The real issue is that Edmonton is Edmonton and it, like Calgary, continues to expand outward like a blob engulfing once rural communities. I was born and lived there for some years and still have family there. Vancouver isn't Vancouver ... well, Vancouver is Vancouver BUT Metro Vancouver is Vancouver, Burnaby, North Van (x 2), West Van, New West, Richmond, and on and on. Each community has it's own identity and a desire to protect that identity. Do you think that, perhaps, an amalgamation into a Megacity (as was done in Toronto decades ago) could provide a more cohesive housing strategy?
Edmonton can definitely sprawl in a way that Metro Vancouver can't, because of the ocean and the mountains. A great visualization by Eugene Chen of Darkhorse Analytics: https://morehousing.substack.com/p/edmonton-update
Comments by Oh the Urbanity!:
"Whenever we mention Edmonton and suggest that the housing crisis in other cities might be self-inflicted, we encounter some skepticism. Some people wonder if Edmonton is just affordable because nobody wants to live there. No, Edmonton is one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country. Granted, Toronto and Vancouver would probably have grown more than they did if not for their self-inflicted housing shortage, but Edmonton is not a Rust Belt city that's only cheap because the population is stagnating or declining.
"People also wonder whether housing is cheap in Edmonton because the city is less affluent. But again, that's wrong. Alberta has some of the highest median incomes in the country, and if we adjust home prices to incomes, Edmonton does better, not worse.
"And finally, people will ask how we can possibly think that Edmonton has lessons for places like Vancouver, Sydney, San Francisco, or New York, when Edmonton is a smaller city with a lot more developable land due to a lack of mountains and water.
"That one is true, but if your city has to house more people with less land, **shouldn't you be significantly more open to density than Edmonton**? What we have here is a midsized city on the Canadian prairies that's legalized more density by right than most bigger land-constrained cities. And from what we can tell, they have a culture among planners, council, and staff of actually wanting to see things built, instead of making symbolic reforms. If you're in a bigger, land-constrained metro area and you really want to move the needle on housing, you should go well beyond Edmonton and legalize something more like eight-story midrise apartments literally everywhere."
The fragmentation of Metro Vancouver into different municipalities probably doesn't help. It's straightforward for a municipality to achieve faster growth (like Surrey), harder for it to achieve greater affordability (because the benefits of greater supply in pushing prices and rents downward are spread across the entire region).
One factor in the other direction is that each city councillor is elected at large, rather than to represent a smaller ward. It's like all of Metro Vancouver is a municipality that's divided into rather large wards, with multiple elected officials per ward, and with no majority override.
The real issue is that Edmonton is Edmonton and it, like Calgary, continues to expand outward like a blob engulfing once rural communities. I was born and lived there for some years and still have family there. Vancouver isn't Vancouver ... well, Vancouver is Vancouver BUT Metro Vancouver is Vancouver, Burnaby, North Van (x 2), West Van, New West, Richmond, and on and on. Each community has it's own identity and a desire to protect that identity. Do you think that, perhaps, an amalgamation into a Megacity (as was done in Toronto decades ago) could provide a more cohesive housing strategy?
Edmonton can definitely sprawl in a way that Metro Vancouver can't, because of the ocean and the mountains. A great visualization by Eugene Chen of Darkhorse Analytics: https://morehousing.substack.com/p/edmonton-update
Comments by Oh the Urbanity!:
"Whenever we mention Edmonton and suggest that the housing crisis in other cities might be self-inflicted, we encounter some skepticism. Some people wonder if Edmonton is just affordable because nobody wants to live there. No, Edmonton is one of the fastest growing metro areas in the country. Granted, Toronto and Vancouver would probably have grown more than they did if not for their self-inflicted housing shortage, but Edmonton is not a Rust Belt city that's only cheap because the population is stagnating or declining.
"People also wonder whether housing is cheap in Edmonton because the city is less affluent. But again, that's wrong. Alberta has some of the highest median incomes in the country, and if we adjust home prices to incomes, Edmonton does better, not worse.
"And finally, people will ask how we can possibly think that Edmonton has lessons for places like Vancouver, Sydney, San Francisco, or New York, when Edmonton is a smaller city with a lot more developable land due to a lack of mountains and water.
"That one is true, but if your city has to house more people with less land, **shouldn't you be significantly more open to density than Edmonton**? What we have here is a midsized city on the Canadian prairies that's legalized more density by right than most bigger land-constrained cities. And from what we can tell, they have a culture among planners, council, and staff of actually wanting to see things built, instead of making symbolic reforms. If you're in a bigger, land-constrained metro area and you really want to move the needle on housing, you should go well beyond Edmonton and legalize something more like eight-story midrise apartments literally everywhere."
The fragmentation of Metro Vancouver into different municipalities probably doesn't help. It's straightforward for a municipality to achieve faster growth (like Surrey), harder for it to achieve greater affordability (because the benefits of greater supply in pushing prices and rents downward are spread across the entire region).
One factor in the other direction is that each city councillor is elected at large, rather than to represent a smaller ward. It's like all of Metro Vancouver is a municipality that's divided into rather large wards, with multiple elected officials per ward, and with no majority override.