Jamie: Hi everyone, again my name is Jamie.
Kelly: I’m Kelly.
Jamie: A couple days ago, Kelly and I were at a City Council meeting, and it was focused on the Edmonton redevelopment plan, because the city is trying to redevelop Edmonton’s Mature neighbourhoods, which we’re a big believer in. Wouldn’t you say Kelly?
Kelly: Yes.
Jamie: So, we went there, half a day early turns out, but we were there and we heard some really cool tidbits we thought we’d just pass along to you. The first one was just talking about how many people are moving to the city of Edmonton. Right now there’s 58 families per week moving to the city of Edmonton, which is unbelievable.
Kelly: They said its the equivalent of one red deer per year.
Jamie: Moving to the city of Edmonton, and we got to stop the urban sprawl, so to speak, and look at the some of the neighbourhoods that are in Edmonton, that have great schools, great infrastructures, but it’s just inundated with older folks and we need to move younger families in there.
Kelly: So a lot of the conversation was about how to make the mature neighbourhoods more dense, and some of the challenges that they have, the way that the system is set up right now, there’s only eleven neighbourhoods that are zoned RF3, and for those of you who don’t know, RF3 is..
Jamie: Well you can build essentially a duplex or a triplex or a fourplex in our free zone lot, so it gives you a lot more options. Now this is pretty volatile topic in the city of Edmonton, because people that are in these mature neighbors love the serenity of not having very many neighbours. But it’s not a status that can be maintained.
Kelly: Because most of the neighbourhoods that are close to the core are zoned RF1, so if its RF1 that means you cannot build a duplex and have such strong regulations about garage suites, garden suites, that sort of thing. But if it was all RF3, you would be able to subdivide lots, maybe build more duplexes.
Jamie: So it’s about densification, is the keyword of the day. How do we rezone the city to increase the densification in these mature neighbourhoods, and as you can appreciate it’s a complex decision there’s not one perfect answer. If you currently live in a mature neighbourhood in Edmonton and you want your voice to be heard, there’s still lots of ways to have that heard. Number one is to be informed, all the reports that were cabled last week you can find on the internet, and even right down to the council meeting you can find on the internet, as well. And if you’re interested in understanding a little bit more about this, feel free to contact us, we’d be more than happy to talk to people. It was a great experience, the council meeting.
Kelly: It was, and really it was nice to hear the voices of people in Edmonton from all walks of life saying that they support densification and rebuilding within the areas close to the core. We just have so much to offer within the core, so it’s nice to see that change. And it’s kind of interesting, one of the suggestions was to do a blanket rezoning of the entire city, to our three. So that means neighbourhoods like Glenora, or neighbourhoods like, Laurea, they have such wide beautiful lots that you could subdivide and build two “so called” skinny homes, are not so skinny homes, the lots are so big.
Jamie: The stats that got thrown out at the council meeting is that there’s 8,000 lots in the city of Edmonton in the mature neighbourhoods that could be subdivided, so that’s a ton of redevelopment for the city of Edmonton. And we need it, we need it because there’s a ton of people moving here, and we want to give them homes.
Kelly: For that reason, and also too, inside the mature neighbourhoods there’s already schools that are fantastic, there’s groceries stores that are fantastic, there’s river valley systems, and farmers markets, and shopping local, and all of that already here. I vote for a blanket zone of RF3!
Jamie: Me too. Take care.