Quote:
Originally Posted by middeljohn
My theory:
Edmonton's highrise construction boom is only getting started because the height restriction has only recently been lifted. Further, this crazy population growth has the city backlogged on construction for at least ten years. For evidence, look at Toronto. Late 90s early 2000s Toronto had similar population growth rates to what Edmonton is seeing right now, but it wasn't until the late 2000s when the construction began to catch up. I believe it'll be similar for Edmonton.
Speaking to Edmontonians, they still have a small town mentality despite Metro Edmonton being 1.3 million. Hell, a lot of them consider Calgary to be a metropolis yet their own city they consider more of a small city when the reality is that the two are almost identical sizes. Hopefully this changes over the next few years. The reality is Edmonton is Canada's fifth largest metro and is only beginning to see its construction boom. I think the mentality as well as the number of highrise construction projects is going to be a lot different ten years from now as the infrastructure begins to catch up to today's growth.
|
Maybe the issue is that most Edmonton residents aren't actually comparing CMA populations but are instead comparing actual civic populations - by those numbers (2014 = 1,195,194 vs 877,926) there is a considerable difference. People living in bedroom communities are generally not going to all of a sudden be moving into the core of the larger neighbouring city - there has to be more to attract someone to live in the core. Metro Calgary includes such burgeoning places like Crossfield, Beiseker and Irricana - good for people who like fudging numbers but the reality is that they're not part of what defines Calgary to me (or many others) and no more so than Airdrie and Cochrane are (also part of Calgary's CMA). Do people living in these outlying communities contribute to Calgary's prosperity and growth - yes they do but at the same time those community's demographics have pretty much have no impact on a developer's decision to build a a highrise tower in Calgary's core.
That said, if one compares the cores of Edmonton and Calgary, there are very notable differences - Calgary's is just that much more built up. Will Edmonton's catch up - difficult to say. Calgary just feels bigger and more intense in it's core but I suspect Calgary may very well run out of affordable and easy to redevelop land parcels before Edmonton does and that could certainly be in Edmonton's favour.