Golfing guy
Active Member
It wasn’t long ago the election was based off of that. Nenshi vs Smith. Smith was backed by developers
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- Thread starter Surrealplaces
- Start date
Why wouldn't we push for suburban communities? They allow us to build a lot of units quickly, something that can't happen in a redevelopment. They're often denser than what can be built as a redevelopment, too.
There's also the fact that if Calgary doesn't build these communities, the surrounding MDs will, only without transit service, and to a lower standard in a number of ways.
There's also the fact that if Calgary doesn't build these communities, the surrounding MDs will, only without transit service, and to a lower standard in a number of ways.
CalgaryTiger
Senior Member
I don't think we're saying "they should not be built 'period'". At least I'm not.
Just my annual or maybe quarterly realization that there's equalization at all levels (Alberta/Ontario>Quebec/Maritimes, Calgary/Edmonton>Rural Alberta Municipalities). At the city level, established communities equalize new communities whose taxes for decades go to pay off the upfront cost of city services that mean from the City's perspective CAPEX and OPEX of these communities do not make the city whole for some time.
For me, it isn't a "we should build up not out". It is a we should build out AND up. My point: It is typically the suburban councillors who do not support density, look at the votes on key inner-city density projects. Those councillors should realize that it is efficient use of existing services in those inner-city communities that make suburban communities possible while allowing tax increases to not be insane. (Tongue-in-cheek and to use Trump's mentality) I mean they don't even say thank you, us inner-city folk could just charge them congestion fees for accessing the services we pay for while they're still paying off their basic infrastructure services.
MichaelS
Senior Member
The bolded is not necessarily true anymore, for every community. While the data is not perfect, some of the business cases for these new greenfield communities turn revenue positive for the City in pretty short order. This is due to the more compact, dense nature of the development we see in the greenfield under our relativel new MDP policies. Couple that with substantially increased offsite levies, and some suburbs (location dependent) are not the financial drain that they have been characterized as.
darwink
Senior Member
It really depends. Admin was really pushed by council to make communities look better, and the business cases were torqued to the point that Admin went from recommended no communities to recommending 12 or 14 iirc.
I don't think this is a bad thing though. TBH besides the beltline I doubt any residential communities 'pay' for themselves.
The businesses cases IMO are most importantly used to tell developers to go back and improve their proposal if the ROI is egregiously negative, and since they are co-developed and iterative, the developer can get feedback like: change this road to align with that road, so the transit route would work a lot better and fire trucks can serve 3 adjacent neighbourhoods instead of 2. Before even changing the proposed unit mixes.
I don't really have a problem with new subdivisions being built, as long as we do it as smart as we can. When a city is growing by 30k-100k er year, we don't have much of a choice. Increasing the density has been fairly successful in recent years, as the new neighborhoods of today are more densely populated than just about any neighborhood built before 2010. Many are being in built in areas where the LRT can be extended (North of Saddletowne, south of Shawnessy, Around Seton, Springbank Hill , and where the Green Line will eventually go. and there's been more thought put into main streets, instead of a few strip malls scattered here and there. Not perfect, but an improvement over previous decades.
As long as the new developments pay a decent share of the newly added cost I'm okay with it. My compliant was always that the city wasn't incentivizing inner city builds, but with blanket zoning a lot of that has changed. The issue now seems to be those neighborhoods from 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's. They're low density and not set up in a way that's conducive to the increased zoning builds we see in places like Capital Hill, Killarney, etc..
A while back there was discussion of having a hybrid of property value and property frontage for property tax instead of straight property value. I think kt's one way to allow people to have their single family homes in new neighborhoods, or in older less dense neighborhoods, if they don't mind paying a bit extra.
As long as the new developments pay a decent share of the newly added cost I'm okay with it. My compliant was always that the city wasn't incentivizing inner city builds, but with blanket zoning a lot of that has changed. The issue now seems to be those neighborhoods from 50's, 60's, 70's and 80's. They're low density and not set up in a way that's conducive to the increased zoning builds we see in places like Capital Hill, Killarney, etc..
A while back there was discussion of having a hybrid of property value and property frontage for property tax instead of straight property value. I think kt's one way to allow people to have their single family homes in new neighborhoods, or in older less dense neighborhoods, if they don't mind paying a bit extra.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
Despite rhetoric often put forward by the suburban development lobbyists, I don't think the city's position has ever been anti-suburban growth in any meaningful way.
"Both up and out" has been in vogue for at least 20 years. Calgary has never entertained any sense of "hard" boundary like a greenbelt to curtail suburban growth, nor has ever materially favoured redevelopment over suburban growth through restricting the suburban side. If we really didn't want suburban communities we'd have killed them like other cities did with a far more draconian approach decades ago (likely triggering the leap-frogging to surrounding municipalities). Never be fooled by anti-suburban claims in Calgary, the proof is in the physical form of the city - obviously we didn't limit suburban growth here.
What's changed in the past few decades is the more sophisticated approach to trying to land a more balanced cost-sharing approach to suburban growth. This is both an input and output of becoming a larger city: at greater scales and distances suburban growth infrastructure starts to not scale well, land gets more expensive. Costs keep increasing and the scale of new development hits more threshold problems that trigger yet more costs. The older models that were more generous (i.e. more public subsidy of growth infrastructure) become unsustainable, necessitating change. All this happened in the last 20 years.
At the same time, there's far more recognition on the barriers to redevelopment and much more effective approaches to remove these barriers. The citywide rezoning efforts, incrementally improving infill products, and the many big and small rule changes to help infill growth are part of this. The scale and pace of redevelopment is evidence that this too is working.
The result, IMO, is that Calgary has found a reasonable balance between infill and greenfield development, given our size and political opportunities/constraints. Nothing is perfect and there's plenty of pain points, but overall it's a positive balance. Things will keep changing as the city does - no system is static.
Next for us is being a bigger metro-region, where the increasing distance and commute times thanks to continued suburban growth really start boosting the business case for more large-scale redevelopment opportunities at places like Chinook, North Hill, University etc. Secondary centres within the city will start forming with a critical mass of interesting stuff going on (one day, the Beltline may not be the only place with a real nightlife!) Some of that has started already, but will continue as the size of the overall city increases.
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1875
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thecivilengineer
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Our New Home
CalgaryTiger
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Our new home features nine tower floors dedicated to innovative design education and research, a main floor community-facing Design Justice Lab, and a Digital Fabrication Workshop in an adjacent three-story annex.Our New Home
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This annex looks to be across 7th Ave. Interesting. Wonder is this it or if this is just the beginning.
I'm really liking this conversion of floors to Education space. It's going to be a nice addition to that part of downtown.
darwink
Senior Member
Makes me wonder about elevators, if even normal office use would be viable for upper floors, with dedicated, or higher speed/capacity elevators.
CBBarnett
Senior Member
And the 8th Street public realm upgrade starting construction this year. With all the conversions - on top of what was already the densest area of the city - it's awesome to see so much activity in one place.
thecivilengineer
Active Member
starting this month.
thecivilengineer
Active Member
#ucalgary | University of Calgary
#UCalgary President Ed McCauley announces School of Architecture, Planning and Landscape and City of Calgary partnership to convert downtown office space into new home for 1,200 students featuring classrooms, labs, design studios and research spaces in Calgary’s core. School of Architecture...
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