Housing statistics show that Edmonton is slowly curbing urban sprawl. However, the majority of units are still homes built outside of the Henday. For anyone who is concerned about property taxes, air quality, or traffic, these stats should continue to ring alarm bells.
With population expected to grow 3.1% in 2025 thanks to Premier Smith's "Alberta is Calling" campaign, where are new people going to live and what does that mean for our city budget?
More urban sprawl means…
Almost 10,000 new dwelling units were built outside of the Anthony Henday last year. That's sixty percent of the 16,519 total. The other 40% were built in the redeveloping area. If another 6,519 homes were built outside of the Henday, that would have required an enormous amount of additional farmland.
That is an enormous expense when you think about the new pipe, road, concrete, land and much more that is required in terms of the capital costs. The impacts to our annual operational budgets are much greater.
Infill in Edmonton has been receiving significant attention in the media, but sprawl stories have been seemingly absent.
When we look at the big picture problems facing the city, including our billion dollar deferred maintenance gap, we seem to be missing the forest for the saplings. It is taxpayers – not developers, of course – who pick up this liability.
We need to remember that every new neighbourhood constructed is a future tax increase, adding to our deferred maintenance, our fiscal gap, and our carbon budget. Reporters, where are the news stories about urban sprawl?
That is not my opinion, that is what the numbers continue to show in Edmonton and in cities across North America that have leaned on sprawl to address housing capacity needs. In Ottawa, for example, the city found that suburban expansion costs $465 per person per year. By contrast, Ottawa found that high-density infill development earned that city $606 per person per year.
In Edmonton, consultant research showed that six new neighbourhoods, even with a higher density than traditional sprawl, in the Decouteau area of the city’s southeast would create a $400-million liability (in 2014 dollars) by 2050. Conversely, building inwards has generated over $263 million in new property taxes in mature neighbourhoods alone.
As I’ve written about previously, urban sprawl is the greatest financial danger to our city. As countless environmental experts have highlighted, reversing urban sprawl is the most impactful measure we can make to lower our carbon emissions and ensure clean air and water for our children. I would urge you to listen to this ear opening podcast from VOLTS “Why housing is a pass/fail issue for climate.”
There are hundreds of thousands of opportunities for housing inside redeveloping areas including:
Some sprawl-friendly councillors are trying to distract us by saying “green building requirements” are the cause of tax increases and expensive problems. The problem isn’t the green building materials in a project, the problem is we need to build so many new projects because of sprawl.
The problem isn’t the workers' wages who are sweeping the road, the problem is the fact that each year we are adding hundreds of new kilometers of roads to maintain and sweep. Each year our roads cost us $466 million dollars ($300m in new capital and $166m in operating costs in 2024).
What are our next big steps?
This unprecedented event park/CRL extension should be put forward to taxpayers as a municipal referendum this upcoming municipal election and I will be moving a motion to advance this opportunity.
Wherever we are in the city, we all deserve to feel and be safe. Public health is a foundation of public safety. When people feel healthy and experience less pain, they are more likely to contribute positively to the community.
Over the last year, every week on Tuesday, the city of Edmonton and public health partners have set up a pop-up health clinic in west Edmonton, to take care of people experiencing homelessness. In addition to health improvements, clinic presence has contributed to a stronger sense of safety in the area, with fewer visible health crises and less gang-related activity reported.
