Why we're about to find out who builds Edmonton

This week, Edmonton’s city council approved a new neighbourhood on a patch of farmland well south of the Anthony Henday ring road. The decision raises important questions about who builds our city, and how, and if that can change in the future.

If this neighbourhood, called Heritage Valley, rolls out to plan it will be completed in 2030, house less than 4,000 people, “eventually” offer LRT service at its core and centre around a new hospital that will be built by the province.

Ambleside, a neighbourhood that exists outside the Anthony Henday ring road. Photo: Mack Male/Flickr

The most forward-thinking part of this project is that it has been intentionally designed with a relationship between housing, mobility, and jobs. The hospital and associated employment clustered near it will mean, ideally, that a future resident can live close to work — heck, maybe even walk there. This is the way all city neighbourhoods should be built, most especially the suburban ones, so bravo to Edmonton on that point.

But what the new community also highlights — aside from our city’s long-established aversion to tackling costly edge-of-city sprawl by doing something other than a better job at that same sprawl — are the questions I pointed out above about city building.

The answers are more complex than many realize. And as Edmonton enters into a discussion on its next city plan over the next few weeks, these questions need to be asked. The trouble is, those who can answer may not be in the room.

The neighbourhood we’ve just approved, called Heritage Valley, has been driven by the province, not our city planners or officials. Provincial investment in a hospital and the Dr. Anne Anderson high school are catalysts. The city passed an area structural plan in 2009 for Heritage Valley and we have made investments there, but without the province and the infrastructure, Heritage Valley was going to remain more an idea than a reality.

It gets more complicated still. Arguably the largest investment in city-building in Edmonton over the last quarter century is Anthony Henday ring road, which Heritage Valley is close to. Since 1990 the province has built this freeway, but the city has built freeway connections to it. Beyond the more than $4 billion and counting that has been spent on the Henday, what has resulted is an explosion in housing in the southwest of Edmonton.

Without the Henday, it wouldn’t be there.

The relationship between how a province invests in infrastructure in our cities and how those cities can develop, or control development, is therefore complex one. Put another way: it will be near impossible for Edmonton to tackle a huge reason its property taxes go up — sprawl — if the province continues to invest in the infrastructure that literally enables it.

The discussion gets even more complicated as we consider Edmonton’s upcoming city plan. If you haven’t read the proposals in this plan, here they are. Edmonton is re-envisioned as a compact city that can grow within its existing footprint to house a lot more people. This makes sense on all levels — carbon emissions, congestion, liveability, equity, and keeping property taxes in check.

Council can, and should, endorse this plan. It’s a good one.

But the trouble is that the province controls a lot of the development in Edmonton by what it does, and does not, invest in. The city can plan all it likes to remain compact, but unless the province invests in LRT, rather than expansions to freeways, those plans will not become reality.

As council discusses the city plan over the next while, the most pressing questions should not be put to planners. Instead, it should be those preparing to run for mayor of Edmonton who are put on the hot seat. How will you negotiate city-building with the province? How dedicated are you to building LRT rather than freeways? How committed are you to enacting the city’s plan, rather than the province’s?

Pitting renters against owners hurts cities where it matters most — democracy

It’s time, again, to talk the losing battle for cities that is the renters versus owners battle. It’s a recurring discussion, which means it’s almost as circular as the Pembina River (jokes: the river is not a circle people!), though far less enjoyable. What’s most concerning for cities, though, is that it hurts basic democracy.

An apartment building in Little Havana, Miami. Neighbourhoods that fight density based on owners versus renters restrict where these gentle-density buildings can be built. Flickr: Phillip Pessar

I’ll walk you through this step by step.

Today, Alex Bozikovic, a Globe and Mail writer you should follow, tweeted the following:

A toxic stew of classism, nativism, and entitlement on Vancouver’s west side https://t.co/dn5OR982cU

— Alex Bozikovic (@alexbozikovic) July 29, 2020

The inspiration for this tweet was the tweet below. I encourage you to read the speaker’s thoughts on owners versus renters.

"When you're an owner, you have a far greater impact and care more for the neighbourhood than you would if you're a renter."

A transcription of one speaker and 10 minutes from a public hearing tonight for a 4-storey rental apartment in Vancouver's Shaughnessy neighbourhood. pic.twitter.com/EbV8m3fAQO

— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) July 29, 2020

Okay then. So we’ve got owners speaking as if they know renters, and telling city governments that renters care less about taking care of neighbourhoods than they do in order to prevent increased density (read: apartment buildings) from coming to their neighbourhoods.

It’s anecdata, subjective, and self-serving garbage. And it’s rampant at city councils.

But beyond being simply inaccurate, this renters versus owners falsehood does bigger harm. It breaks democracy in cities. Allow me to explain.

A few years ago, I wrote a story for The Yards that examined what barriers to those living in multi-family housing (many of them renters) means for local elections. Too long, didn’t read? One city councillor, who lives in multi-family housing himself, said he’s talked to people at their doorstep who were certain that, as renters, they were not entitled to vote in municipal elections.

This is where your head should probably explode.

If we assume that a large portion of those who rent have less means than those who rent (this is not at all a rule, of course; many rent for many reasons), what this potentially means is that those who need to be heard about the city services they rely on — think transit, for example — don’t even feel entitled to cast a vote in city elections.

My argument: end the renters versus owners discussion now. It’s bad.

Why losing reporters at city hall is bad for all of us

This is a bit of a rant inspired by a tweet, which in turn was inspired by news.

Today, reporter Scott Johnston tweeted that Global News has laid him off. Johnston, who reports for Edmonton’s 630CHED, which Global owns, has been a reporter for 27 years. If you ever go to Edmonton City Hall, you almost always see him there. Johnston’s very much a reporter from the old mold — covering his beat, reporting near everything that comes up.

Scott Johnston (left) was the person who didn’t miss anything at city hall. Photo: Mack Male/Flickr

Having tried to emulate this old-school approach when I had the Yukon legislature beat at the Yukon News, back in 2005-2006 (receipts here), I can relate to how much work this is, how nuanced your understanding of issues becomes, how essential your reporting of often mundane, banal facts is not only to keep power in check but keep people on the outside informed. Our system depends on well-informed actors making reasonably well-informed decisions.

That’s why I see this as a dark day.

As many city councillors will tell you, their experience at the doors when campaigning is that voters are upset about things, but aren’t at all clear which level of government is responsible. Sure, this goes all ways, and isn’t unique to city politicians: It’s doubtful federal candidates in Edmonton don’t hear complaints about potholes, or hospitals, or that provincial ones don’t hear complaints about Don Iveson.

Still, city politics and issues are unique in that cities are limited to what they can do by the province. Edmonton can’t unilaterally decide to bring in new ways to raise money to pay for infrastructure, for example. Instead, it has limited tools and lots of direct contact with the often angry public. So councillors at the doors hearing anger have even less agency to do much about it.

The reason today is particularly dark is because the more we get away from fact-based discussions on city issues in Edmonton, the more people who work outside the world of facts and fairness will be rewarded. Which is a polite way to say the more people who manipulate and spin will see opportunity.

“As many city councillors will tell you, their experience at the doors when campaigning is that voters are upset about things, but aren’t at all clear which level of government is responsible. ”

For example, almost all discussions I’ve seen on social media about city “waste” point to things like the funicular and the proposed gondola. The first example saw Edmonton spend just $1.6M of the total $24M cost; the latter, regardless of whether you think it’s a wise idea or not, is currently not going to cost the city a dime. No matter: Both are now examples angry residents point to when they express frustration with city “pet projects.”

We’re seeing the opportunists realize ignorance offers rewards. We already have one city councillor who screams about bike lanes but could care less about Edmonton debt-financing the Yellowhead expansion to the tune of $510M.

Without reporters like Johnston, offering daily, ubiquitous coverage of each and every city discussion and issue, we should expect this worrying trend to accelerate.

*I’ve amended the cost of the funicular from the first draft I posted