Building Up And In – Infill 2.0
As Edmonton moves towards becoming a city of a million people, we are rapidly coming to terms with a number of pressures facing our city, including longer commutes, paying for more infrastructure to support more people and building ‘up and in’ to keep our communities vibrant and sustainable.
Of all of these pressures, infill has perhaps been the most contentious – and the most important – for our city. After working to create better conditions for infill development and the communities we build in, the City is turning its attention to the “infill 2.0” plan. Several important and interesting reports were released today that highlight key actions that will address the need to further densify our mature neighbourhoods, address neighbourhood concerns and tackle the affordability of infill in our city.
A few important points about infill are worth reinforcing again. Specifically, infill:
- Makes good economic sense
Growing our mature communities allows us to use the infrastructure we already have (i.e. sewers, roads, neighbourhood parks) instead of building new connections to new communities. - Is good for communities over the long run
Research shows that our mature neighbourhoods are losing residents, their schools are closing and retail is struggling. Infill is a way to make these communities more sustainable. - Provides choice for homebuyers
Today, new home buyers must look to the suburbs for homes they can afford. By providing more choice we give buyers the option to live centrally, reduce car dependency and free up income to spend on other things.
Building more affordable infill was one of my most significant commitments from the re-election campaign with emphasis on focusing our infill efforts along major transit routes and near significant employment centres. I also committed to building more of the so-called “missing-middle” in these key areas, including rowhouses, townhouses, fourplexes and low-mid rise apartments.
I’m pleased to see that the infill roadmap shows how we’ll start to complete this important work. I’ve highlighted a few of the key actions here.
First, and most importantly, the report highlights actions to prioritize infill at key nodes and corridors and create an optimal infill map. This would include focusing infill housing in areas where it makes the most sense and will have the greatest impact, promoting more walkable, human-scale streets. We see good examples of this with projects like Westblock and Southpark on Whyte. This theme of clustering density along transit routes was one of the most popular comments during our recent #yegCommute campaign. Second, the report outlines ways to better inform residents and setting clear expectations about what infill will mean for their community and giving more opportunities for residents’ voices to be heard. This builds on the work the City has done to improve signage on infill sites, working with infill builders on being better neighbours, and enforcing against builders who don’t build with the neighbourhood in mind.
Third, the roadmap discusses ways to improve permitting process timelines and consistency. I had the opportunity to chat with many reputable home builders over the last year who wanted to build more infill but found the inconsistent timelines and processes were too much of a barrier to building more. By improving how we work with builders, we’re able to reduce their interest fees and their cost to building – which should improve the affordability of infill homes. Several other interesting actionables from this report include improving medium scale zoning, making it easier to build the “missing-middle”, reducing the burden of parking requirements, and increasing the opportunities for semi-detached housing which will allow more affordable duplexes to be built in more parts of the city.
We’re on the right track here, and I think many of you will be pleased with this progress. We’re not there yet, but as one of the fastest growing, youngest cities in the country, we must keep moving forward on our infill efforts in order to keep Edmonton vibrant, competitive and sustainable.
What are your thoughts, concerns and comments? I’d like to incorporate them into my feedback for Administration so, please let me know. Your direct feedback fueled a number of changes to how the city engages with both infill and developers, let’s keep this kind of conversation going.
Mr Mayor, the original idea was to provide low-medium priced housing. We seek to knock down approx $400,000.00 house(affordable) and build two $550,000-$800,000 houses(not affordable). Looks like it is just a way for upwardly mobile people to get closer to downtown. It has lost the spirit of what you originally said and campaigned on. Too expensive and obviuosly more tax income. Not a lot of inexpensive infill.
My wife and I recently purchased a duplex in Canora. Our first house purchase. We chose it because it was very close to work, grocery shopping could be done on foot, and future LRT rail lines would be close. We love our decision and also love being so relatively close to downtown, the river valley, Stony plain Road, and other amenities. We agree with the infill projects and look forward to a more dense, less sprawling city.
I support infill building and high density, but please develop the whole safe community neighbourhood concept. Please make sure as you add density you also reconfigure the traffic flow to reduce commuters cutting through these neighbourhoods, close off more access roads to the community and reduce straight through roads. We have been requesting this in the Richie Area for over 4 years and no progress had been made other than to reduce speed limits in playground zones. The traffic safety department had stated this community needs physical deterrents as they do not have the capacity to enforce.