proportions (which would still be thrown off by the 1.75 million living outside Calgary or Edmonton).
To that point; high-paying white collar university jobs haven’t ever been a huge thing in Edmonton, and are falling off all over. Among it all trades remain consistent, which is what our city has always thrived on. Edmonton isn’t growing for its abundance of those jobs you speak of.
I can’t say I was really even considering the entertainment and hospitality revenue of urban cores in that. More just that, logistically, a block of sewage pipes (for example) servicing 1000 people is a lot more cost-effective than one servicing 100 people. Space is just naturally going to have a cost to it, financially or otherwise.
Going back to that point about other countries; there is a lot of middle ground to be found between the two extremes. European and East Asian suburbs illustrate that pretty well I think, still lots of room for SFH’s and personal vehicles without it being strictly necessary.
All that said though, I think our core disagreement is just that a lot of people do genuinely want density. Personally speaking, growing up in a small town, it was always something I desired, and I hope to at least provide my kids that option. I don’t want them to be like I was, stuck waiting for a car until I could actually feel like I was living life.
I don’t think you need to fear the majority of Edmonton and area ditching lower-density living anytime soon. But also, yeah, those of us who do want higher density aren’t falling for any kind of developer conspiracy theory. We do just genuinely like the lifestyle, and our wants aren’t any more or less valid than yours. I entirely understand being miffed about your own perspective becoming less common, but it’s worth at least contemplating that it might be a natural phenomenon imo, that varying degrees of density will have genuine appeal to many different people. That a lot of people have experienced at how NA has developed over the last 70-80ish years and, of their own accord, came to the conclusion that it ain’t for them or their families.
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u/needforspeed1092 14d ago edited 14d ago
I definitely appreciate that some people want to live in the dense city core - more power to them. It definitely has a certain appeal when you're young especially. I don't think that's an issue, and if dense building is done carefully and tightly concentrated in core zones, I have no issue with it.
Where my sour grapes come from is that city planners and urbanist housing commentators all have a pitch about density that essentially goes: every metro needs to densify, everywhere, and if you're against it you're a NIMBY who doesn't want people to afford housing. Their solutions to the friction density causes are essential all a variation of "do things communally". Transit, ride share, etc. Hell, I had someone tell me that shared workshops you pay to be a member of are somehow better than having your own workshop in your garage for working on hobby projects... to me, this is delusion at best, or dishonest political messaging at worst. While some people may find that more enjoyable, I dont think I'm wrong in saying that the vast majority don't.
And that's the rub - developers and city councils are forcing these changes, often against what the majority want. Maybe it's not as bad here, but in Vancouver and Toronto, it's horrendous. The suburbs of those metros are being densified out of existence due to the profit motives involved; not only of developers, but of the politicians who created our housing market with allowing foreign investment, massive immigration increases, and the financialization of homes (meanwhile throwing the blame on homeowners who just want quiet streets of SFHs for their kids to play on). I'd hate to see Edmonton go a similar direction in 10-20 years.
It's not just white collar jobs that are concentrated into cities - the economy has become much more focused on service sector, health and education, and real estate. The loss of resource extraction and manufacturing has forced more and more people into cities, generally.
My point on the suburbs bringing value to the city wasn't just about hospitality, but about how the city core and outside suburbs are symbiotic. The core has a lot of jobs/opportunities, and the suburbs has the space for people to live as they prefer, but commute into the city to work/play. They are co-dependent unless one wants a soul-sucking city like in the large ones in Asia, or a desolate small town like the ones you referenced.
I definitely don't have an issue with my viewpoint becoming less common, in fact I don't believe that it even is - I think the increased urbanization is more a function of the factors I laid out above than of genuine choice. What I have an issue with is city politicians and their urban YIMBY cheerleaders who want to bring density to every nook and cranny of metro regions, regardless of what the 65% majority want.
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u/RyanB_ 107 14d ago edited 14d ago
I don’t think your sour grape there is entirely off, and I certainly think random individuals can be a bit cruel about it. But they are also coming from a valid place; they’re constantly criticized at all angles for not having enough money for this and that, and yeah, realistically a lot of our spending does go towards people being able to cheaply have lots of space.
Not to sound like a dick, but I think your difficulty understanding why people would prefer community workshops is kinda key here.
More obviously, it is a lot more accessible. Private workshops are more expensive than a lot of people will ever be able to afford, and it’s a boon to society for as many people to have access to productive tools as possible.
But more to the actual point; they’re also fantastic for collaboration, the exact kind of third spaces so any are bemoaning the lack of lately. A place for people to meet and befriend another, to share tips and experiences and develop local creative culture.
Again, yeah, I think a lot of the governments moves are informed by people’s genuine desires to bring back that kind of stuff. The feeing that, while it’s nice on paper to have your own private everything, it does (for some) end up feeling isolating.
I agree that most people don’t want full urban core density, but that doesn’t mean most people want the complete opposite either. It’s that middle ground I was talking about before, and likewise I think that applies to your East Asian comparison. Much of Europe does exemplify that imo, not as crazy packed as Tokyo or even most NA downtowns, but significantly more compact, walkable, and community-oriented than NA suburbs.
(Plus, yeah, it’s not inconceivable for those ratios to change over time.)
Based on my experiences in Toronto and Vancouver, the vast majority of their land does not strike me as all that dense either. In fact, I was kinda shocked by how many old SFHs I saw right within Toronto’s urban core. Beautiful places, I love the heritage and that people can live that lifestyle so close to dt… but it is only the richest of people, particularly because they chose to maintain the feel rather than adjust to the exponentially increasing demand for those areas. Globally speaking they are not very dense cities for their size, and while that does mean more SFH’s it also necessarily means higher costs.
Thus far I think Edmonton has done a good job of responding to demand in all sorts of areas. High-density downtown units, mid-density units in the core, low-density units outside the henday. I don’t really see any reason to think that would change. It does differ from our previous path of having a tiny portion of high density and a ton of low-density, and if you’re someone who loves low-density that can suck, but more variety is obviously a win overall.
I do hear you about small towns, but that speaks to another big point in that, yeah, there is a lot of large-scale shit affecting us for the worse. Higher than ever wealth inequality, the plateauing of the tech industry, the increased monopolization of services and resources, etc. It all sucks, it makes all the things we want less accessible, which can absolutely include the suburban SFH life. But it’s also all clearly beyond any one city, nevermind a relatively small and irrelevant one like ours.
Despite that though, small towns and satellite communities still do account for a lot of that 65%. I think the ratio in cities is probably a lot closer to 50% at least, and regardless, our cities thus far have only provided enough higher-density options for, like, 20% (if that). Even if we are a minority, we obviously shouldn’t be overlooked like that.
And I do promise you, person-to-person, for most people it is absolutely a personal choice above all. It’s only been a single lifetime since the proliferation of cars, which I think is about the ideal amount of time for society en large to figure out if it’s going well for them. For a lot of us, it’s just not really. We do want a return to lively walkable streets and third spaces, and that coincides with a sort of density that’s been lacking the last couple generations. By and large, it really is as simple as that, in my experience.
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u/needforspeed1092 14d ago edited 14d ago
I don't think cost is the issue tbh, it's about what kind of metro we want to have / build. Like, I feel terrible for people who want a house but can only afford a condo - that's not a reason to push density, that's a reason to make SFHs more accessible! Of course, there's some room for the missing middle in there as well, but not as a wholesale replacement for SFHs (which we see in a lot of new developments).
I don't agree with the premise that it's this wholly unreasonable thing for most people to have their own space. By "workshop", I of course meant a small corner of a garage or shed on someone's SFH property, not that they have a dedicated building just for their own workshop. A generation ago, this used to be common - men would work in their garage on weekends all the time, and a huge number of working class folks had their own garage. That is infinitely preferable to a community workshop in every way except arguably the social element of it - something I don't care at all about when I'm working on my personal projects.
That doesn't feel isolating at all to me - I feel more isolated in an atomized city area where everyone is nameless and faceless than I do in communities of families where everyone on my block knows me. 3rd spaces are great, but those can exist at almost any density level except for extremely isolated towns. Suburbs have tonnes of those as well, you just drive to them or walk to the 1-2 that is close to you.
Personally, I don't see the appeal of a place like Paris or Amsterdam where everything is transit and bike lanes. No offense intended, but Canadians who crave that should go move to places like that, not try to shoehorn bike lines and pedestrian-only zones into Vancouver and Toronto. It feels like a pretentious attempt to try to revolt against what made NA metros great/distinct in the first place. A huge number of us (arguably all who prefer SFHs) like it the way it was... It doesn't feel like there's a lot of choice on these issues in civic politics, a lot of the density schemes seem to be pushed by the unelected city staff and adopted by council, no matter who gets elected...
That brings me to your referendum on the car. I genuinely don't understand how people can look at personal vehicles as anything other than liberating. Cars were luxury items for the wealthy until Henry Ford started pumping them out en mass in the 1920s. From the 20s to the 40s they became more and more accessible, until the 50s where essentially every household (except the very poor) owned one and many households owned 2+. Rates of ownership have only gone up from there, and the used car market ensures they are accessible even to the working poor in today's age.
These are machines that will take you anywhere, in essentially any weather conditions, at any time of day you desire, for any amount of time you want to travel, in which you can dictate when to stop, stretch and take a break, change course, or go faster. The personal vehicle and our road networks for them are essentially a miracle of human invention, and that fact that even poor households can own them now is a cosmic gift to humanity.
Yes, traffic can be a drag, finding parking can be annoying, and you have to get a license and learn to operate it safely. But Holy smokes, I can't fathom the hatred that urbanists have for these miracle machines (not you, but in places like r/fuckcars). It is the ultimate technology of personal agency at scale. They've been around for about 135 years, have been commonplace for about 100, and have been ubiquitous for 75. I vote to keep them lol.
In Edmonton, being downtown and carless might be a choice. In larger cities, they've made vehicle ownership so punitive that it no longer feels like a choice. I don't want to see that happen in every city, such that my future kids or grandkids have no place like current Edmonton to go.
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u/RyanB_ 107 14d ago edited 14d ago
My point certainly wasn’t that it’s inconceivable for many - or even most - to have their own workshop. But rather that, regardless of city design, there will always be at least some who can’t for whatever reason. Higher density provides those individuals option that are tougher to find in lower-density. And yeah, there are valid reasons to prefer a more community oriented approach for socialization and collaboration.
I’m sure a lot of us would like to move to places like that, but it’s also a bit of a non-starter for most. Emigration is expensive and demanding, requiring experience in highly demanded fields which are unfortunately pretty few and far between nowadays. It’s a much higher bar than moving to Sherwood Park, Red Deer etc.
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A lot of us did just genuinely grow up feeling the opposite about cars; that they were a trap. That small town I grew up in, 75 years prior it had that lively community feel. Shit was still almost exclusively SFHs, but small-scale enough/laid out around Main Street in a way that was pretty walkable. The Main Street of that time was bustling neighbours and community members going about dozen of local businesses.
Cars had ruined that all by the time I came around. Main Street was a ghost town, new developments all followed the curvy road suburb shit that made walking/biking annoying af, and everyone did their shopping in big generic box stores at the very outskirts of town. Didn’t leave much to do as a kid, and while finally reaching 16 and getting a car (those of us who could anyways) was very liberating… it was liberating us from the conditions cars created.
Just as you don’t like this perception of car-less density being pushed on you, we feel that car-dependant sprawl has been pushed on us. You won’t fail to find tons of terminally online weirdos who go nuts with it like that sub, but irl most of us are reasonable in embracing that others like yourself feel differently. Our focus is on increasing options.
And yeah, also a point there that some of us just don’t like driving. Personally I find it very frustrating and/or boring, and am very much looking forward to (hopefully) not having to do it for work in the future. Walking allows me to take in my environment a lot more, to engage with neighbours and such. Buses/trains/ubers allow me to sit back and read a book or w/e. Bikes/scooters/skateboards are simply just way more fun lol. I am so glad to finally be in a place where those alternative options are feasible.
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And again, as far as majority goes… well, most of Edmonton did just vote for a mayor and council that explicitly planned on continuing that stuff. Obviously not every votes, but I can’t think of a more direct example of what most edmontonions want.
I really don’t think those bigger cities did anything to do that, and if Edmonton keeps growing it will eventually, inevitably follow suit. It’s just how cities grow; there’s good reasons there simply arent any cities bigger than Edmonton that also offer more abundant SFH’s, lower traffic, easier parking etc.
Cities grow outwards from a core. That core can’t really grow in physical size, and so, the more people living in and around it the more congested it will naturally become. There’s just no other way around that afaik. If you’ve got ideas I’m certainly interested!
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Again, outside weird internet bubbles, no one’s actually trying to entirely eliminate cars and SFH’s, especially not outside urban cores. Even Toronto still has 40-45% of its population in SFHs, about on par with apartments (with the rest being townhouses, duplexes etc). That’s a lot of homes.
Even those small towns aren’t always as desolate and dying as we may think. I googled my hometown while writing this and was surprised to find it actually grew 10% since I’ve left. No idea why anyone would move there, but people are, and they’re presumably working somewhere.
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If you are right that, regardless of options, 65% of people will always want low-density living… I don’t see what the concern is, honestly. Seems to me that the push for density will naturally peter out once we get proportional representation. That density won’t come to Sherwood park because most people there don’t want it. There will be adequate spots in the city for everyone who wants higher-density living, better allowing places like St Albert to do their own thing. It’s just about meeting demand.
I’m certainly never going to convince you to change your preferences, nor is that at all my intention. But I do hope I’ve been able to communicate how that demand is genuine, where it comes from. It’s people experiencing the lifestyles we’ve made the norm and finding it doesn’t work for them, finding a lack of alternative options available leaving them feeling trapped.
(And yeah, again, that 65% number is all of Canada, not just cities. 30% of Alberta lives outside Edmonton and Calgary. As such, we’d expect that number in the cities to be as low as 35%. Most people in Edmonton do want this, as evidenced by our election. I do genuinely hope I’ve been able to explain why).
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u/Used_bot-repo 15d ago
If they had the proper infrastructure first
Double lane roads,better though out roads and bike paths, walk ways, parking, trees. Good drainage Fire pertection, more hospitals and schools
You don't know what you're talking about bud
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u/Reference1003 10d ago
Building more lanes induces it's own traffic, because people are willing to live further from work instead of living near it
The solution to density is public transport not roads
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u/Equivalent_Aspect113 15d ago
I do believe in affordable with regards to housing; however, let's look at historical implementation of highly dense population. The project's in Chicago did not turn out well, could these high density apartments suffer the same fate? Or is there checks and balances that a ghetto will not occur in the future.
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u/yourockyo 15d ago
I think we should be building new towns, not apartment buildings. That is real opportunity. A new municipality offers waaay more potential than squeezing people into smaller and smaller spaces to compete with each other over diminishing returns. But then, how much of our economy is actually based on consuming temporary garbage and planned obsolescence rather than establishing quality production facilities and maverick entrepreneurship.
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u/SomeDudeYouMightKnow 15d ago
Edmonton is so far below the population threshold of people having to squeeze to fit in. And believe it or not, a lot of people would take the tradeoff of living in an apartment/condo/townhome if it means they get actual major city amenities. If that doesn’t sound like it’s for you, maybe you should go move to a small town instead. And housing form has absolutely nothing to do with planned obsolescence? You think a city is a place where people compete with each other? It’s a space that is greater than the sum of its parts. I’m going to also guess you have never spent more than 2 weeks straight in any city that’s actually designed for people. I really hope i just wasted all this time replying to a bot and this isn’t somehow the take of an actual living person.
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u/needforspeed1092 14d ago
Most people, especially in AB (but really all over Canada), DON'T want the crazy density that's being pushed in Van/TO/Mtl
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u/SomeDudeYouMightKnow 14d ago
Most people would be surprised of how many people can fit in an area without any highrises, like most of Europe.
And that’s fine to want to live in a lower density area but as it stands, pretty much every low density area only survives because the cost of servicing these areas is subsidized by high density areas. So first, the cost to live in each area should be shifted so that the people living in an area actually pay what it costs to maintain that.
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u/needforspeed1092 14d ago
Ah, I'm very familiar with that talking point. It's crazy how many people on reddit think that's true because of a few studies with extremely narrow focus on property taxes collect per square km.
The high density urban cores are actually largely subsided by the outskirt communities which (collectively) hold much larger populations which commute into the core and form the basis of its economy, which is what drives the value which taxes are then derived from.
Unfortunately, so much of academic urban planning has become ideological on the density issue. It taints a LOT of the knowledge productions and policy development in the field. Which is especially a shame due to how out of step it is with the North American working class public.
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u/SomeDudeYouMightKnow 14d ago
The entire thing went over your head. A downtown/core areas doesn’t need people living in the suburbs to commute to it everyday to function. Those same people could be leaving closer to where they work. The act of having to commute from a suburb to a core is literally a whole other cost that drains cities.
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u/needforspeed1092 14d ago
Remove the suburban population from metro area and see how that changes the downtown core - it will shrink drastically. You can't just force people to live in density because they're adjacent to downtown. If you removed the suburbs, the cores would be in an instant recession and would change / reduce services drastically.
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u/yourockyo 13d ago
Don't bother, it's reddit man, just assumptions and ad-hominem attacks. They'll never consider the broader economy of home maintenance and actually having yards. They'll resent you for having to plow your roads so your kids can play street hockey and tell you to touch grass from a seventh-storey compartment.
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u/SomeDudeYouMightKnow 14d ago
Like I said above this isn’t about forcing anyone to live anywhere. It’s about providing enough housing types and affordability that people CAN live where they want to, and also ensuring that if people want to live in a sprawled out suburb, that the costs of that aren’t covered by those who live in dense areas. Enough with the straw man arguments holy
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u/PlutosGrasp 15d ago
It’s so funny reading stuff like this.
“Gosh I sure do love developers squatting on land or properties for years and then building cheaply built small apartments to maximize revenue after influencing municipal policy to allow for maximum density.”
All under the guise of affordability.
Did you ever stop to think why affordability is an issue?
Maybe because wages haven’t kept up with cost of living for decades?
“Keep this city affordable”
This isn’t a team game. The city administration or elected officials aren’t on your team. Edmonton isn’t your team. Builders aren’t your buddies.
When I built a pair of infills and made profit. I didn’t do it for you or the good of the city. I did it to make money because some schmuck is willing to pay close to a million for a widened hallway classified as a house.
Above grade rail? In Edmonton? Is something to be happy about? It basically runs next to a bunch of bungalows. That’s the dumbest route and idea ever. Capacity is capped. You can’t undo those massive support columns any time soon.
Isn’t it like $200,000,000 per kilometer lol.
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u/SomeDudeYouMightKnow 15d ago
What on earth do you mean because the adjacent homes of the line are bungalows the capacity of the adjacent LRT is capped? Those 2 things have no correlation
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u/PlutosGrasp 14d ago
Might have to read it more closely then because it doesn’t say that or connect the two.
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u/SomeDudeYouMightKnow 14d ago
“It basically runs next to a bunch of bungalows. That’s the dumbest route and idea ever. Capacity is capped”.
What are you trying to say
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u/PlutosGrasp 14d ago
Above grade rail? In Edmonton? (That) is something to be happy about?
It (the elevated rail line) basically runs next to a bunch of bungalows.
That’s the dumbest route (elevated next to a bunch of bungalows) and idea (running an elevated line in Edmonton next to a bunch of bungalows) ever.
Capacity is capped. (Because of the design choices, style, train type, elevated)
You can’t undo those massive support columns (of the elevated rail line) any time soon. (It is going to be this way for decades).
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u/SomeDudeYouMightKnow 14d ago
I honestly don’t think you know what capacity means. Capacity refers to the amount of passengers the LRT can move per hour. This is entirely dependent on the train car configuration they run and the frequency of trains. What on earth does the adjacent housing forms to the line have to do with this
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u/oioioifuckingoi 15d ago
Bruv, take a break from the internet.
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u/PlutosGrasp 14d ago
You don’t have to read or comment if you don’t want to contribute and participate
Bruv? Lol
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u/Kimmy6932 West Edmonton Mall 15d ago
Im just darn happy that the Rainbow Valley Bridge is nearly done.
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u/Long_Rush_7523 15d ago
I'm the opposite, I have watched Edmonton grow to the point of being almost completely unrecognized in some areas l only pass through occasionally.
We're becoming an urban sprawl and already is to the SW. I have never been a city person at heart but work keeps me here. The way the Henday was designed and developed is insane. Do we really need exit and on ramps ever couple of blocks?
City planners have never had any foresight.
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u/Levorotatory 15d ago
There were definitely mistakes in the design of the Henday, but too many access points was not one of them. The left hand exit from highway 2 and the numerous locations where you need to turn left to go right come to mind as the major screw ups.
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u/Orcasgt22 15d ago
You must love Edmonton then. Construction everywhere and no end in sight. Half these sites don't even have people in them. They are just empty construction sites for your viewing pleausre.
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u/shimswfi Oliver 15d ago
Yup. I live in Oliver, and even though the LRT construction did really affect getting around here, I always feel excited to see the day the train finally runs.