Quote:
Originally Posted by bizaro86
I watched the video posted above (by mykalberta) and the speaker from the city said something I found interesting around the 37 minute mark. Basically, you can back calculate from his remarks that ~20% of the total property taxes paid in the entire city come from the office buildings in the downtown commercial core. He also had a graph showing that basically the only other types of property that pays for itself tax wise is medium and high rises. Essentially high density downtown subsidizes the rest of the city, including the inner city.
I think the whole urban vs suburban thing is a red herring. Costs are mainly controlled by density, so a low density inner city neighbourhood is more costly and less sustainable than a higher density suburban neighbourhood. And much of the inner city/close in suburbs are currently R1 zoned 50 foot wide lots, which is probably the worst building form possible from a tax perspective. With the new density requirements, condos in saddleridge help pay for the rest of saddleridge.
Density in many newer communities is greater than that of many older communities. In the NW, for example, Royal Oak has a density of 3130 people/km2, while the inner city Hounsfield Heights/Briar Hill had a density of only 2460 people/km2, and West Hillhurst has only 2420 people/km2. Even perennial whipping boy of Tuscany has a density of 2756 people/km2. They should probably be complaining about the sprawl of West Hillhurst, and how the people there aren't covering the operating costs of their (now extremely old and inefficient) infrastructure, like old pipes, small neighbourhood schools, etc.
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Check out the zoning map:
http://www.calgary.ca/PDA/DBA/Pages/...aw-1P2007.aspx
All of West Hillhurst is RC-2, and appears to be 95% infilled. Meaning that most of the infrastructure has been upgraded. The city requires you to upgrade the section of sewer, electric, gas, etc when you redevelop. In areas like Renfrew (where I built) it wasn't as bad as it is in areas like Inglewood and Bridgeland, it's piecemeal and it paid upfront, but it does get upgraded.
As for general use infrastructure like schools, I'd love it if we could have more funding put into our schools in the inner city. There are two elementary and one Jr. High school in Renfrew, but the two elementary are special use (girls academy and special needs) so something is going to have to change there soon.
Changes to zoning will be fought against tooth and nail by community associations. I'm not looking forward to that fight.