The Way we Grow/Sprawl

November 14th, 2009 in 2007-2010 Term, A city with better housing & transportation choices, A fair city, A fiscally responsible city, An environmentally responsible city, Smarter Planning, Urban Sprawl
townhomes modern urban - istock

Good urban form, by way of example.

I caused a bit of a stir on Thursday at Council by raising some concerns about the city’s proposed development plan ‘The Way we Grow’. I rather flippantly suggested we could call it ‘The Way we Sprawl.’

Scott McKeen wrote about the plan in Friday’s Journal and his critique is similar to mine. In spite of what he said, there are some very positive things in this plan, so I don’t want to write it off completely. I’ll come back to that.

First, though, the part of the plan I spoke against and voted against yesterday is the part where our expectations for relative share of growth are set out, which is section 2.1.1.2, on page 13, which reads:

Encourage a greater percentage 25% of city-wide housing unit growth to locate in the Downtown and mature neighbourhoods (see Map 3: Mature Neighbourhood Overlay) and around premium transit locations where infrastructure capacity supports redevelopment.

The underlying assumption of the plan is that the city will grow by 400,000 people in the next 30 years. This means 75% of the units will be outside of the core and away from ‘premium transit’ (i.e. LRT or the very best bus service). Furthermore, since we’re assuming that households occupying infill and intensification units have fewer members, 25% of units in the core only comes to 20% of the people (which has been our experience, since families with children still largely flock to the suburbs, vs. the singles and empty nesters who may pick smaller units with better locations). On other words, our plan presumes that 320,000 people will locate on the periphery, near or beyond Anthony Henday Drive.

I find this tough to swallow.

But here’s the plan’s qualifying statement in the plan about how fast we can ‘turn the ship’ from our suburban character to urban, from page 12:

Changing our current growth pattern will take time.  Edmonton’s mature neighbourhoods received 18% of the city’s growth in housing units in 2007; despite this unit growth, the population in these mature areas has declined in recent years.  Between 2005 and 2008, mature neighbourhoods declined in population by 1%.  All new population growth during this time occurred in other areas of the city, primarily in our developing communities.  The MDP proposes a new direction for growth and it will take time to effect change.  The Plan is a long term strategy and will require incremental decisions that support our commitment to saying “yes” to the things we want and need and “no” to the things that do not advance our City Vision and goals.

I think we need to ‘turn the ship’ faster and push for a bigger share of growth to be urban, rather than suburban, over the 30 years of the plan. Easier said then done, yes, but let’s ask why would it be desirable to urbanize at least as much as we suburbanize?

  • A less efficient city will cost more to serve well, or will end up with declining services. We know these peripheral neighbourhoods will be very expensive to deliver services to and maintain infrastructure for; things like fire protection, waste collection, and transit will be more costly to deliver to further suburbia than if we densify the exiting footprint properly. This is intuitive, but the city is also studying this. Wish we had the results.
  • Peripheral neighbourhoods, no matter how walkable or attractive, will lock in automobile dependancy for the vast majority of their residents. There is well-documented public health evidence that automobile dependance leads to higher rates of obesity as well as impacts to emotional well-being. Our council-stated goal to see a shift from car use to other modes of transportation (principally transit, walking and cycling) stands in jeopardy. This means more traffic, more delay, more private and public expense on cars and infrastructure.
  • Plus there’s no way we achieve community-wide reductions in greenhouse gasses with rising distances travelled by car and worsening downstream gridlock.

In other words, for fiscal, social and environmental reasons, there is a strong case against conceding to so much peripheral development. Again, I’m not calling for a halt to it, since I don’t see how we could accomplish that under current legislation. I’m calling for greater urbanization within today’s footprint. We’re told that market demand’s not there, that demand is for the suburbs, and that we can’t fight that. But I think we have to work to make urban living more family-friendly – which we’re beginning to do – and we need to make it competitive in terms of affordability. This is work worth doing, even if it’s hard. It doesn’t mean cramming families into highrises, it means more duplexes where there are bungalows, nice townhomes where there are underused lands, and family-oriented units on the ground floor of some taller buildings. That, by the way, is city building.

I should note that there is much to like in the plan: the parts that deal with integrating transit and land planning in established areas are positive (section 2.3); the new provisions in chapter 9 about Urban Agriculture and Food are very encouraging; and the design principles for planning in established and new areas are sound in my view (e.g. chapter 3).

The one outstanding issue we’ll grapple with next time Council deals with the plan in February is density targets for new development. These are mandated under the Capital Region Land Use Plan, but these were not going to be discussed in our MDP. At my urging, they will be. Targets were a source of significant debate in Calgary’s recent plan, and were watered down before final passage. If we can achieve sufficient thresholds of density in the new areas then some of the inefficiencies and negative impacts of this growth can be reduced.

22 thoughts on “The Way we Grow/Sprawl”

  1. How about adding tax benefits commercial business solutions within central neighbourhoods, kind of like how Toronto municipalities function? Like allowing Millwoods to have low-rise office towers so workers in companies living in the area can go to work there instead of downtown? Cities within cities would probably work well in Edmonton. Just having shopping as the central of Millwoods or West Edmonton just doesn’t seem to make sense if people aren’t working nearby to enjoy them all week long. And now that SEC is successful, we should have high density residential towers smack in the middle with a transit station between Century Park and MWTC. What has made ‘great cities’ is the pedestrian traffic that allows people to interact with others and experience cultures and lives of others across groups and aggregates one may not usually be found among.

  2. Thanks for these comments Don, clarifying your reported positions this week. We need Councilors who are prepared to do the right thing, if not the easy thing. Increased urban development is in the long term interests of the city, even if it may ruffle a few feathers in the short term. Nice work.

  3. Don.

    This is exactly why you were elected. You are standing up for the future of our city and we do appreciate it. I look forward to hearing your responses in February.

    Once again like many reports, this one sounds like it is made up to satisfy the administration, not the future of Edmontonians. Just like the TMP, the future of Scona Pool, the Trolleybuses. These reports do not respect the wishes of Edmontonians, they respect the wishes of Administration and its time we have more councillors like you taking a stand against this Wish Wash.

    Keep up the positive work and you may be one of the only councillors re-elected!

  4. I was impressed by the ideas behind the Jasper Avenue New vision- and if you can marry that plan to the MDP, and tie in a limitation of sprawl, perhaps we will have a viable, livable and growing downtown population!

  7. Don, interesting perspective. I think the fundamental flaw with the MDP is that it doesn’t seem to take into consideration how the Generation Y cohort will influence the way our city will grow over the next 25-30 years. This cohort, which is the second largest in terms of numbers to the Baby Boomer generation, has a different perspective on how and where they want to live. Recent research into this group has identified a number of key trends:

    1) The majority are delaying marriage and having families. A large number of women within this cohort entering the workforce are tending to focus more on their careers and less on having children. A greater proportion of single and common-law couples are entering the market.

    2) They place a high value on living closer to work and near entertainment / lifestyle amenities. Many don’t want to commute for 1 or 2 hours a day. Many be looking to live in urban and mature communities. They also have a higher tendency of seeking entertainment outside of their house. There will be a greater tendency to live in mixed-use transit-oriented neighbourhoods.

    3) Will demand access to various modes of transportation, particularly transit. This cohort will rely less on the personal automobile for getting aroud. They will demand access to high quality, safe and efficient transit.

    4) They are keen on being green and sustainable. Green buildings and design elements will be important to this cohort.

  8. Hi Don,

    I assume housing unit growth will at least be measured on a net – not a gross – basis. That’s because in mature neighbourhoods there is often a loss of housing units when new housing units are built (e.g. tearing down an old house and building a new one). 20% of the population growth taking place in mature neighbourhoods is likely a generous estimate for the reasons you mention.

    That’s one of the things that troubles me about the proposed LRT Network. The best vehicle for achieving compact urban growth is the land use plan (MDP), not a rail-based transit system whose primary purpose should be to move people as quickly and directly as possible.

    So my concern is that Edmonton will end up with the worst of both worlds. An MDP that allows continued urban sprawl and a LRT network that these suburban folk won’t want to ride because it’s too slow and indirect.

  9. Great comments Don. As per the comments ChrisD left above, I agree in full. Consideration for the impact of demography in our young city, the ‘Richard Florida’ equation, and general progressive foresight seem to be lacking from the MDP draft.
    Not to mention the loss of full potential any LRT plan that isn’t married too a good master land-use document.

    Keep up the good work. We have settled for out-dated planning ideas and mediocrity for far too long in this city.

  10. Hi Don,

    Are you looking at a newer draft than I am? I’ve got one dated October 15 2008, which does not contain the 25% figure for 2.1.1.2. Is there a newer update I should be looking at?

    We’re looking at planning countrywide for transportation networks; I’d like to have the most updated version.

    Thanks

    Jinting

  12. Yes, somewhat confusingly the city has the original October 2008 draft up on the website as part of the project page.

    This is the ‘reference consolidation’ of the document up to October 23, which we debated last week:

    [Link updated] http://is.gd/4XqRA

    Great comments, everyone. I appreciate the interest and thought. I’ll be commenting further on this issue, rest assured.

  13. The link no worky. I’m going to assume that number was in there somewhere. I just finished the Transportation Master Plan. If we are going to be serious about alternate modes of transportation/mode shift, the key will indeed be land use planning.

  15. Just got back from Phoenix. Please do not let us become Phoenix!! There is no hope of getting out of the car culture there – the place is such a huge metropolis that getting from one side to the other takes forever and all the traffic is incredible. Hopefully we can encourage people to live closer to downtown and stop the unsustainable development.

  16. I share similar concerns with the MDP and have been thinking more and more about how urban sprawl is perpetuated. There are just too many incentives to move out to the suburbs. Friends of mine just bought a new house out in the burbs after years of swearing that they would never leave the core, and these were their reasons why:
    – lower housing/land costs that do not reflect the actual costs to the triple bottom line
    – newer schools and gigantic rec centres
    – proximity to large shopping centres like West Ed & 170th St and South West Common
    – ring roads that make commuting to work and shopping easy
    – parking rates in the core that make parking downtown affordable

    I can’t help but think that if people actually had to pay for the true cost of their property – land costs, costs to provide infrastructure to that land, and the cost to the environment (carbon emissions) – they might think twice about moving out to the suburbs. Its just too cheap right now in comparison to buying land in the core, and until it starts hitting people in the pocketbook I unfortunately don’t think things will change too much.

  17. Young people often don’t want to live in sprawling bungalows in quiet boring grid, just-out-side-the-core neighbourhoods, with no sense of “community”.

    Redeveloping a few houses into townhouses or building a new high rise isn’t going to solve everything. A drastic neighbourhood “redo” is in order.

    I live closer to the Anthony Henday then I do downtown, but my area has a *higher population density* than anything between Downtown and here.

    I’d like to see sprawl stopped, or slowed down, however, I wonder if this is possible. Will developers keep building Estate lots around the perimeter of the city? Will Leduc, Stony, St. Albert and Sherwood park fill the sprawl void for us?

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