The density dilemma
Is it time to reign in urban sprawl?
By David Hutton, The Star Phoenix October 9, 2010 Comments (7)
Saskatoon is now among the most spread-out cities in Canada. Building a more compact city is the key to keeping taxes at bay, but a stronger political will is needed, experts say. Photograph by: Greg Pender, The StarPhoenix
This is the first story of Face the Future, a series that steps back to examine issues challenging Saskatoon in the decades to come. The multi-part series will run during the next two months.
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Joel Teal pulls his black SUV over to the side of the road to admire the view.
The sound of air-powered nail guns ring out. The clamour of construction crews, hard at work building a new road on this rain-soaked morning, is like a civic anthem here in Stonebridge, the fast-growing south-end Saskatoon neighbourhood.
“Without urban sprawl,” Teal said, smiling, “there wouldn’t be all these jobs.”
We are justifying more urban sprawl because it provides short-term work? Yeah, because building communities any other way fails to provide our economy with meaningful employment 
These are our business leaders! Saskatoon has an opportunity to produce innovative urban development but our leaders are too damn conservative to step out of their comfort zone. Another failure to launch.
Teal is a self-described “hired gun” who has spent a long career devoted to suburban development in Western Canada and is now president of home-building juggernaut Dundee Developments.
[...]
The key is building suburbs that are complete communities, not just endless streets filled with single-family homes, Teal says.
Complete communities by Dundee Development? Yeah, and just last week I saw a unicorn playing poker with a dragon in Friendship Park.
The developer has watched decades of Saskatoon’s growth with a ground-floor view. He was behind the push to annex what is now present-day Stonebridge in the mid-1980s. He bought the land that forms the neighbourhood in the early 1990s when he was with a different company. Then, when that firm wanted out of Saskatoon when growth slumped, Teal bought it back with Dundee.
Areas such as Lakeridge, Briarwood, Erindale, Silverspring and Arbor Creek came on stream when housing prices in Saskatoon were still among the lowest among major cities in the country and more people could afford single-family homes on large lots.
Stonebridge, one of the denser new neighbourhoods developed in Saskatoon since the 1960s at six units per acre, has begun an evolution toward a more diverse neighbourhood, Teal says. Dundee has designed the area with multi-family units along the main arterials to create a transit corridor and built up density close to the commercial big-box sector. Instead of single-family homes being the dominant form, there are more townhouses, condominiums and seniors complexes, which make new neighbourhoods more diverse, he said.
Yawnnnn. Very few developers ever take off their motorist hats and contemplate walking or cycling through their idyllic Tuscany's and Arborcreek's. Big box development with ample parking surrounded by 4 storey walk-ups does not make a complete community.
Evergreen, the northeast neighbourhood being brought on line by the city’s land branch, will continue the trend toward more complete suburban neighbourhoods with a projected 8.6 units per acre, the densest neighbourhood ever built in Saskatoon.
Creating more diverse neighbourhoods has a proven track record during the last century, Grauer says. Areas such as Nutana, City Park and Caswell Hill, which have some of the highest densities in the city, have a gravitational pull to them because a variety of housing forms are provided.
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Nobody should be holding up Saskatoon as an example of urban sprawl, Teal says.
“We’re not Mexico City,” he says.
OH RLY? So what are building here? Teal could have been more clear on what he has in mind for Saskatoon -- another city defined by clusterfuck urban design.
Walker questions the view there is ample choice available for homebuyers. While developers portray new areas as vastly different from the last, they are only incrementally different, he said.
There has to be a strong effort to show people the benefits of a more urban lifestyle, Walker said.
“Time and again we’re rolling out the same thing,” he said. “I really don’t believe that people know what they could have.”
Building up rather than out will take leadership from municipal and provincial politicians, Walker said.
“The limitations are just the will to do it,” Walker said. “We have to have a government that’s pretty serious about it and wants to make it their project and energizes the administration and the development community."
The biggest obstacle to overcome.
“We’re not bringing the inner cities to the suburbs here. We’re talking about adding two more units per acre.”
Early in the tour of Stonebridge, Teal pulls his vehicle over and points to a number of similar-styled stucco-walled houses with attached garages.
This, he says, is the definition of the ‘cookie-cutter’ homes those who preach the anti-suburban mantra love to hate.
“The people that loathe suburban development say these homes with ticky-tacky attached garages are the enemy,” Teal says.
“If this is so bad how come they sell like hot cakes?”
Because in Saskatoon there is no alternative to car oriented neighborhood development.
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Dundee shows no concern -- no understanding -- for the negative implications their poorly designed tract housing developments will have on this city.
Ugghhh, and to top it off we have several councilors who share the same myopic vision for Saskatoon.
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