Grandin 4 | 23m | 6s | Westrich Pacific | J+S Architect

[strata]

@strata @cmd uw

^I'm saying that that the "normal" suburbs (single houses, cul-de-sacs, etc.) are a symptom of bad city planning, not the cause of it. I'm not blaming the symptoms for getting the illness, per say.

^You're right about people having the freedom of choice, and if the burbs is truly what they want at heart then all power to them. However, I just personally think that what most people want is conditioned over time through their own life experience and what viable options are available. For example, If 95% of the housing market in your town and city is single-detached homes, and you live in one that your parents bought who lived under one which your grandparents bought and so on, then you've most likely been conditioned to believe that's the only right option for you and your future family. Now, if more options are available to someone (and good options) for living in a more compact and urban space, and if that person is close to people who live in these spaces or were raised in one themselves, then their experience is broadened and they can contemplate different options for themselves and/or their future family. If they are still set on the suburbs then that's fine, but at least they can make an educated choice. If that's right or wrong is up to you, but isn't that train of thought logical nonetheless?

Can't say I agree with your 2nd point.

Edmonton has seen a massive amount of immigration over the past few years from Asian countries where density is very much what they are used to. And yet, you have seen the majority of those people choosing to live in the suburbs. One of the most attractive parts of immigrating to Edmonton is the ability to live in a ground oriented home. The appeal to owning a small piece of heaven in the form of a backyard is not something that is reserved for any particular family from any particular background.

And once they are settled in, and the time for the "educated choice" you refer to, they stay there more often than not.

 

[strata]

About the whole skinny homes thing: Of course it's more expensive there than in the burbs! In a nice old area of the city like Westmount an alright quality 1950's-60's bungalow will go for around 300-400k (with good market conditions). Now take a narrow-lot home, a brand-new build with more square-footage and you can start to see how it compares. It's even more clear if you realize that same 700k skinny home would go for around 1.2-1.4 mil if it were doubled into a full-size two-storey house (with good market conditions). In the end it all comes down to what you want, right? A 2 storey home or duplex unit on the periphery of the city with similar square footage to a skinny home in the core would probs be around 200-300k, and if someone values that price over the location then there you go

Sorry if I was unclear, but the point I was trying to make was that people flocking to the suburbs solely for the affordable price is not accurate when people are willing to pay $700K for a skinny (or $1.2M for a full infill on a normal lot) in a mature neighborhood (because they still see the value in it).

 

[strata]

I'm a bit confused by this sorry. I might have misread. But are you saying "if we want people to live in the core, we need to give them things they want, but what they don't want is a townhouse"? Are you thinking people want condos over townhouses? Or the other way, bigger detached homes? Cause the core will never have big detached homes, that's what causes the sprawl.

Which housing product do you think people want? Or are you suggesting we need better quality condos to attract people to the core?

I am saying that if 95% of the people want to own some sort of property with their own back yard (townhouse, duplex, skinny, normal single family), then you either need to find a way to offer that product to the market, offer something so special downtown that people are willing to purchase a housing product that isn't their first choice, or concede to the fact that by the nature of not offering the housing product most people want to buy - there is a limited market for downtown buyers and you just have to work within that box.

 

[rake]

I think it's a bit short-sighted to focus on consumer choice without acknowledging the context those choices occur in, especially if we ignore the consumer choices people make when they choose to leave the city, or not move here in the first place.

The missing middle is absolutely missing here, but critically it's missing from older development eras. New 'missing middle' construction is still going to be necessarily expensive and targeted to higher income earners. This might mean an individual new stacked townhouse project can fail, but doesn't mean there wouldn't be massive demand for a 90's era rowhouse development in the same location but at a lower price point. We've had decades of building nothing but single family homes and cheap condos - we've never given anything else a chance to show whether there is 'demand' for other choices.

It's also important to understand that we have built a city that effectively subsidizes single-family home suburban living by hiding it's true cost and therefore making it the de facto choice for most people. You can't blame people for accepting a 'deal' on a suburban lifestyle and then pretend they wouldn't make a different choice if circumstances were altered. I couldn't even begin to recall how many conversations I've had with people who really wanted to find a townhouse in a central neighborhood, but couldn't find appealing options and the prices available in the suburbs were such that they basically felt it was financially irresponsible not to move out to the 'burbs.

We are paying for the sins of our past, but it doesn't mean we are dealing with immutable forces of demand that will never change. Of course, change is going to be very, very difficult. We need a lot of new construction of desirable missing middle development, but at affordable rates, or we need to massively raise the 'cost' of suburban living (which largely requires MGA changes / City Charters), and needlessly punish the people we incented to move out there in the first place. This ain't gonna be easy.

 

[RH van der Rohe]

The solution is Greenbelts, no other policy has increased the value of available land and therefore density.

 

[strata]

We are paying for the sins of our past, but it doesn't mean we are dealing with immutable forces of demand that will never change. Of course, change is going to be very, very difficult. We need a lot of new construction of desirable missing middle development, but at affordable rates, or we need to massively raise the 'cost' of suburban living (which largely requires MGA changes / City Charters), and needlessly punish the people we incented to move out there in the first place. This ain't gonna be easy.

Do you believe that there will always be a premium that people are willing to pay for the same house (let's call it a townhouse to keep it simple) in a nice mature core neighborhood compared to the suburbs? If so, do you think people that own property in those mature neighborhoods that are primed for redevelopment will just "donate" the increased value of their lot or knock-down should you successfully increase the price in the suburbs?


The suburbs are cheaper than the core in every major city, it's just relative. 600K townhouse in Blatchford versus 300K townhouse in Chappelle. $1.7M townhouse in Yaletown (Vancouver) versus $600K townhouse in Surrey. Raising the price of suburban housing just raises the price of ALL housing.

I stand by my initial comments. I don't think making it more difficult to live in the suburbs does anything to improve the living experience in the core. Invest in new and revitalized parks, create an environment where it is cheaper for businesses to operate in the core. That will only make the extra cost to live there more worthwhile for the people considering it.

 

[rake]

Do you believe that there will always be a premium that people are willing to pay for the same house (let's call it a townhouse to keep it simple) in a nice mature core neighborhood compared to the suburbs? If so, do you think people that own property in those mature neighborhoods that are primed for redevelopment will just "donate" the increased value of their lot or knock-down should you successfully increase the price in the suburbs?

Of course I do, but I also think we've exacerbated the problem beyond the natural value gap people might have by actively making suburban living artificially cheap (both in terms of real dollars and softer costs like prioritizing road spending to keep commute times low). I also don't think we need to wait for people to magically donate extra value to be able to do something about it - we don't have a lot of tools, but we have far more than we've been willing to try.

Personally, I would support a moratorium on new greenfield development, major changes to zoning standards that allow for more units per lot in mature neighborhoods (we've done the easy part and declared them legal, but left a lot of the setbacks/site orientation/etc. that make them effectively impossible to build), substantially differential tax rates for multi-family versus single-family homes (the current MGA would not allow us to target specific locations, so this would have to apply broadly across the city), and I think the new city plan is right to focus on multiple nodes and town centers compared to a singular focus on downtown to avoid concentrated property value inflation. I would also go a step further and advocate for a more active role for the City in the development process to attempt to 'enhance' affordability of new development. Obviously I'm watching Blatchford closely for this reason, but early returns haven't exactly shown that we've found the right mix.

The bottom line is that suburban development does not pay for itself and we are nearing a breaking point as a city - this should concern both suburban and non-suburban dwellers. We are quickly headed towards a state of crumbling infrastructure, stretched city services, and rapidly increasing property taxes, all while paying lip service to the idea of greening our city - so it's not exactly like we can just wait this out and see. The basic reality of any municipality in Alberta (again, pending MGA changes or City Charters being implemented) is that commercial, industrial and (generally) multi-family developments subsidize the property taxes of single family homes, and we have stretched our tax base very thin with our decades of sprawl.

While I certainly believe the suburbs are inherently problematic for the financial and environmental footprint of the city, I think my previous message shows that I have complete empathy for suburban residents who simply chose the best option available to them. We can't simply price people out of their neighborhoods as a solution to our problems without providing reasonable supports and alternatives, but we are in a market where reasonable alternatives can't be built without people being priced out of their neighborhoods. It's extremely difficult and I can't see a solution that doesn't include some sort of non-market intervention at a significant scale (a boogie-man phrase for some I'm sure, and obviously politically unlikely).

Ultimately, I want to find a solution that doesn't just raise the cost of living on everyone and increases the burden on struggling people - there are very, very few North American cities that have managed to find that balance so I can appreciate your skepticism here.

 

[rake]

Apologies for derailing the thread, I do believe that projects like this - as unsexy as they may be - will absolutely be one answer to slowly making central living more desirable for a broader group of people, even if it doesn't immediately supply the kind of missing-middle housing we typically think of. I hope Westrich does well on this project and gives them the confidence to keep tackling their long list of ambitious projects in our city.

 

[northlands]

Just to add some further anecdotal perspective to this discussion: go drive around any of those outer rim suburban developments. Probably 2/3 of the driveways have a pickup truck or work van sitting in them, and quite often it's a work truck (although just as often it's for pleasure use). You have tradesfolk, site supers, surveyors, oilfield workers, pipeliners, welders, and beyond out there which make up a large portion of Edmonton's work force--probably larger than cities comparable in size due to the Alberta energy sector. Not only that, but more often than not those folks either work in an industrial area or Nisku/Acheson/Aurum/Ft Sask/etc or work out of town entirely--a good friend of mine lives just off 124th and Jasper, but he's a tradesmen and has been working out in Redwater the past year, and he says the commute has been killing him to the point where he's contemplating moving to the outer rim of Edmonton.

So for those people, not only is living in the 'burbs more affordable and more bang for their buck, but it also makes a heckuva lot more sense given their work situation. Pretty tough to park a 3/4 ton company truck or a highroof work van in any underground parkade. And it compounds when you have a couple, where one might work centrally, but the other doesn't and has a work truck. Guess where they'll end up living?

Just another fact of the matter. Edmonton's downtown core is largely gov't jobs (which are continually being cut) and satellite offices. Our central workforce isn't big enough to help attract those to living in central areas IMO

 

[thommyjo]

I think it's a bit short-sighted to focus on consumer choice without acknowledging the context those choices occur in, especially if we ignore the consumer choices people make when they choose to leave the city, or not move here in the first place.

The missing middle is absolutely missing here, but critically it's missing from older development eras. New 'missing middle' construction is still going to be necessarily expensive and targeted to higher income earners. This might mean an individual new stacked townhouse project can fail, but doesn't mean there wouldn't be massive demand for a 90's era rowhouse development in the same location but at a lower price point. We've had decades of building nothing but single family homes and cheap condos - we've never given anything else a chance to show whether there is 'demand' for other choices.

It's also important to understand that we have built a city that effectively subsidizes single-family home suburban living by hiding it's true cost and therefore making it the de facto choice for most people. You can't blame people for accepting a 'deal' on a suburban lifestyle and then pretend they wouldn't make a different choice if circumstances were altered. I couldn't even begin to recall how many conversations I've had with people who really wanted to find a townhouse in a central neighborhood, but couldn't find appealing options and the prices available in the suburbs were such that they basically felt it was financially irresponsible not to move out to the 'burbs.

We are paying for the sins of our past, but it doesn't mean we are dealing with immutable forces of demand that will never change. Of course, change is going to be very, very difficult. We need a lot of new construction of desirable missing middle development, but at affordable rates, or we need to massively raise the 'cost' of suburban living (which largely requires MGA changes / City Charters), and needlessly punish the people we incented to move out there in the first place. This ain't gonna be easy.

This is very true. As a 24 year old who just sold in the GTA and moving back to buy again, buying in the core feels fiscally irresponsible. But my wife and I want to live DT one day. So the best options look like buying a big house with a basement suite in Rosenthal outside the henday to live in, with rental income to save for retirement. Then eventually hold the property as a rental and buy or rent downtown in a few years.

The appreciation of a single home with land, and the reality that housing in canada is more of an investment than a home, means you willingly give up tens or hundreds of thousands in future earnings to live downtown. (Of course there are many other cost factors such as transportation this doesn't account for. But my dad showed me how a friend who bought downtown who was a partner at pwc barely had his penthouse appreciate with inflation over 20 years, whereas my parent who bought on the city limits in the late 90s saw their 240k house sell for 680k in the same time span. You just can't beat that.)

 

[Avenuer]

The solution is Greenbelts, no other policy has increased the value of available land and therefore density.

This would have to be a regional initiative for EMRB members, or else developers would just hop over to a bedroom community and continue developing sprawl there.

 

[strata]

Personally, I would support a moratorium on new greenfield development

A moratorium on greenfield development would only create more problems for Edmonton.

The market would move out to St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Spruce. Those places would see a large property value increase, and by extension a large property tax revenue increase. Hizzuh for them! On the other hand, you will have an increasingly disproportionate number of people driving the roads to work in Edmonton, using public transport, utilizing all the soft/hard infrastructure in the city...and then drive home and contribute all their property tax dollars to another municipality.

 

[IanO]

Bingo.

Create more variety of housing along with a more attractive, amenity rich, walkable with efficient transit and amazing parks... people will come.

 

[David A]

I am a bit more optimistic than some about this. Like any other city, we have mostly single family development in the newer areas being built. There is obviously a market for this and prices on the edge of the city are lower than more central locations, like in most other cities . However, there are trade offs. I know someone who lives in the south west and works in the north east. Is is possible? Yes, but I sure wouldn't want that commute daily. Also, it is nice to have stores work and other amenities within reasonable walking distance. Enough people are willing to pay more to live centrally, otherwise there would be no premium and of course the supply is more limited too. This does not work for everyone's budget, but as the city grows, distances get further and traffic increases, central living becomes more desirable for more people.

I do see some duplexes and row houses being built in some older areas replacing older houses from the post WWII era. There are also some 5 to 10 storey projects in older areas. I believe this is what people refer to when they talk about the missing middle. Probably more would be good, but I don't think Edmonton's rules are quite as NIMBY as some places that have very nice tall condo towers, single family homes and not much in between. I hope we are learning from their mistakes.

 

[Daveography]

We are on the way to developing a greenbelt. It's not what it should be yet, but it's a start:

Elise Stolte: Edmonton region to say no more, drawing a line on sprawl

Rather than build suburb after suburb, Edmonton and the smaller cities would have to conserve land within the new boundary.

edmontonjournal.com

A moratorium on greenfield development would only create more problems for Edmonton.

The market would move out to St. Albert, Sherwood Park, Leduc, Spruce. Those places would see a large property value increase, and by extension a large property tax revenue increase. Hizzuh for them! On the other hand, you will have an increasingly disproportionate number of people driving the roads to work in Edmonton, using public transport, utilizing all the soft/hard infrastructure in the city...and then drive home and contribute all their property tax dollars to another municipality.

Nah; if the sprawl we're creating currently isn't financially sustainable for us (see How Suburban Sprawl Is A Ponzi Scheme), then let those municipalities deal with the planning consequences (that said, we do have density targets that the entire region now adheres to). We're under no obligation to widen our roads for dealing with regional transport demands; we can also consider tolling the roads when if it gets to an untenable point, and use the proceeds to improve regional transit.