Urban living in Edmonton

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by Coldrsx

As the article mentions, the continuous stress, impact and real personal safety concerns many of us have to deal with are simply driving people out and significantly impacting decision making for potential/future residents.

While it is encouraging to see multiple stakeholders working towards improving safety/security, the general lack of any attention or commitment to the residential areas of the Downtown is disheartening.

As mentioned many times, our neighbourhood has never been so plagued with crime, B&Es, people ODing in our lobby or vestibule, or damage to property in and around our building. Our condo board is spending a lot of money as a result when we would rather be putting that towards rising utility prices. This will directly lead to increases in condo fees, if not special assessments in many buildings and diminish the value proposition of these units to both live in and or invest in.

I have always been a strong advocate for living Downtown, that it was safe for my sister to live and explore as a single person (back in the day), that it is more family friendly than people believe, that it is a great place for active seniors and yet right now I am not sure I would recommend it to anyone; that's a sad statement.

It's almost as if a the closing of safe consumption sites in central Edmonton has lead to more people doing drugs and ODing in public...

[Coldrsx]

Edmonton's omnibus zoning bylaw would change entire city and limit development rules

Author of the article: Lauren Boothby

Neighbourhoods could be in for some significant, transformational and permanent changes as Edmonton moves forward on plans to rezone the entire city and limit regulations on development.

The omnibus zoning bylaw, if passed, would upzone most lots now restricted to single-family homes and duplexes to allow for infill development. It would boost density and housing types allowed, like small apartments, rowhouses, garden suites, and supportive housing up to 10 metres in height — including in mature neighbourhoods — as well as some small businesses. Outside Anthony Henday Drive, residential lots have slightly different rules.

It would use about half the zones and about a quarter of land-use types as the current bylaws, so sites can be used for multiple purposes. Zones are split into residential, mixed-use, commercial, industrial, open space and civic services, agricultural or rural, and specialized categories.

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/loc...elopment-rules

---

A listing of the proposed changes/zones:

https://pub-edmonton.escribemeetings...umentId=138244

[Coldrsx]

The Five Social Inequities that Urban Planning Contributes to and How to Address Them

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/five-...CvkHRBsQ%3D%3D

[s211]

Originally Posted by Harrison

It's almost as if a the closing of safe consumption sites in central Edmonton has lead to more people doing drugs and ODing in public...

An interesting premise, but Vancouver has safe consumption sites and it's street problems are at least as distressing as what's seen in Edmonton.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by s211

An interesting premise, but Vancouver has safe consumption sites and it's street problems are at least as distressing as what's seen in Edmonton.

I'd say they're even more distressing in certain areas of Van like the DTES considering Canada Post recently announced they were going to stop delivering mail along a couple blocks of East Hastings due to safety issues... Van has considerably more expensive housing but at least the Province is doing more there through BC Housing than the Alberta Government ever has.

[Coldrsx]

Affordability needs to be built into Edmonton's plans to boost density with infill development: expert

Infill is key to reaching the goals set out in the city's most recent municipal development plan, City Plan, 2020.

Author of the article: Lauren Boothby
Publishing date:May 04, 2022

https://edmontonjournal.com/news/loc...-infill-expert

[feepa]

infill isn't affordable though. Any Infill projects I've witnessed are all $600,000+, whether its lot splitting, or just a tear down and rebuild, or duplex/triplex.

Hardly affordable.

If anything, its pushing affordable housing out of the core.

[B.ike]

^ no infill 'isn't' affordable to the prospective buyer -- but it is way more sustainable (and by extension more affordable) for the City

paper napkin math already shows that it isn't about affordability to the masses...buying a run down post war bungalow is $300k. tear down and rebuild quickly pushes that number to $600k+. Most would elect to buy on the fringes of the city is owning a non-strata type building is their desire.

But the fact the CoE is one of the few cities in Canada that makes it so easy to turn SFH lots into duplexes (or even essentially 'fourplexes' with basement suites each side) will go a long way in keep housing prices down in Edmonton in general.

Just look at Toronto and the archaic zoning. probably 75% of the City is zoned purely for SFH and good luck getting variations on that. Putting up a duplex in a SFH neighbourhood is almost impossible.
End result is concentrated areas of massive supertalls while the rest of the city is flat. And this approach has made housing unaffordable.

If TO allowed people to knock down homes to put up townhomes and duplexes, it would relief a lot of pressures. Would it make the prices Prairies level cheap? no. never. but definitely would satisfy certain demand pressures.

If I may go on a complete tangent. SFH owners are basically being subsidized by the higher density dwellers of the city. If we were to proportionally tax by land area and land values, SFH owners would face property taxes 10x higher than what they are paying now. It's always been absurd to me that a $400k shoebox in the Ice District pays the same tax as a $400k post war home on a massive lot.
So things like lot splitting are helping 'affordability' on the grand scheme of things but not on the direct consumer level.

[Coldrsx]

Kinda sorta.

My sister bought a 550k 1800sqft house in the burbs.

They had been looking at a 600k 1400sqft duplex in westmount.

They needed to get a second car for their new house, but would have been fine with a single car centrally.

Their commute delta is 30mins each way.

[Harrison]

Originally Posted by feepa

infill isn't affordable though. Any Infill projects I've witnessed are all $600,000+, whether its lot splitting, or just a tear down and rebuild, or duplex/triplex.

Hardly affordable.

If anything, its pushing affordable housing out of the core.

Well you haven't looked in all neighborhoods since I purchased my new Alberta Avenue duplex in 2019 for $310,000 through our builder. The same build would likely be closer to $450k in a ' bougier' neighbourhood back in 2019 I reckon, but that goes to show you can get more affordable infill in other parts of the city.

[Coldrsx]

Bar raised Edmonton

[kcantor]

^

you can't compare "architecture" without paying attention to pricing... it's a lovely project whether it's affordable housing or market housing but it's not cheap housing...

the $32.3M residential allocation of the project's total hard construction cost is $538k per unit. add say 15% for land and 15% for soft costs and those 60 small apartments cost $700k each noting that a good portion of the total project cost is being subsidized by the underlying bc hydro substation and by the school construction. it also has to be noted this doesn't allocate any municipal overheads and doesn't reflect the city's non-collection of any development levies (because it's "affordable housing").

you also have to look at what is considered "affordable housing" in the vancouver residential market. as of march of this year, the average cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment in vancouver is $2,239, while the average cost for a two-bedroom unit is $$3,050. anything rented at or below that average is deemed to be "affordable". it's also worth noting those are vancouver numbers, not coal harbour/west end numbers which i would think would be higher.

my guess is that if you could get those numbers in edmonton on either a sale or a rental basis, there wouldn't be any downtown gravel parking lots left.

the bar isn't set by design or demanding better design per se, it's set by dollars and we won't get what we're not prepared to pay for any more than vancouver or anywhere else gets anything for free.

[s211]

Originally Posted by kcantor

^

you can't compare "architecture" without paying attention to pricing... it's a lovely project whether it's affordable housing or market housing but it's not cheap housing...

the $32.3M residential allocation of the project's total hard construction cost is $538k per unit. add say 15% for land and 15% for soft costs and those 60 small apartments cost $700k each noting that a good portion of the total project cost is being subsidized by the underlying bc hydro substation and by the school construction. it also has to be noted this doesn't allocate any municipal overheads and doesn't reflect the city's non-collection of any development levies (because it's "affordable housing").

you also have to look at what is considered "affordable housing" in the vancouver residential market. as of march of this year, the average cost to rent a one-bedroom apartment in vancouver is $2,239, while the average cost for a two-bedroom unit is $$3,050. anything rented at or below that average is deemed to be "affordable". it's also worth noting those are vancouver numbers, not coal harbour/west end numbers which i would think would be higher.

my guess is that if you could get those numbers in edmonton on either a sale or a rental basis, there wouldn't be any downtown gravel parking lots left.

the bar isn't set by design or demanding better design per se, it's set by dollars and we won't get what we're not prepared to pay for any more than vancouver or anywhere else gets anything for free.

You can add that this site, were it available for market housing, would be the most expensive high-density residential land in the entire country.

The financial person in my head says sell the site for a kabillion dollars and buy ten social housing sites elsewhere, but hey I guess you can't put a price on inclusivity?

[Coldrsx]

IDEA's newest podcast with the most wonderful Dave Onishenko.

In Development Episode 16 - How Urban Planning Can Solve Unique Problems

https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcas...=1000565862275

[Coldrsx]

2021 Annual Report
https://www.edmonton.ca/sites/defaul...eid=30a714a4e8

[Coldrsx]

Mick Graham chats with Ryan and Mariah Infill Development Association of Edmonton about all things infill.

https://open.spotify.com/episode/13j...RbCS1-NDRj1fAg

[Coldrsx]

Al Fresco is back!

https://twitter.com/pentapod/status/1540756071903424512

[Coldrsx]

Plans to revamp the Rossdale neighbourhood could take 10-15 years to build, depending on economic conditions. The area is defined as a priority growth area in the City Plan, according to Avril McCalla, a senior policy advisor at the City of Edmonton.

[Coldrsx]

A zoning podcast like you’ve never heard because you’ve never listened to a podcast about zoning

Yes, zoning. With one z. Not zzzz-oning. Too often, how we talk about zoning gets people to tune out. It’s complex. There’s all kinds of specialized language the experts use. The lawyers and the planners and the politicians get it, but that leaves a lot of us who might not.

Which is wrong.

Because zoning—basically, the rules for how land can be used and what can be built where—affects everyone.

https://transforming.edmonton.ca/mak...=making_space_

[Coldrsx]

Robert F. McLeod
• 1st
President & Broker - McLeod Realty & Management Ltd. & McLeod Project Marketing Ltd.
1h • 1 hour ago

And Another One! Top Floor Penthouses are officially SOLD OUT within SKY Residences!