Quote:
Originally Posted by zahav
Halifax really remarkable with how much infill density they are getting. Very encouraging to see that they are building up the densest parts rather than relying on suburban sprawl (maybe that is also happening, I am not sure, but they seem to be focusing growth on the urban core more)
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There are a few things happening all at once:
- a large proportion of the new residential
is infill/redevelopments on the Peninsula (urban core)
- suburban corridors like
Sackville Drive,
Bedford Highway,
Wyze Road,
Dutch Village, and the
Armdale Rotary area are also getting a lot of apartment/condo infill.
- new greenfield developments (going back 10 or 20 years now) tend to have a low proportion of SFHs (with narrow lots) relative to the number of townhouses, and a large proportion of dwellings in ~100-unit buildings. The New England-style large-lot subdivisions that were developed here in the 90s don't really happen at a large scale anymore. So basically all of the new "non-core" stuff is built in the style you can see on right in the overhead view (and adjacent to similarly-built-up areas), and basically none of it in the style on the left (which at the time of construction was mostly outside of a de facto greenbelt):
At this point about half of the housing units in that view are probably on
one street in the top-right corner; most of the major streets through the new area will end up looking like that. Everything visible to the east of the linear industrial blob has been built up over the last 10 years or so.
- a small but not-insignificant amount of residential development on the Dartmouth side is infill of a different type - pushing into the Harbour on land reclamation/rock-dumping sites (a lot of the stone removed from the ground during construction processes here can leach potentially harmful minerals when exposed to air and freshwater for too long, so it's "used" to create new land by dumping it into the ocean at specific points along the shoreline). This has been mostly apartment and condo towers with some townhouses.
- on the horizon there are large-scale ("Burnaby-style") infill plans for Halifax Shopping Centre and Mic Mac Mall (the two largest malls in the region) as well as Park West Plaza and Penhorn Plaza (strip mall complexes with enough space to accommodate developments of that scale); and other redevelopments of that scale planned for the Cogswell Interchange site downtown and Shannon Park on the Dartmouth waterfront.
- based on the current realities I wouldn't be surprised if the universities and military each end up building some new housing of their own over the next few years. Most or all of this would be in the urban core or immediately adjacent.
There's been a lot of public (and also private) investment in the core areas generally tipping the balance in their favour in terms of being the attractive part of the urban area to live in these days, while pressure on the transportation networks means it takes longer for everyone else to get there. On the other hand the suburban areas are densifying and becoming more self-contained, and the transit system is much more reliable at a regional level than it was even a decade ago, with a lot more bus-only lanes and the ability for transit to override traffic light timing along major corridors in order to stay on schedule.
Unfortunately, "quick", "inexpensive", or even "straightforward" are not things that we do well here when it comes to construction, and even with all of the above the vacancy rate is extremely low and there's a lot of upwards pressure on rents and very little "choice" right now when it comes to purchasing a home here.
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