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New Zoning Bylaw

Kosy123 said:
edmontonjournal.com

Opinion: New zoning bylaw will worsen housing affordability in Edmonton

Leaders of a citizens' coalition sound off on claims Edmonton's proposed zoning bylaw will improve home affordability.
edmontonjournal.com edmontonjournal.com

I'm not gonna lie, reading this made me so frustrated and angry, I hope to god they cry tears when this bylaw gets passed.
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It's baffling how some get themselves so twisted up in their refusal to let cities grow and change that they convince themselves that every home built is making the problem worse.
As if only we stopped doing anything, it would all get better.
 
JuliallThat said:
It's baffling how some get themselves so twisted up in their refusal to let cities grow and change that they convince themselves that every home built is making the problem worse.
As if only we stopped doing anything, it would all get better.
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The fact that these absolute cretins had the gall to go "Vancouver's pricing issue is because of oversupply" makes my blood boil. As someone in their 20's, I'm frankly just livid at this point.
 
Anyone got this in the mail? NIMBYs are coming, please email ur councilor or find other ways to show ur support of the new zoning bylaw.
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Go to betterinfill.ca and email them to express frustration and disagreement with their stances and suggestions. Let’s push back hard so they know they don’t represent everyone like they think they do.
 
I am extremely curious to see which councilors vote which way for this zoning bylaw. I'm not sure if I'm exaggerating but this is probably the biggest decision this council has in this entire cycle, and frankly a lot of other things they've done pale in comparison to the long-term effects of this. I have hope that we have enough progressives/urbanists on council (along with the Mayor) that this passes through. But I'm still extremely nervous either way.
 
thommyjo said:
Go to betterinfill.ca and email them to express frustration and disagreement with their stances and suggestions. Let’s push back hard so they know they don’t represent everyone like they think they do.
Click to expand...

Here's another great idea - round up legions of pro-infill supporters along with the mass media types (CBC, CTV, Global, CityTV, PostMedia, etc) and crash betterinfill.ca's next few meetings.
 
GrowTogether has a tool you can use to email your councillor in support of ZBR in 20 seconds:

https://www.gtyeg.ca/#take-action

Also, we're doing an in person event Sept. 25 where we're preparing folks to speak at the ZBR public hearing:

www.eventbrite.com

Drinks for Density

Meet like-minded urbanists, learn how you can advocate for better city planning and support a fantastic local business.
www.eventbrite.com www.eventbrite.com
 

For those who are interested here is the whole document for the new zoning bylaw draft.

I only focused on reading the details of the new small scale residential zone (RS) and the similarly new small scale residential flex zone (RSF) as both of these zones pretty much encompass probably over 70% of the city which are mostly single family zones currently and probably one of the most drastic change in the new zoning bylaw.

-Pretty much any type of housing (single detached to multiplex) up to 3 storeys and maximum height of 10.5 m (12 m for RSF)
-Maximum of 8 units (For RSF, only max of 8 units for "lodging houses", but doesn't specifiy the max units that can be built for other types, interesting...). It also say that you can potentially put more units if the lot is on a corner.
-Minimum site area of 75m^2 per dwelling, (no mention for RSF), maximum length of any building is 30 m, maximum site coverage of building is 45% of lot (55 % for RSF)
-Have minimum front and rear setbacks (so the lots are required to have a "frontyard" and "backyard" which i don't really like too much as I would prefer some buildings be able to face directly towards the public sidewalk)

One very interesting detail is that this zoning allows for some commercial uses (food and drinks, health services, indoor sales, offices) if the "interior side lot abuts a site in a non residential zone that permits commercial uses" up to 300m^2. Whats also interesting for this is that "outdoor seating areas are permitted to a maximum area of 20 m^2 and must only located in the front yard or flanking side yard". I am very curious on how this plays out in the future and how and what type of retail businesses will decide to put up their stores in these residential lots. But I just wished that this zoning would allow for commercial use anywhere within the residential zone , not just directly next to a commercial zone.


Overall, I think only the bigger lots can accommodate all 8 units as you can't use up 100% of the lot to build your whole building. But compare to Calgary's (up to 4 units per lot?) and Vancouver's zoning changes on single family zones (up to 6 units), Edmonton is pretty bold.
 
Does this include anything similar to Seattle's single stair rule? It would allow units like this to be built. Neighbourhoods like Oliver would be great for these.
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I really don't like that they're sticking with minimum lot sizes for RS detached. (30m long, 7.5m wide) when they already have a per unit minimum metric. (one unit per 75m²).
Specifically because this makes front-back lot splits illegal, even when both are on a corner and have direct street access.

I also find it annoying that the unit allowance math for old 33'x120' lots works out to 4.9 units. So close to 5! But the density is a reasonable increase, and enables quadplexes at minimum on nearly every lot in the city. 8plexes (octoplexes?) would be allowed on all the midcentury 50'x150' lots. It's a big potential increase in density, and combined with the lack of parking regulations, and now with the GST being removed for rental apartments, has a lot of potential to empower small time landlords, and really lock in affordability.

I want to add something of note, because although the commercial uses caveat says you must be adjacent to a commercial property, best I can tell, and based on a conversation with city workers during one of the feedback sessions, the new "home based business" regulations allow small scale cafés, restaurants, shopfronts and whatever other shopfront in RS zones.;
Two non-resident employees at a time enables a reasonable business to operate.
60m² is a reasonable area for a small business.
You're allowed to have an external frontage just that it "must be visually consistent".
Though annoyingly it says no outdoor activity is allowed, so one might get in trouble for daring to put a café table out front, but there's no restrictions written in the new code that would indicate you can't run an actual public fronting business.
There's no restrictions on daily visitors like the old code, nor rules saying absolutely no signage, only that it must be "visually consistent".
No restrictions like the old one that says "Your business must not generate pedestrian or vehicular traffic or parking in excess of what is normal for your neighbourhood's zone".
So correct me if I'm wrong here, but this is a really powerful opening that enables small shops to operate anywhere in the city. I'm really excited about this.
 
Barnaby said:
Does this include anything similar to Seattle's single stair rule? It would allow units like this to be built. Neighbourhoods like Oliver would be great for these.View attachment 507145
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My understanding is that the stair rule (single v double) is part of the building code, not the zoning code. So i don't think the new zoning code addresses that.
I agree, I'd like to see it relaxed for small apartments, and I wonder what the best method is to see that outcome? Because Edmonton doesn't have our own building code like Vancouver does, it would require a modification to the National Code, or just for Alberta? I don't know, is the city allowed to grant an exception to the building code?
 
^ AFAIK despite the City of Edmonton being the authority having jurisdiction to grant building permits within Edmonton, they cannot enact municipal bylaws that supersede the Alberta Building Code (which supersedes the National Building Code within the province of Alberta outside of federal properties). So they would require a variance of some sort granted by the province.
 
northlands said:
^ AFAIK despite the City of Edmonton being the authority having jurisdiction to grant building permits within Edmonton, they cannot enact municipal bylaws that supersede the Alberta Building Code (which supersedes the National Building Code within the province of Alberta outside of federal properties). So they would require a variance of some sort granted by the province.
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Now might be the time to make a push for this to change with housing affordability being a bipartisan talking point.
 
Barnaby said:
Now might be the time to make a push for this to change with housing affordability being a bipartisan talking point.
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If this was a central point in Calgary’s new housing measures they just announced, it probably would happen on the provincial level.
 
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