A monday thought about houses etc

[NbyNW]

Will try to answer with the caveat that I have only been in Edmonton for 5 months and arrived just in time for winter weather, so only had a couple of opportunities to cycle the area immediate to where I was staying at the time.

..What are the challenges facing your area regarding growth??

As I've observed it, new development seems to be dominated by McMansions sprawling out from the city center. Street layouts in these new developments are quite confusing, and as the terrain is mostly flat, there is really no clear rationale for some of these layouts. Kind of ignores the principles in A Pattern Language.

There is no concept of mixed-use development here. While a new light rail system has recently gone into operation, there does not seem to be a recognition that adopting a different mix of housing & business development might help reduce car dependency. We stayed for two months in a condo development on the SW edge of the city limit (if you know Edmonton, we could see the Henday from our back window). Nearest retail and services were only 1.75 miles by car, but if you wanted a ped-friendly or bike-friendly route, much longer and very confusing to navigate through the curly street layout.

The climate may be part of it. There doesn't seem to be any real sense of urgency regarding emissions reduction here, for example.

I don't know WHY Edmonton is developing in this way. This city is definitely growing. The oil sands attract workers, and then they have to build housing for the workers. The University also attracts people from outside the province. I don't know if they are choosing to build housing like this because of market demand (perceived or real), because of a lack of a long-term master plan or a lack of will to enforce it. I've heard of a master plan that governs development at the ravine edges, which seems to have eroded in its power, literally, but that's another story.

If you were asked to think about how your community/city will accommodate everyone in 20yrs time, what would you suggest? Where will we put everyone?

I don't think the leadership of this city or the public perceives this as a problem. There is plenty of land to go around here.

Can you see the connection to cycling?

Not sure what you mean by this, but there do seem to be separate systems of paved trails throughout the city. It seems that they are not yet fully linked as a network, though I have seen a river valley master plan that calls for that. Sometimes they dead end or don't connect. But that's my roadie perspective. The further away from downtown you are, the harder it is to link to the center. We are now only a few miles from downtown, so I expect I'll be able to access a lot. Seems like mtbs are much more useful here, so I will probably be trying to explore those options when it gets warmer.

ETA: here's an editorial regarding Edmonton's growth plan, from this past November: http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/...764/story.html