It's interesting that Montana managed a big change without going past a doubling of occupancy per lot. The thing that has Calgarians Up in Fear is the notion of four families per lot - and all their cars.
But Calgary and Edmonton are already partially urbanized, as touted in this video by Montreal urbanist activists:
It's interesting that Montana managed a big change without going past a doubling of occupancy per lot. The thing that has Calgarians Up in Fear is the notion of four families per lot - and all their cars.
But Calgary and Edmonton are already partially urbanized, as touted in this video by Montreal urbanist activists:
I noticed it myself from all the infilling in Calgary. This is a graphic from my GIS of the water system. There's a dot for every new water service installed this century. So the outer-ring of the city is solid blue ring of SFD new water services in the new subdivisions, with a few red dots for duplexes.
...and also, in the centre of town, a couple of thousand new dots that are all infills, since very few people ever have to put in a few water service because the old one wore out. We require every new build to put in new pipes, so it's a cute way to map the new construction in old areas. Calgary, you can see, has been aggressively infilling for 25 years and more, doubling the population of older streets.
I don't pretend to be a particularly well-versed urbanist (my partner, who works in public transit tech and is always showing me Youtube videos from channels like, up, Oh The Urbanity, is the real urban wonk.) But strikes me that you're going to see some particular local flavor of how this actually shakes out.
Like, do we really imagine that Montana is going to be row-after-row of fourplexes? No, probably not. Subdivisions of nice duplexes seems like a perfectly good compromise, there.
I think places like Calgary will prefer a gentler density, but with super-dense blocks around the C-Train. That works just fine, too!
Fact is, we'll never abolish single-family homes — nor should we. The little blue ring in your map (which is very cool) should always be an option for people. But figuring out that infill — and, later, infilling those suburban subdivisions, as the city grows — is going to be the key piece.
Anyway, who knows what this looks like 10 years from now. But I feel like it's going to be exciting.
It's interesting that Montana managed a big change without going past a doubling of occupancy per lot. The thing that has Calgarians Up in Fear is the notion of four families per lot - and all their cars.
But Calgary and Edmonton are already partially urbanized, as touted in this video by Montreal urbanist activists:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBVEfO5IwI
I noticed it myself from all the infilling in Calgary. This is a graphic from my GIS of the water system. There's a dot for every new water service installed this century. So the outer-ring of the city is solid blue ring of SFD new water services in the new subdivisions, with a few red dots for duplexes.
...and also, in the centre of town, a couple of thousand new dots that are all infills, since very few people ever have to put in a few water service because the old one wore out. We require every new build to put in new pipes, so it's a cute way to map the new construction in old areas. Calgary, you can see, has been aggressively infilling for 25 years and more, doubling the population of older streets.
http://brander.ca/CalgaryC21.png
...and that may be enough, if it was for Montana.
I don't pretend to be a particularly well-versed urbanist (my partner, who works in public transit tech and is always showing me Youtube videos from channels like, up, Oh The Urbanity, is the real urban wonk.) But strikes me that you're going to see some particular local flavor of how this actually shakes out.
Like, do we really imagine that Montana is going to be row-after-row of fourplexes? No, probably not. Subdivisions of nice duplexes seems like a perfectly good compromise, there.
I think places like Calgary will prefer a gentler density, but with super-dense blocks around the C-Train. That works just fine, too!
Fact is, we'll never abolish single-family homes — nor should we. The little blue ring in your map (which is very cool) should always be an option for people. But figuring out that infill — and, later, infilling those suburban subdivisions, as the city grows — is going to be the key piece.
Anyway, who knows what this looks like 10 years from now. But I feel like it's going to be exciting.