My general position is that people should pay for what they use.
This means no subsidies for anyone, infill, suburb, Condo etc should pay for the capital costs of adding their new properties.
The Cause of sprawl isnt new communities it is everyone who lives in Calgary's fault. The amount you contribute to sprawl is based on the square footage of the lot where you live. Transportation congestion is also not caused by where you live but when, where, and how much you drive.Therefore we need some sort of lot size based tax to assess the costs of sprawl and some sort of road toll to asesss the cost of driving.
I haven't been able to participate in the election or similar threads as much as I'd like to due to other commitments, so this is going to be another of my long-winded posts touching on a number of thoughts. Fair warning that I might not have time to do a back-and-forth defense on this over the next few days.
Re: Subsidy
The figure between $4-5K per new lot was laid out fairly well by Bunk a little while back and thanks for that. The thing about this number though is that it's only within the context of the capital outlay that the City of Calgary pays for. The capital outlay for new suburbs that the Province pays should be in the discussion as well (you would have to have some corresponding number-crunching as well with the different tax streams if you really want to go deeper, and I don't have a "final" number to give you, mostly speaking qualitatively here, but the point is intuitive enough on that level).
In the context of the Provincial capital outlay, the big ones are hospitals and other healthcare facilities, schools and highways (aka Deerfoot and Stoney Trail in the context of those within Calgary city limits). It's been posted a number of times in the past, but basically, Calgary's public school attendance hasn't nearly kept pace with population growth (people having less kids) and yet the geographic representation of school projects sees a ton of new schools being built on the outreaches of the city and older schools systematically being closed closer in. Now, the "but that's where the kids are" argument is more chicken-and-egg than those who would bring that up might want to admit (i.e., would you continue to live somewhere if there weren't a school about to be built there?) and is also a bit of a red herring (kids can be bused to school if need be).
Hospitals and healthcare facility capital outlay is a lot easier in terms of examples and explanation. It involves taking a trip south as if you were heading to Lethbridge (and you actually almost make it there), spinning your head in the direction of the Deerfoot/22X interchange and noticing that thing that rises out of the sea of beige and brown.
With Provincial highway projects, Stoney Trail is a multi-billion dollar outlay. You can justify one half of it in that it helps enable goods movement which benefits a wide swath of the population and the economy. A lot of it (especially the SW leg) is largely a tool to enable and encourage suburban and exurban commuters though. The thing about ring roads such as this one is that it invites and encourages people to build on the other side of them. Houston is currently working on its third ring road, each one of which was, in its own time, justified as being a quick way to get around the city for those inside of it.
I know the SW ring road is a big issue right now and I don't intend for that to flare up, as I do recognize and acknowledge some of the arguments for it and it is not without its redeeming qualities, but let's look at some of the consequences of this expenditure as it applies to this context. Just trying to give some things to think about. For those in the southwest south of Glenmore and especially south of Fish Creek who are clamouring for this thing - consider that you and all your neighbours are currently making-do and are willing to live in your current situation and in some cases have been for decades. Now the ringroad gets built and you have exponentially more people such as yourself that are willing to live further south and west than you do now because there's been a paradigm shift that makes those places have conditions similar to what you are currently willing to live with. Providence is the new Oakridge and Silverado-south is the new Bridlewood, all made easier and enabled by spending on the southwest ringroad.
What the Province builds and where they do it factors into where development happens too, and you can't take the fact that they build schools and highways for granted and treat it as some natural, unchangeable force. Yeah, it's a bit beyond the strict scope of this thread, but it fits into "subsidy" talk, as a bit of a broader topic. Shift the capital outlay on schools to renovating and expanding existing schools, shift some of the highway building to balancing it with capital transit projects. Not necessarily 180 degree turnarounds, but changing the balance should be in the conversation if we want to look at the big picture. Either that, or figure out a way to approximate how much each new lot benefits from the proposed Provincial capital outlay (whereby the bulk of it is built in a geographic orientation that benefits outlying suburbs and exurbs more than existing residents versus alternative orientation/building schemes that is more balanced) and pass that on to whoever chooses to live there.
Re: "Where do you put all the people?" or "People have to live somewhere"
Not without some merit, this argument does resemble a red herring as it's been used by some. The implication here is that established areas are somehow filled up and thus to add people (as I'm sure most will agree - adding people is a good thing), the only choice is to build outwards.
I think a lot of people underestimate how many empty or underused lots there are in inner city Calgary and other key established areas and how many people and jobs could be accommodated far before Calgary resembles Hong Kong, Seoul or Tehran levels of crowding.
For an example I know well, Beltline alone can accommodate 50 000 people whereas it is hovering around 20 000 people right now. I live in the most built-up part of the community (the three city blocks surrounding my place is the densest residential area in Alberta, and one of a handful of the densest in Canada) and there is a huge vacant lot (just sitting there, not even being used for surface parking) on my block, another on an adjacent block, another few within the next ring of blocks, and probably a dozen within a 500 meter radius. That's without counting all the single-story shops and small commercial strips, and the many aging two-and three story walkup buildings that sit on large half-block lots. The 50 000 figure is arrived at after making some assumptions about reserving land for new parks and cultural spaces and using what is allowed under existing land-uses - not Hong Kong style 200 sqft apartments in every possible corner. Lots more employment as well, especially between 12th Avenue and the CPR tracks.
That's just Beltline. There's Mission, Bridgeland, Hillhurst-Sunnyside (more appetite and better political environment for development there in the last few years after the changes to the ARP by the way - before the history of NIMBYism argument gets trotted out), Lower Mount Royal, Bankview, Sunalta, Inglewood and others. Add in some of the stronger TOD sites with redevelopment plans in place (and the rest eventually) such as Chinook, Brentwood, Westbrook. Dealing only with the very inner city and some TOD pockets, without really any land use redesignations at all, you could add into the hundreds of thousands of new residents to these areas, and lots of jobs as well (some commercial in TOD and inner city and still lots of developable lots downtown).
Theoretically speaking (and no, this is not what I want to see happen), you could bring all suburban and exurban development to a standstill and easily accommodate all the regional population growth in the next 5-10 years by building out inner city and TOD areas and then spend the next 20-30 building out the successive rings of existing communities and other TOD areas without ever building a single new snout house in Mahogany or 2 + bonus room in Airdrie.
The core and inner city really isn't full at all and a lot of people seem to be waving their hands and just saying that it is so bring on 250th Avenue SW. It's a lot "emptier" than a lot of people think and a lot more can be accommodated there without even coming close to the mega density of the cities I mentioned earlier.
I don't want to see the obviously extreme and unhealthy theoretical situation I posted above, but there's a lot of room for the balance to shift, coupled with a discussion about appropriate redevelopment levies (Beltline already has a levy). I also agree with earlier comments that people in established areas who are pushing for less surburban development have to realize that part of that equation means that their areas will see more intensive redevelopment.
Fotze's gripe about some of the pain this can cause is legitimate (and this is part of why the theoretical scenario above can't work and some concurrent outward growth is needed), but there are lots of solutions on the construction management and inspection side of things that will go a long way to mitigate this. The City currently doesn't do a very good job in this area and it needs to improve - something we're working on in our community.
Re: "Not everyone works downtown"
While of course true, Calgary has a freakishly high proportion of downtown workforce for a city of its age, location, type and size, but we've been over that in this or another thread recently. Still, I've always found the "I can live in the suburbs and still live close to work" argument a bit spurious, in a general sense.
The problem is that people change job locations more often than they change residences, and there is a lot of workplace location variance within many households. Long gone are the days when the father would go and work at the same place for 40 years and the woman stay at home and I don't think telecommuting will ever take as strong a hold as its proponents argue.
Okay, so you bought a house in Douglasdale or Mahogany because you work in Foothills or Starfield Industrial, or you bought a house in Saddleridge or Coventry Hills because you work at the airport or surrounding business parks. The problem comes when your spouse or significant other is likely to work on the opposite side of the City (say, Quarry Park or Rockyview Hospital). What happens when you yourself will be in the same situation once you change companies, change careers or your company moves offices (look at Imperial Oil or CP Rail as large and recent examples)? I suppose you can say you had a good run of 5 years.
The thing about living more centrally is that you can hedge your bets against this a little bit. Sure, the person living in West Hillhurst who works near the University may find themselves or the people they live with working in Seton or somewhere out off of northeast Stoney Trail in 5 years, but it's a good thing they didn't choose to buy a house in Tuscany (the Calgary one). It's also why locating employment more centrally is a good idea too (how else do you think the concept of a "downtown" in nearly every city in history came to be?).
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Not sure if this is really a rebuttal to any one issue, but regarding suburbs in Calgary, there's a couple issues that I have trouble getting past from a standpoint of my personal preferences. I don't think I've seen anyone bring these specific points up recently.
The aging (60s-90s) suburbs have all the traditional problems with suburbs. There's no variety or good opportunity to age-in-place, the layout is terrible and infuriating; sidewalks, parks, school sites are barren and windswept, walking and transit are woefully unideal situations.
The ones being built now are better in many ways that I will acknowledge and a lot closer to something I could actually see myself choosing. The built form is better, the housing type mix is better, the street hierarchy and street layout is better. The problem with the new suburbs is that they are too geographically removed from everything, being removed from the rest of the city by several rings of the older variety of suburbs. Walden's great. It's just that it's about 120 blocks too far south.
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Sorry to be so verbose, as usual, but I hope it's noted that I do acknowledge that there are lots of intelligent arguments from all directions on these issues and I'm just putting some food for thought out there.
Last edited by frinkprof; 10-22-2013 at 10:41 PM.
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$5000 subsidy per suburban new build lot? Simple solution, remove the subsidy and the builders/developers will just pass the cost onto the consumer. What is an extra $5k on the mortgage on a typical $500k new build, or whatever they are going for right now? If they do this all the yuppy/hipsters/dinks/doinks can shut up there mouths.
As for sprawl? The city should annex further, implement a 'green belt' perimeter and then control growth through zoning. Allow single family detached but reserve larger sections for building up and future transit zones.
$5000 subsidy per suburban new build lot? Simple solution, remove the subsidy and the builders/developers will just pass the cost onto the consumer. What is an extra $5k on the mortgage on a typical $500k new build, or whatever they are going for right now? If they do this all the yuppy/hipsters/dinks/doinks can shut up there mouths.
As for sprawl? The city should annex further, implement a 'green belt' perimeter and then control growth through zoning. Allow single family detached but reserve larger sections for building up and future transit zones.
That's what I have thought, but it's almost too simple to actually happen.
But why should an individual in a new community pay for the impact of roads they dont use or need. If you want to charge new communities for their impact to roads you need to charge all comunities for their imoact to roads. This means tolls based on usasge and time of use.
I fully agree. I think it's hilarious that grandma who's lived in Sunnyside forever has had to pay increasing property taxes to pay for the endless amount of enormous interchanges.
Actually, I had heard that it's not legal for the province to set up toll booths on roads, I don't know how true that is.
But in the absence of a user fee system for every service that you use, I don't think it's asking too much for a new community to not only pay for the capital costs of the project, but also the life cycle costs. This means that neighbourhoods should be built in such an efficient manner that they can bring in enough revenue on their own to maintain the roads, utilities, fire departments, police stations, etc. A lot of that is on the City mandating certain density and mixed use requirements. I believe that's getting much better, although it's been pretty freaking terrible for a very long time.
Are they not allready making new communities like Quarry Park and the new Hospital in the south area? Work on making new communties higher density and put everything there that people need including offices.
Why not just create new smaller facilities for infastructure like waste treatment plants rathern than try to tie everything together to existing. Same thing with roads and traffic, reduce the number of cars allowed in the city or on given roadways. That's how you make real change.
I fully agree. I think it's hilarious that grandma who's lived in Sunnyside forever has had to pay increasing property taxes to pay for the endless amount of enormous interchanges.
Actually, I had heard that it's not legal for the province to set up toll booths on roads, I don't know how true that is.
But in the absence of a user fee system for every service that you use, I don't think it's asking too much for a new community to not only pay for the capital costs of the project, but also the life cycle costs. This means that neighbourhoods should be built in such an efficient manner that they can bring in enough revenue on their own to maintain the roads, utilities, fire departments, police stations, etc. A lot of that is on the City mandating certain density and mixed use requirements. I believe that's getting much better, although it's been pretty freaking terrible for a very long time.
I think there are a few ways to look at this issue.
First, at the community level, I see it being similar to the equalization program between the provinces and just like that system, there would be have and have not communities. In a system where only work and or maintenance for a community was based on the taxes generated within said community, some neighbourhoods would be at a distinct disadvantage versus others who possess a larger revenue base (e.g. Forest Lawn v. Mount Royal). Having tax revenue collected at a level above the community (i.e. the city) and distributed by that larger entity is a more equitable way for all communities to thrive.
Second, at the individual level, one cannot realistically expect to receive full value for ones tax dollars. The best example of such would be tax revenue that goes towards education as not every tax payer has children who reap the immediate benefits of a publicly funded education system. Ultimately, funding education is a long term benefit for the greater good of society.
As to tolled roads, I am not sure about the legality of placing tolls on existing roads, but personally, I am ideologically opposed to tolls on roads that are funded by tax payers.
Glad to see this thread start, I think it will be a good catch-all thread for all the very good debate and discussion to be had on the many issues our uni-city faces.
Oh and I am going to start using the Yop-Gobblers term as much as possible. It is the yin to our latte-sipping yang.
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My problem with asking the new community to have to pick up all of the lifecycle costs is that it is not the fault of the new community that it is so far out. It is the fault of years of poor city planning and low density growth. Like Frinkprof said above new communities are being better planned.
The other issue with just adding costs to new construction is that it just raises the cost of a suburban home which in turn raises the value of an inner city home. So while you will recover costs on new construction you also have created a wealth transfer from future home owners to current home owners.
How can one justify charging Walden for its future traffic problems while kingsland gets a free pass. Its why I keep coming back to lot size as your contribution to sprawl. If you sip your latte on a 50ft frontage lot you are causing more sprawl then any new suburb and should pay for it. If we want people to pay for their impact we need to recognize that the new community isn't entirely to blame and therefore shouldn't bare all of the cost.
Its why I keep coming back to lot size as your contribution to sprawl. If you sip your latte on a 50ft frontage lot you are causing more sprawl then any new suburb and should pay for it. If we want people to pay for their impact we need to recognize that the new community isn't entirely to blame and therefore shouldn't bare all of the cost.
So under your proposal, people who live in mid-rise and high-rise condos (that have a very small footprint per occupant) should receive a huge tax break?
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Latte Sipping, YOP Gobbling Urban Planning Megathread
