Blatchford Development | ?m | ?s | City of Edmonton

This slow and steady approach works for me. There are 21 completed dwellings, with 24 more planned. The Blatchford development will be measures in decades, not years. And there's nothing wrong with that. Alberta is experiencing VERY slow population growth right now, as Canada is seeing low levels of immigration due to Covid. I think by 2040, the neighbourhood will be very vibrant. And even 2030 it should certainly be a lot more developed than it is now. Though I can't see even 15,000 living there. The houses are quite expensive, and you really have to be car-free. I could see 2,000 to 3,000 people there maybe by 2030 or 2035. But that would require a huge population and construction boom over the next few years. But again, 24 dwellings are currently planned, so to get into the hundreds, or even a thousand dwellings, will require probably another decade at least. But yeah, maybe oil prices will increase, and these mega oil and gas projects will take off again at some points.
 
Come to think of it, if Blatchford is 2.17 square kilometers, it being able to accommodate even 15,000 people is insane considering Edmonton's urban population density is 1855.5/sq km. Blatchford would be denser than downtown if it had to accommodate 15k residents. And half of it is commercially zoned.
 
Tommy2342 said:
This slow and steady approach works for me. There are 21 completed dwellings, with 24 more planned. The Blatchford development will be measures in decades, not years. And there's nothing wrong with that. Alberta is experiencing VERY slow population growth right now, as Canada is seeing low levels of immigration due to Covid. I think by 2040, the neighbourhood will be very vibrant. And even 2030 it should certainly be a lot more developed than it is now. Though I can't see even 15,000 living there. The houses are quite expensive, and you really have to be car-free. I could see 2,000 to 3,000 people there maybe by 2030 or 2035. But that would require a huge population and construction boom over the next few years. But again, 24 dwellings are currently planned, so to get into the hundreds, or even a thousand dwellings, will require probably another decade at least. But yeah, maybe oil prices will increase, and these mega oil and gas projects will take off again at some points.
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We are building 4-5k homes a year here. Why couldn't 1000 of those be in blatchford?

Part of the hope of blatchford is to absorb suburban sprawl buyers and keep them in more central, sustainable neighbourhoods. So building 50 homes a year while thousands are built in Chappelle and st albert and secord isn't a help really.
 
thommyjo said:
We are building 4-5k homes a year here. Why couldn't 1000 of those be in blatchford?

Part of the hope of blatchford is to absorb suburban sprawl buyers and keep them in more central, sustainable neighbourhoods. So building 50 homes a year while thousands are built in Chappelle and st albert and secord isn't a help really.
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Because you can get a larger home for the same price in the southwest. Most people would choose that option.
 
Tommy2342 said:
Because you can get a larger home for the same price in the southwest. Most people would choose that option.
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Which is why we need a green belt and taxes on new greenfield developments outside the henday.

But also I'd argue the sell/appeal of a neighbourhood is powerful. People will pay more to live in blatchford if it's awesome, which it will increasingly become as it's built out. 100 houses or less a year won't do that.
 
Tommy2342 said:
Because you can get a larger home for the same price in the southwest. Most people would choose that option.
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We need to stop (indirectly) subsidizing these developments and, as @thommyjo said, define a greenbelt to help stop the bloody sprawl.
To be honest, I'd love to have a magic wand that I could wave and make North Americans think a little bit more like Europeans, give up the suburban fetish and the car centric mentality, but sadly I can't.

yeggator said:
Come to think of it, if Blatchford is 2.17 square kilometers, it being able to accommodate even 15,000 people is insane considering Edmonton's urban population density is 1855.5/sq km. Blatchford would be denser than downtown if it had to accommodate 15k residents. And half of it is commercially zoned.
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This is the general density of Edmonton, which includes unpopulated or sparsely populated areas. For comparison, Oliver has 0.66 sq mi (1.72.sq km) and houses roughly 20k people, with a lot of retail, Oliver Square and the Brewery District, for starters, and quite a few low density housing around.

If Blatchford ever achieves the same density, it could house upwards of 25k, but considering that Oliver is the densest neighborhood in Alberta (population-wise), I can imagine that realistically, it could end up in the 20k realm, and still feel somewhat dense and interesting.
 
yeggator said:
Come to think of it, if Blatchford is 2.17 square kilometers, it being able to accommodate even 15,000 people is insane considering Edmonton's urban population density is 1855.5/sq km. Blatchford would be denser than downtown if it had to accommodate 15k residents. And half of it is commercially zoned.
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Sure but keep in mind that they want to hit multiple times that density.

That said, I could not agree more about being sceptical about those targets and how they plan to reach them.
 
ChazYEG said:
This is the general density of Edmonton, which includes unpopulated or sparsely populated areas. For comparison, Oliver has 0.66 sq mi (1.72.sq km) and houses roughly 20k people, with a lot of retail, Unity Square and the Brewery District, for starters, and quite a few low density housing around.
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FTFY ;)
 
I do believe the intention is Blatchford will have much more density than the area around it, so the 15,000 makes sense to me. Now, it will not be quite like the Vienna project, for which the video is quite impressive, but Europe is already very built up . It is hard to say build a skyscraper in downtown Vienna, which actually seems quite beautiful without them, so available land there a bit away from the city center can more easily be developed with more density.

I don't think Blatchford is comparable in many ways to Calgary's East Village either, which is much closer to downtown, but I think one of the points of bringing it up was to just illustrate how long it takes to develop such projects.

However, the one thing I wish Blatchford would do like Vienna and I think would increase its popularity a lot, would be to make a lake for a wider range of recreational use, like the one shown in the Vienna video.
 
thommyjo said:
Which is why we need a green belt and taxes on new greenfield developments outside the henday.

But also I'd argue the sell/appeal of a neighbourhood is powerful. People will pay more to live in blatchford if it's awesome, which it will increasingly become as it's built out. 100 houses or less a year won't do that.
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Curious to see what the extents of this green belt you are proposing could look like?

I strongly agree with your 2nd point. There are too many options in the market - you can't MAKE someone buy in Blatchford or any other community. If you create a place that people actually want to be, and provide an offering where the buyer sees value (regardless of what that purchase price is), that will be what provides the sales/development momentum.
 
strata said:
Curious to see what the extents of this green belt you are proposing could look like?

I strongly agree with your 2nd point. There are too many options in the market - you can't MAKE someone buy in Blatchford or any other community. If you create a place that people actually want to be, and provide an offering where the buyer sees value (regardless of what that purchase price is), that will be what provides the sales/development momentum.
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The City can implement a green belt all it likes, but just watch those greenfield developers hope over it and develop sprawl in Strathcona County, Beaumont, St. Albert, Spruce Grove, Leduc, etc. That is exactly what happened in Ottawa with their greenbelt (and is currently happening in the GTA with Ontario's Green Belt and Niagara Escarpment Plan).
 
You could go the BC route and create an agricultural land reserve that encompasses the entire province. Don't see that ever happening though.
 
Avenuer said:
The City can implement a green belt all it likes, but just watch those greenfield developers hope over it and develop sprawl in Strathcona County, Beaumont, St. Albert, Spruce Grove, Leduc, etc. That is exactly what happened in Ottawa with their greenbelt (and is currently happening in the GTA with Ontario's Green Belt and Niagara Escarpment Plan).
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Not if we take a regional approach through the Edmonton Metropolitan Region Board, like is done for things like density requirements.
 
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