Tax neutral incentives in the inner-city need to be adpoted in order to have greater, and denser, amounts of people living closer to the core. The way it's set up now is that people pay more taxes, given property values, in the inner-city. This is ass backwards.
There's also an issue with low supply of housing in the inner city. Once the supply of properties goes up, property values come down (as do taxes), and people will move closer to downtown. Supply and demand. Developers should be highly, highly encouraged to build medium to highrise towers in the core and the surrounding perimeter. The City of Calgary would have a vested interest in this as well, as it works within the frame of Plan It, and reduced the long-term stress caused from the ever-expanding infrastructure in this city.
I do agree whole-heartedly that people have a right to live in a huge house on the perimeter of the city. Whether they should, is the question they everyone has to answer. I made the choice to pay more to live downtown, yes, but at the same time, I also incur faaaar less transportation costs (and associated costs), as things are more readily available to me (retail, LRT, buses, parks, etc.). I rarely drive my car anywhere, my carbon foorprint is tiny, and all my amenities are within walking distance. Including getting to work, and using the fantastic park system already in place (who needs a backyard when I have Prince's Island - for free??). And, I use existing infrastructure which has likely been paid for long ago. This is why I am an advocate of the new pedestrian bridges. It's an upgrade to inner city infrastructure with a minimal cost when you compare them to the massive, massive other infrastucture projects that are always being built just to support the outward expansion of this city.
The new mayor needs to adopt a platform of encouraging / supporting high-volume urban development in order to sustainably carry our city into the future (which is a green one, by the way, no matter how you look at it), and bring our city into the upper echelons of great metro areas with 1 million+ people. Once property prices inner-city are manageable again, people will migrate back downtown and infrastructure demand will be lessened. Existing infrastructure will be upgraded, and subsequently used more efficiently.
Imagine an even further expanded LRT network (multiple locations within downtown), and bike lanes on every road to encourage more bike traffic as opposed to car traffic. With less cars on the road, traffic goes down, bike usage goes up, people are able to move around more effectively, our polluting levels reduce, and the social benefits of human relations goes up as well (people living and commuting closer together means greater communication and social interaction between residents).
|