Oct. 13, 2010 - Issue #782 : Future Edmonton

What will the future bring

What 'The Way We Grow' means for the future of Edmonton

In 2040 it's predicted Edmonton will be home to over one million people. A frightening thought in a city that only three years ago was facing a vacancy rate of one percent in a majority of jurisdictions and housed the working poor in a temporary tent city in its downtown. The future of Edmonton was looking like a crush of people in a sprawling city. But a rejuvenated municipal development plan, focusing on core services, approved just this year may work to provide the core transportation and living needs of Edmontonians.

Mandated by the provincial government to create a strategic 10-year development plan, the city created The Way We Grow between 2006 and 2009, working to integrate the principles of intensifying development in the downtown core, transit-focused urban form and a strategic look at environmental issues facing the city, including the development of urban agriculture.

"It's a step in the right direction," says former councillor and executive director of Edmonton Federation of Community Leagues Allan Bolstad, who believes the plan works toward a strategy of smart growth—something he wrote an extensive report on in 2005. Though the city has created numerous strategic development plans, the most recent seems focused on the new philosophy of "smart growth." Bolstad's 2005 report uses language such as intensification, infill development, mixed use and transit-oriented development, words found within The Way We Grow document.
"Ten, 15 years ago we still had developers who didn't believe we had urban sprawl," continues Bolstad. "Today that's in the same category as saying there's no climate change."

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Infrastructure

Infrastructure includes everything from recreation and cultural facilities to transportation routes and water systems. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimated that in 2007 Edmonton was sitting at an infrastructure deficit of over $188 million, the second highest in a country facing over $123 billion in city infrastructure debt. Crunched between provincial and federal governments that had spent the '90s taking money out of public infrastructure, a nearly 200-million-dollar deficit can be debilitating to a city. And as Bolstad's report notes, "the failure of the federal and municipal government does not prevent municipal politicians from their responsibility of looking ahead and using information that is not commonly available to the public to make decisions that are in the best overall interest of the community."

For Bolstad the answer lies in building around central hubs, building mixed-use developments and infill in mature neighbourhoods. The second of nine strategic goals in the current municipal development plan says, "Land use and design complement and support the transportation system, while the transportation network supports areas of increased density and employment."

With a life cycle of 50 years and an infrastructure inventory of $33 billion, the answer to saving money on infrastructure costs may lie in building closer rather than spreading out. Says Bolstad, "Infrastructure costs still eat up a huge amount of the city's budget and so being able to control the size of the city will help."

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Transit

Perhaps what will change the shape, quite literally, of Edmonton the most is the central statement in The Way We Grow: transit will create the basis of urban form. The Way We Grow was created simultaneously with the The Way We Move, and almost as evidence of council's seriousness on the matter, the south LRT extension was approved in 2008 and in December of last year the west and southeast LRT lines were approved for development by council. On September 9 of this year, the Capital Region Board endorsed provincial Green Trip funding for the NAIT LRT.

The transportation master plan reports that Edmonton has one of the highest rates of single passenger car rides in Canada. "It's good to see the city looking at moving people some other way than the car," says Bolstad. "Lots of our volunteers spend their time chauffering and less time coaching or helping with the team and that's just because people are responding to the demands of getting to and from the games and practices.”

That being said, Bolstad qualifies that there is more work to be done to ensure transportation changes in the city. "I don't know that they've stopped to analyze the number of trips people are taking and distances people are driving every day. Standard measureables to help the city know they are beating urban sprawl. The goal is to reduce the number of trips or at least to stabilize them, and to reduce the distance of each trip. Those are two measureables."

The transit plan has received criticism throughout the 2010 election for costing upwards of $2 billion, but the movement of people toward transit usage in 2009 may make the case for council. In 2009 when the transit station at South Campus opened, transit ridership increased by 39 percent, carrying over 74 000 people daily.
 

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Edmonton Population

Achieving these goals may be a matter of commitment and funding. With the infrastructure deficit earlier this decade, the province and the federal government stepped up funding and commitment to areas such as housing and transportation. The federal government committed the gas tax in 2005 as part of the New Deal for Cities initiative. And more recently economic stimulus money was used as part of projects building infrastructure in the city. While the federal government remains committed to these projects in the 2010 – 2011 budget, the economic stimulus money will soon end, and any impending budget crises at either level of government could potentially pull money away from cities. Any future council securing the liveability of Edmonton's soon-to-be one million citizens will have to continue inter-governmental advocacy to achieve these goals. V



 

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