yeggator
Active Member
The Transportation Utility Corridor is basically a green belt and look at all the sprawl that hopped past it.
- Thread starter Daveography
- Start date
yeggator
Active Member
But real talk, I'd rather have unrestrained contiguous sprawl over sprawl that leapfrogs past a green belt.
occidentalcapital
Senior Member
just make sure the airport is within the green belt, please. I want urban fabric out to YEG. A greenbelt would absolutely have to be a provincial initiative given that the region has many different municipalities. And we'd better loosen density limits pretty darn quick or you will quickly have unaffordable housing.
thommyjo
Senior Member
Yeah, lots of challenges with a green belt thanks to our surrounding municipalities.
Anyone know options for that? I always bug my st albert friends that they don't want to join edmonton and pay our taxes, but they all work and study in ednonton and most of their friends are in the city.
Do we limit transit access to the peripherals, limit road build outs, and introduce tolls? So its like...hey, you can live in Devon if you want...its just going to suck to access the city, so you can't get away with the cheap land, but demanding the expensive services extend to you?
.
Or do we do the opposite, instead of the Stick, we go with a Carrot. Has anyone heard of something like a first time home buyers credit for mature builds? Like I wonder if the city offered a credit or grant program of sorts for either mature neighbourhoods or homes over a certain age?
Young people buying in mature areas instead of the edges is key to limiting sprawl cause its shapes whole lifestyles and patterns for decades to come. It also influences schools dramatically, which is the biggest cost to our sprawl I believe I've read (closing old schools while building new ones, which creates cyclical challenges as neighbourhood attractiveness is based on schools).
Anyone know options for that? I always bug my st albert friends that they don't want to join edmonton and pay our taxes, but they all work and study in ednonton and most of their friends are in the city.
Do we limit transit access to the peripherals, limit road build outs, and introduce tolls? So its like...hey, you can live in Devon if you want...its just going to suck to access the city, so you can't get away with the cheap land, but demanding the expensive services extend to you?
.
Or do we do the opposite, instead of the Stick, we go with a Carrot. Has anyone heard of something like a first time home buyers credit for mature builds? Like I wonder if the city offered a credit or grant program of sorts for either mature neighbourhoods or homes over a certain age?
Young people buying in mature areas instead of the edges is key to limiting sprawl cause its shapes whole lifestyles and patterns for decades to come. It also influences schools dramatically, which is the biggest cost to our sprawl I believe I've read (closing old schools while building new ones, which creates cyclical challenges as neighbourhood attractiveness is based on schools).
ChazYEG
Senior Member
I'll go even further: why not both?!
Give tax credits for people buying into mature neighborhoods, especially if they're renewing an older house.
Stick toll booths on every access possible (I'd say we can keep the QE II and the Yellowhead free, though)...
Why? I don't see Absolutely ANY practical advantage of that, unless we're 100% bringing the LRT down to YEG. Other than that, it's just terrible sprawl like any other.
occidentalcapital
Senior Member
psychological connection to the airport
occidentalcapital
Senior Member
In terms of creating an urban growth boundary, the only practical option is for it to come from the province under provincial land use rules. Or, Edmonton could annex all the surrounding communities and institute the boundary itself. But, this seems politically unlikely to occur. Also, if you annex all the rural areas, be prepared for Mike Nickel 2.0 to be elected Mayor. See Rob Ford in Toronto.
ChazYEG
Senior Member
Which is a little bit of a silly reason to continuing to allow sprawl. The area between the southernmost developed places in Edmonton and YEG is MASSIVE. On a straight line, from 41 Av SW to the boundaries of YEG it's roughly 7km and, by looking at the map, it's an area of about 8x Allard + Callaghan + Rutherford + MacEwan + Blackmud Creek. Imagine how many people would be needed to get there? I'd say at least about 100k. Imagine all (or most) of these people in our mature neighborhoods?
yeggator
Active Member
100k is not a lot when the city wants that land to be a part of our plan to accommodate 2 million people in total.
yeggator
Active Member
I'm actually with @occidentalcapital on allowing contiguous urban development to the airport. It would allow us to develop industrial areas within our city limits just north of Highway 19 that are highly integrated with the airport to improve the efficiency of logistics and provide an excellent tax base for Edmonton. Then, the suburban development around that commercial and industrial development could accommodate all of the workers in these employment areas. And all of that would justify the cherry on top which is development of the LRT to the airport. In fact, I'd rather see the city prioritize development in this area over development in Horse Hills and the Edmonton Energy and Technology Park. Honestly, they could keep Horse Hills and the EETP as urban farmland for another 40 years for all I care.
ChazYEG
Senior Member
100k was my lowest estimate, but if we just multiply the population of the area I mentioned by 8, we get to 250~270k, give or take, which is about 1/4 of the intended growth. That's A LOT of people.
It stands that I still don't see any actual, practical advantage to sprawling all the way down to YEG, instead of developing/redeveloping areas inside the ring road, at the very least.
I don't understand this fixation with "connecting" the airport. Plenty of cities with healthy airports and great access to them without the city actually being around it. Not to mention the UNBEARABLE noise pollution of living near an airport (speaking from experience).
MattPT
Active Member
calling any periphery development sprawl isn’t realistic. There are huge employment centres Southside, Nisku, airport. Living where you work and better planned communities in the area near the airport would make more sense than residents of Blatchford driving to these areas for employment. (Trying to bring blatchford back into the discussion lol)
That is also the reason I am all for this development taking as long as necessary as long as they stick to the plan. If they stick to the vision, this will be a complete community. But even so, that doesn’t mean people will use the community as intended... Common issue in most cities. Blatchford can be as forward thinking as it wants but if residents there are commuting to Nisku or Acheson... kind of defeats the purpose lol.
Looking at the plan for Blatchford, and going to walk the streets in person, this could be a very special well planned area. We shouldn’t get sucked into developing this as quick as possible at any cost. What purpose would that serve? Sure it would be “done”… But what’s the point if it’s not done well.
That is also the reason I am all for this development taking as long as necessary as long as they stick to the plan. If they stick to the vision, this will be a complete community. But even so, that doesn’t mean people will use the community as intended... Common issue in most cities. Blatchford can be as forward thinking as it wants but if residents there are commuting to Nisku or Acheson... kind of defeats the purpose lol.
Looking at the plan for Blatchford, and going to walk the streets in person, this could be a very special well planned area. We shouldn’t get sucked into developing this as quick as possible at any cost. What purpose would that serve? Sure it would be “done”… But what’s the point if it’s not done well.
strata
Active Member
To play devil's advocate...
The purpose of getting is done quickly is
1) Extract the value out of the raw land (plus profit of development) back into the City's pocket
2) Accelerate creating a massive property tax base that will pay large amounts of taxes to the City (in perpetuity) without requiring the same level of infrastructure investments and new ongoing operating costs as greenfield development
It doesn't matter where in Edmonton you live, those are two very good things for every citizen. It provides much needed revenue for whatever your flavor is: lower property taxes, infrastructure investments to unlock more core redevelopment, higher levels of service for core services, investment capital in green energy, etc, etc.
thommyjo
Senior Member
I agree. The lost revenue every year is in the tens, and soon to be hundreds of millions vs if the site was built out faster. It does matter whether it takes 10-15 years vs 30-40.
Airboy
Senior Member
Just for perspective. Griesbach is still building out.
Blatchford also became available during a downturn and then a pandemic.
2 more complexes are being added to the district energy system this month. and enhancements to the energy recovery systems are ongoing.
Blatchford also became available during a downturn and then a pandemic.
2 more complexes are being added to the district energy system this month. and enhancements to the energy recovery systems are ongoing.