Winnipeg Roads & Infrastructure

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Riverman

There are suburbs all over in every country of the world. People have to live somewhere and most consider dense living to be a short term, temporary unpleasant situation. Owning a detached home is the goal.

It's the ideal for young people and for many older childless couples and singles too. Speaking for myself, from the ages 18-30 having a detached home is the thing that would have been unpleasant, as compared to having an urban apartment/condo. Not everyone is Riverman.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by Riverman

There are suburbs all over in every country of the world. People have to live somewhere and most consider dense living to be a short term, temporary unpleasant situation. Owning a detached home is the goal.

While there is absolutely nothing wrong with owning a detached home or having that as your goal, it needs to come at a fair price because the cost of servicing suburban detached homes is higher than servicing inner, multi-family units.

In many North American cities, especially in Canada, suburban homes pay significantly higher municipal property tax than here in Winnipeg (and have been subject to impact/development fees for much longer than here in Winnipeg). Many Canadian cities also have a significantly higher proportion of their housing stock that is non-single family. And at an international level, only the ultra rich can afford to live in detached homes in major urban centres.

About 61% of Winnipeg's housing stock are single-family homes. The only other Canadian city that exceeds that is Regina (at 68%). Every other major city has a much lower proportion of their housing stock being denser multi-family units. Again, there's nothing particularly wrong with Winnipeg having a high percent of it's housing stock being detached singles IF our finances were in proper shape, but they are not. As it stands, Winnipeggers have the 2nd lowest average municipal property taxes across Canada, and that combined with how suburban/not dense we are results in low revenue per capita and high service area requirements, which ultimately mean continued, unsustainable budgetary issues and the lack of financial ability to fund plans that will fix this and make denser living more attractive (i.e. proper rapid transit, park and active transit infastructure, etc.)

[EdwardTH]

Originally Posted by Riverman

There are suburbs all over in every country of the world. People have to live somewhere and most consider dense living to be a short term, temporary unpleasant situation. Owning a detached home is the goal.

I think you're missing the point. No one said everyone has to live in a high-rise downtown, just that suburbs can be done a whole lot better than Waverley West is. Yes there are suburbs all over the world, most of them are designed better than Waverley West. Look at suburban parts of Toronto. You can have your yard and your big house and your quiet street, and also have reasonable transit service and walkability. People can live in a detached home and still live in a neighbourhood that has these things. There is all kinds of middle ground.

[bomberjet]

There's also something to be said about living in Winnipeg, connected to a good water and sewer system. Yes we do have very good water and sewer systems here.

Vs living in an exurb on well water and holding tank. Even rural water systems are not very good. Hard water and such. I disliked living at my moms place on a rural water system. The water always left me feeling like I was coated in something. Never ever drink the water there.

If people really want to leave Winnipeg over a 'growth fee', go for it. I will not be one of them. I'll pay my fair share if I want to live in WW or other suburb. Over the last few decades, it seems this has not been the case.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by EdwardTH

I think you're missing the point. No one said everyone has to live in a high-rise downtown, just that suburbs can be done a whole lot better than Waverley West is.

Exactly that.

I remember posting pictures of well done suburban developments 15 years ago, like this walkable commercial area in a Calgary suburb.



I guess theoretically Waverley West will get there some day, but to access it, you will still have to cross a de facto expressway to get there. It's not really what most would consider especially walkable.

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by EdwardTH

Just because people like it doesn't make it financially sustainable.

This is another mistruth that continues to be spoken here. Suburbs like WW are a net benefit to running the city due to the level of property taxation.

All you have to look at is where the city's income ends up. A large majority is spent on emergency services, police, fire and paramedic. Not roads and streets, not by a long shot. And those very expensive resources are used in the small part of Winnipeg that is the inner city.

So it is the suburbs that subsidize the inner city, not the other way around.

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by esquire

It's the ideal for young people and for many older childless couples and singles too. Speaking for myself, from the ages 18-30 having a detached home is the thing that would have been unpleasant, as compared to having an urban apartment/condo. Not everyone is Riverman.

I guess this is reflected in the condos in Glasshouse and Dcondo selling at light speed.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Riverman

This is another mistruth that continues to be spoken here. Suburbs like WW are a net benefit to running the city due to the level of property taxation.

All you have to look at is where the city's income ends up. A large majority is spent on emergency services, police, fire and paramedic. Not roads and streets, not by a long shot. And those very expensive resources are used in the small part of Winnipeg that is the inner city.

So it is the suburbs that subsidize the inner city, not the other way around.

LOL

Without all the suburban development in SW Winnipeg we wouldn't be talking about a half billion dollar widening of Route 90. You think Waverley West property taxes are paying for that?

[DancingDuck]

Originally Posted by Riverman

I guess this is reflected in the condos in Glasshouse and Dcondo selling at light speed.

Not to nitpick, but I'm not really sure the sales of only 2 buildings is indicative of the market as a whole.... especially given that, from my understanding, Glasshouse had sold quite well

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by esquire

LOL

Without all the suburban development in SW Winnipeg we wouldn't be talking about a half billion dollar widening of Route 90. You think Waverley West property taxes are paying for that?

No, not just WW but all suburban taxpayers. Reread the post that you quoted. Suburbs like WW.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by DancingDuck

Not to nitpick, but I'm not really sure the sales of only 2 buildings is indicative of the market as a whole.... especially given that, from my understanding, Glasshouse had sold quite well

Glasshouse sold well, and dCondo targeted a much smaller niche. dCondo's product is practically double the price of the average condo, so not surprisingly it takes longer to sell. Much like how $600,000 suburban homes take a lot longer to sell than $250,000 ones.

[esquire]

Originally Posted by Riverman

No, not just WW but all suburban taxpayers. Reread the post that you quoted. Suburbs like WW.

The point is that you think WW has fewer police and fire calls so it's somehow subsidizing the inner city. Which is only true if you overlook the massive amounts of infrastructure involved in building these areas in the first place, a cost which is not carried by homeowners there.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by Riverman

This is another mistruth that continues to be spoken here. Suburbs like WW are a net benefit to running the city due to the level of property taxation.

All you have to look at is where the city's income ends up. A large majority is spent on emergency services, police, fire and paramedic. Not roads and streets, not by a long shot. And those very expensive resources are used in the small part of Winnipeg that is the inner city.

So it is the suburbs that subsidize the inner city, not the other way around.

Spoken like a true Vogan, Shindleman, or Borger.

There is no such thing as "subsidizing" one part of a city over another in municipal finance. The so called "suburbs" benefit from inner-city policing, fire response, and emergency services just as much as the inner-city. A criminal taken off the street at Higgens and Main provides a benefit to people in Bridgewater just as much as those in the North End.

The argument that people who live in "wealthier suburbs" are "better" because they "use less social services" and therefore subsidize the inner city is flawed in multiple respects and demonstrates that you have very little understanding of economics, public goods, or municipal finance. Even if people in the north end benefited in tangibly higher ways than people in Bridgewater (or any suburb for that matter) from emergency services, they also use less of other services the city provides such as parks and roads.

Just like military and healthcare in Canada, we don't charge people based on their "units of usage" for public goods. We don't charge so-called wealthy suburbanites for the amount of road or park they consume, nor do we charge inner-city folk for the units of police or fire they consume. Together, these services represent the group of goods a city provides, and people all pay for this group of city public services and goods according to their ability to pay (i.e. the assessed value of their home).

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by EdwardTH

Just because people like it doesn't make it financially sustainable.

Yes I know, I was just proving a point. Just disproving the post I quoted above. You can't call one part of the city "financially unsustainable" just because it is new.

[EdwardTH]

Originally Posted by Riverman

This is another mistruth that continues to be spoken here. Suburbs like WW are a net benefit to running the city due to the level of property taxation.

All you have to look at is where the city's income ends up. A large majority is spent on emergency services, police, fire and paramedic. Not roads and streets, not by a long shot. And those very expensive resources are used in the small part of Winnipeg that is the inner city.

So it is the suburbs that subsidize the inner city, not the other way around.

You're still missing the point. A city being more dense and urban does not equal more demand for police and fire. If it did, Vancouver would spend a disproportionate amount of money on emergency services compared to Winnipeg. The demand for those services is not determined by how streets are laid out, or what lot sizes are, or whether you have condos on your street, or how frequent transit service is. It's determined by totally different social factors that have nothing to do with urban form so the demand for those service would be the same whether more Winnipeggers preferred to live in bungalows or condos. The two don't have much to do with each other. Our high police and fire costs aren't caused by density, that's ridiculous. If the city sprawled slightly less, it wouldn't somehow make crime go up. It's beside the point anyway because I have a family member in the WPS and I can assure you cops are plenty busy all over the city.

Also, the exodus of middle-class people to the suburbs causes the decline in inner-city neighbourhoods. The experience in other cities is that, when middle-class people start moving back to the inner city, those places improve and crime goes down as they get healthier. Why wouldn't we want the same? More sprawl = more decline, more demand for police in the inner city, and greater costs for the city as a whole. Which is the exact opposite of what you seem to think happens. The cost of fire & police is mostly independent of urban form but if anything it would be slightly less is we had less suburban flight. For your argument to make sense, you would have to think that if everyone in Waverley West moved into new condo towers downtown instead, it would somehow create a bunch of new crime because they were downtown instead of in the surburbs. It's not very logical. Are all the people living in fancy Toronto condos criminals because they live in dense areas?

[Riverman]

It is you that is missing the point sir.

Don't talk to me about suburban flight, I lived in the inner city for 30 years. I saw the concentration of police cars and EMS every day.

Nobody leaves for the burbs to make the city worse. They leave because it is cleaner, safer and just better in the burbs.

The inner city uses far, far more services that the entire rest of the city surrounding it. There is no disbuting that. And I said nothing about street layout, what does that have to do with anything.

You stated that WW is financially unsustainable. That is 100% wrong. The drain the inner city places on the taxpayer is what is financially unsustainable. It is mentioned all over this board, mostly by blaming the unions. I'm just being more honest.

[esquire]

^ What kind of logic is that?

The inner city is behind a lot of EMS costs. OK, fair enough, proportionally it probably is, like in most places.

Where you lose me is how that somehow justifies costly sprawl. Because the City spends $400 million on emergency services it should be no big deal to spend hundreds of millions more on roads, sewers, plus whatever else to service new subdivisions? I don't know what kind of "two wrongs make a right" thinking that is.

[Winnipegger]

Originally Posted by esquire

^ What kind of logic is that?

The inner city is behind a lot of EMS costs. OK, fair enough, proportionally it probably is, like in most places.

Where you lose me is how that somehow justifies costly sprawl. Because the City spends $400 million on emergency services it should be no big deal to spend hundreds of millions more on roads, sewers, plus whatever else to service new subdivisions? I don't know what kind of "two wrongs make a right" thinking that is.

Riverman simply fails to understand the nature of public goods. The assumption is that wealthy suburbanites "cost the city less" because they don't call 911 as frequently. That, combined with the fact that they have more expensive homes mean that they over-contribute to the tax base and subsidize the paupers in the inner-city.

The truth that the public goods and services we all pay for as citizens benefit us more or less equally. If a fire is put out at a business in the north end, we all benefit. If a criminal is arrested in the west end, we all benefit.

Riverman also forgets that even if wealthy suburbanites call 911 less and therefore put less strain on that system, they are driving disproportionately more, force buses to take longer trips, probably utilize parks more, likely to call 311 to complain more, etc. So while they cost less in some areas, they cost more in others. Currently it's impossible to accurately do the math on public good consumption without using questionable assumptions, and even if we could, that defeats the purpose of public goods like police and fire.

Sounds like Riverman has been drinking local developer cool-aid for too long.

[Riverman]

Originally Posted by esquire

Where you lose me is how that somehow justifies costly sprawl.

I didn't say that. And it isn't sprawl, it is a neighbourhood where people live, just like yours.

[GarryEllice]

Originally Posted by Riverman

I didn't say that. And it isn't sprawl, it is a neighbourhood where people live, just like yours.

So what exactly do you think sprawl is, then?