Successful Residential Densification Requires Urban Sprawl
It is hard to make progress on residentil infill without urban sprawl.
The above statement will no doubt cause some head scratching for anyone unfamiliar with development in small cities (a.k.a. large towns) like Yellowknife. But it’s an important point, and our reluctance to face up to it has caused us some problems.
When I was on Yellowknife City Council in the 2010s, the prevailing urban planning philosophy in our city was the “smart growth compact scenario,” which targetted 50% infill and 50% greenfield development. The goal was to develop denser, more vibrant neighbourhoods over time, especially in and close to our downtown. I supported this goal wholeheartedly.
The 50/50 target – and it is important to point out that it was merely a target and not a requirement – turned out to be very hard to achieve. I watched as frustration grew among our city planners. They put incentives in place for infill development but the development community failed to take the bait. New housing construction continued to occur only at the edge of town in greenfield areas.
This frustrated city planners to the point that when the opportunity came up to completely eliminate the option of greenfield development and “force” developers to pursue infill projects, they did so. That was the principal objective of the 2020 Community Plan. And it didn’t work.
Why didn’t it work? This question came up again at a recent public engagement session as part of the community plan update. Frustrated participants were asking why the development community was refusing to assemble lots near the downtown core, tear down old single family homes and build “missing middle” housing.
The most important reason, in my opinion, is that Yellowknife is a very compact city that does not have a sprawl problem.
The best way to understand what I mean by this is to talk to Realtors from cities where infill is actually working. Take Calgary as an example. An infill “missing middle” home in an up-and-coming neighbourhood a short walk or bike ride from the downtown office core is smaller than a home at the edge of town, it offers less privacy and, most significantly, it is more expensive. This infill home asks that buyers set aside some of the quality-of-life expectations that most homeowners cherish, and pay more money on top of these sacrifices. But on the flip side, the buyer doesn’t have to spend an hour and a half driving to and from this home five days a week.
That is why infill works in cities that have a sprawl problem. It gives people back an extra two weeks a year of family time or other quality time that they would otherwise spend in a car.
“Yes, obviously” is what anyone reading this from a big city is thinking right now. But imagine you are a city planner, educated in such a city, who then takes a job in a place like Yellowknife where every part of town is at most a 15-minute bike ride from the downtown core. How do you adjust?
This is a legitimate problem for us.
