“Neighbours over NIMBYs” — that’s a sticker we saw on the back of a sign in Edmonton, Alberta, and it gives a hint as to some of the attitudes that make this maybe the most forward-thinking city for housing reform in North America.
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References:
Two homes to 16-unit townhouse complex: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/neighbours-become-business-partners-in-north-glenora-infill-project-1.5754031 (also: https://engaged.edmonton.ca/t5mconnectdc2)
Church development: https://rightathomehousing.com/turning-sod-affordable-housing-built-westmount-area/
Skinny homes legalized in 2013: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-infill-skinny-homes-1.4689007
Skinny homes approvals: https://www.edmonton.ca/public-files/assets/document?path=PDF/SkinnyHomes_InfillInEdmonton_2016.pdf
Edmonton eliminated parking mandates: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/edmonton-got-rid-of-parking-minimums-2-years-ago-what-has-happened-since-then-1.6680750
Canadian Home Builders’ Association municipal rankings: https://www.chba.ca/municipal-benchmarking/
Report on housing from Canada’s federal housing authority: https://assets.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/sf/project/cmhc/pdfs/content/en/69262.pdf
Edmonton mayor on homelessness support: https://medium.com/mayorsohi/edmonton-city-council-requests-provincial-support-for-community-safety-and-well-being-22b5ed142efd
California mountain lion city: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/feb/05/california-woodside-mountain-lions-development
Mayor of Windsor, Ontario: https://twitter.com/drewdilkens/status/1752843859661295872
Mayor named to housing team: https://windsorstar.com/news/local-news/dilkens-named-chair-of-new-ontario-housing-team
source
Edmonton is in the running for the Strongest Town contest. If you'd like to consider the options and vote, round 1 is open until Thursday, March 7th: https://strongesttown.com
Well, developers could at least pay for the good opinions they get…
Austin is attempting to follow this lead by eliminating mandatory parking minimums and allowing secondary units and homes to be built on smaller lots. NIMBY's and big real estate developers are suing to block the changes, of course. Hopefully it will help address Austin's housing unaffordability, which has reached the stratosphere the last few years. There are affordable homes in the exurbs, if you don't mind a three-hour round-trip commute each day.
Let's come clean. The new zoning bylaw allows 8 units, 4 up and 4 down with no on site parking on a 50 by 150 ft lot. None of it will be affordable. No lot split that allows 2 unit ever resulted in any affordable units. Every 8 unit building will be a rental and will result in a deterioration of the community and will reduce the property value and a drop in tax revenue.
Let me know if this actually fixes the housing crisis or if living in pods only profits the developers who make them.
As someone who live in Edmonton, y’all can do better in north America 😅 it’s still a sprawl hellhole without extensive public transport other than delayed buses
Love to see it! I wish we could built multi unit buildings like that out here in Metro Vancouver. Homes for the homies!
Yeah, I wouldn't think of Edmonton as forward thinking in housing reforms, in need of housing reforms, sure. There's a reason why Tokyo has the lowest housing costs of all major cities and it's because their development decisions are made on a national basis so that they are insulated from NIMBY influences. If the development benefits the country then it's done regardless of individuals NIMBY. Besides the environmental efforts you've mentioned pales when considered to the Drake Landing development in Okotoks, Alberta. What I think of when I think of Edmonton is all the decades where people would flag down police cars when trying to flag down a taxi…
As to Alberta having the highest sverage income and lowest average age in Canada, that's only because the oil industry draws in workers from the entire country and when they lose their employment when the various bubbles burst, some of these workers move on to other areas or return to where their families are. A more transitory population isn't necessarily a good thing and certainly does not warrant Alberta's claims that they deserve 51% of the Canada Pension Plan to set up their own when Alberta only has 18% of Canada's population. If anything, the possibility that the workers drawn to Alberta might move on to other provinces or return to whete they came from as the oil industry busts warrants that Alberta remain in a national pension program not a provincial one so that the funds follows those who contributed to the plan. Don't get me wrong, a business oriented focus may be good for the economy but the conservatives really seem to believe their followers will just eat up every bit of nonsense they spew up as long as they keep saying how they deserve more than everyone else and that everyone else has been taking advantage of them.
Charlottetown was #2!? How bad is it in those other cities then….
Things happen way faster in British Columbia.
Thanks for coming to the winter cycling congress! And thank you for paying attention to what our city is doing, urbanism-wide. We elected a fantastic, progressive Council 4 years ago, and unelected some pretty regressive people. That made a difference because it's signaled to the administration in the city that we really want to be YIMBYs, we want to have a walkable, ridable, affordable city with good climate protective policies. The vibe here is good, but being surrounded by regressive attitudes means we're not out of the woods. Having outsiders recognize how well Edmonton is doing (in terms of policies) is a big help.
I was in Edmonton this past week and was blown away seeing all the examples discussed in this video. The changes in zoning are really making a difference. Unfortunately, it is not the same in Calgary. Calgary is looking at making some changes similar to Edmonton’s and the latest group speak against? Bizarrely, the real estate association!
This video really glosses over the downsides of medium density housing. You can look at the history of housing of the projects in NYC during the 50's or 60's or Far Rockaway, NYC in general. Medium density housing is great in low crime and affluent neighborhoods, sure. Higher density housing is significantly difficult to police, and you can look at Chicago to see how gangs uprooted rule of law in the dense areas. The other issue is these places being turned into dumping grounds for the homeless, mentally ill, or the unreformed. Rockaway has crime out of control because they have too many people who shouldn't be out on the street together in a single neighborhood.
Thanks! Very motivating and I’ll be taking lessons from this directly to my community.
So Jesse, what is your Skinny Home like?? Ha Ha (or should I say; How many $millions have you made?)
Compacting housing just leads to a multitude of other problems, #1 being TOO CLOSE to NEIGHBOURS!
The left argument is wrong. L.A. , New York, Vancouver have been left for decades, and BY FAR the more costly.
Left ten to add more taxes, rules, and constraints on developer's who jack the prices accordingly .
Increasing density. How does it usually turn out?
Love to see people who care and making policies that fit modern society, especially near cities.
I'm not opposed to new housing. And high density housing is one solution to that problem.
That said, a lot of cities (at least in the US) like to jack up the price of new unattached housing by requiring minimum square footages, attached garages, and other things that keep people from building starter homes that can be added onto later. This is done to raise the amount of property taxes that will be collected by a city from the same amount of land. While apartments are good for singles and newlyweds, when people start having kids it becomes a problem for anyone who would like to have a yard for gardening and for kids to play in. It creates a large gap between cramming your kids into a town home with no yard and buying some palatial McMansion. I managed to make that jump by buying a home built in the 50s on a decent sized piece of land in an older neighborhood in my city. Over time I've improved the wiring, plumbing, insulation, appliances, etc. because I'm able to do a lot of that work myself. But not everyone is.
This is a recipe for having kids crammed indoors their entire lives, and resulting in a gerontocracy where people are renters in the long term or living in some tiny town home, and the only people who have a home with a yard are older people who bought decades ago. I'd much rather see young families able to afford homes with yards in neighborhoods where they can have friends and room to have adventures.
I wish someone would address this issue.
Alberta is such an odd province. They're simultaneously conservative, and extremely into property rights, but they vote socialist.
Based on some of those things you mentioned about Edmonton (being blue collar, very left leaning, medium sized city, young council) Hamilton should be cheaper to live. But it's ridiculously expensive here. I suspect it has to do with its close proximity to Toronto.
That thumbnail looks like a soviet block. Probably 90% of this channel viewership doesn't have kids, but if and when you do – you'll realize what a hellscape that looks like. That courtyard you showed in the beginning will never, ever have anyone in it – just like all the rest. It's because it's ugly, facing out of the sun in the shade, and devoid of life… which describes most high density cities.
Wow, I didn't realize Edmonton had such a statistically significant housing affordability! Thanks for sharing! There are several jobs on Indeed there too!
To be fair though, it's still Canada and I'm sure there's federal bureaucracy that slows development. Hopefully Pierre Poilievre can tackle that.
But I'm impressed that there's a clear example of municipal liberalization of zoning leading to favorable outcomes.
One of my friend's dad is a city planner for Edmonton, and they've told me a bit about the importance and benefit of densifying the city. Sure, it could be easy to just continue sprawling out into the open land around the city indefinitely. There has even been talk of annexing surrounding communites like Toronto did. However, the need to densify is about more than just housing more people or for developers to "make extra money," as some other commenters have said. Taking into account how large parts of the city have become virtually inaccessible to many because of the sprawling nature of suburbanisation, by densifying land usage, as well as expanding public transit services, travel within the city will open up for many of its residents.
Another point is that the city infrastructures, such as plumbing, have limitations on how far it can be optimally efficient, especially over such a flat terrain. By making the city more navigable, densifying housing, and expanding public services, the city's tax profits will increase, in turn allowing for funding to be put toward many other much needed services. Edmonton has many issues with homelessness, drug abuse, violence, etc., and I currently see them more now because of where I live, but they've always been around for far longer than I've been alive. For the safety of the geeral public, and of those involved, these issues need to be addressed. Sadly, much of the problems that the city is facing are systemic in nature. They more often than not are perpetuated by the cultures that enable such behaviours, and it has become generational struggle, not just people who fall into it by unfortunate circumstance.