Quote:
Originally Posted by trew
Higher costs to maintain suburban communities is pretty much a fact.
1) Water and Sewer. Costs to pump both from/to central facilities gets more and more expensive the further you get from city center. Entire system upgrades are necessary to create sufficient pressure to reach extremities.
2) Roads. The road use of suburbanites commuting to the CBD is proportionally higher than inner city residents. Cost to plow, and maintain is also higher as staff and materials have to be transported further to reach outer communities. Also the stress on interior roads is increased. This also says nothing about traffic upgrades to major corridors to handle increases in car commuters.
3) Transit also is incrementally more expensive the larger the system grows.
4) Education, Police, Fire, etc.. All cost incrementally more to bring to a suburban community. New infrastructure and increased time/cost to deploy and service relative to inner city are the reasons.
5) Debt maintenance costs. Debt financing is required to install infrastructure because city taxation doesn't collect and save surplusses to fund growth. Half of the cities 3+ billion in debt comes directly from the capital cost of installing depreciating infrastructure to service new suburban communities over the past 10 years.
(Source: http://www.ffwdweekly.com/article/ne...g-sprawl-6361/)
Lastly, a study from Edmonton on the lack of tax recovery from their own, similar, subsidized suburban growth program:
(Source:
http://www.civiccamp.org/wp-content/...wth-Report.pdf) |
So what is the solution? Build up instead of out? Do you want calgary to be all highrises with no suburbs?
Here's the thing you people are not thinking about. The people have to live somewhere. It is cheaper to build out rather than up. If you think that building up and concentrating all the population into a small area alleviates the cost of road infrastructure or sewers, you're wrong. I'd bet that it would cost more to upgrade all the roads in the inner city and all the sewers to the necessary degree to handle all of Calgary living in the beltline or whatever it is that you're suggesting.
Also, not everyone that lives in the suburbs works downtown. I don't have a clue what the percentage is, but I bet that only maybe 15-20% of Calgary workers actually work downtown, so why is that even relevant? Do you know that there is a humongous industrial area smack in the middle of the east side suburbs?
So again, where's the problem? Fire and police? Even if Calgary was concentrated into a smaller area, we'd still want a certain amount of cops per 1000 citizens. As it is, we have satellite stations all around the city.
The real beef (I bet) are those endless neighbourhoods without any kind of large commercial area. Places to live and work. So write a letter to the city and tell them to stop approving neighbourhoods without commercial that border other neighbourhoods without commercial. Because people just keep coming to this city and it's going to get bigger and bigger and bigger. And the houses are going to keep getting built and bought.