Edmonton reaches goal to have infill units make up 25% of new homes
Edmonton called a national leader in building new homes in mature neighbourhoods
Twenty-five per cent of new housing built since 2010 are infill homes located in Edmonton's core and mature areas, reaching a goal set by the city when it embarked on its infill roadmap in that year.
Coun. Ashley Salvador said the infill roadmap has helped shift the city's approach to development.
"For a really long time — decades — construction has focused on suburban, greenfield growth," she said Tuesday after city council's urban planning committee discussed a roadmap update.
"The infill roadmap was to help us change that course towards more infill redevelopment, which of course has taken a lot of effort, consistent support from city [administration], council, community and industry."
Salvador said steps taken to reform the urban landscape also address issues like climate change, equity and affordability.
"Edmonton is the one to watch," Mariah Samji, executive director of the Infill Development in Edmonton Association (IDEA), told councillors.
"I get calls from Ontario, in municipalities outside of Toronto, inside of Toronto, I get calls from Calgary, Vancouver, Regina, Winnipeg, they're looking at what we're doing."
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Salvador said a few factors have fuelled Edmonton's reputation. The city amended zoning rules over the past few years, eliminating single-family-only zoning and minimum parking requirements.
"We enabled a really wide range of housing options in our mature neighbourhoods — things like duplexes, row housing, garden suites, basement suites — that other cities are just starting to talk about now," Salvador said.
Ten years ago, Salvador said a lot of that type of housing wasn't allowed in some mature neighbourhoods.
Infrastructure gap
Kalen Anderson, a member of the Urban Development Institute, Edmonton Metro, agreed the city is a leader but noted a lot of infrastructure needs to be upgraded.
Anderson thinks downtown should get more attention.
"A lot of infrastructure is crumbling. There's not very good sidewalk conditions," Anderson told the committee. "Street lighting is outdated and there's a lot of construction that's happening, which is spilling into the public rights of way in the meantime."
Samji said the infrastructure gap spans the entire city, usually in medium- or high-scale development around main arteries where transit runs.
"Those areas need power upgrades. They need wider sidewalks. They need alleys to be renewed," Samji said.
"And then you have more of our local communities where there still needs to be some transformer upgrades with your power to make sure that solar is an option for you and electric vehicles."
In the past year, the city has reviewed infrastructure capacity in Edmonton's older neighbourhoods and identified work needed to support infill, the report says.
City administration will report back to council in June with more information.
This will help the city get ready for the next lofty goal, of 50 per cent of new housing to be infill units by the time the population reaches 1.5 million people.
Complaints and compliance
An infill compliance team created by the city in 2018 shows complaints dropped after a spike in 2018.
In 2017, there were 659 complaints from residents, which rose to 1,054 in 2018.
There were 599 in 2019, 386 complaints in 2020 and 371 in 2021.
The city has a list of infractions by infill developers, to which peace officers can issue tickets or verbal warnings.
The infraction called "Occupy road right of way" is the most common, with 68 tickets issued in 2018, 87 in 2019, 30 in 2020 and 32 last year.