Unanimous Approval of TOD Guidelines

City's Approval of Transit Oriented Development Guidelines falls short in Protecting Communities.

This morning, the Executive Committee of Council gave unanimous approval to the Administration's draft guidelines for Transit Oriented Development. While the guidelines are exemplary in advancing and articulating the vision and values associated with densifying our city and expanding LRT, they are weak in their protection of community character and offer no firm enhancements or securities to communities.

A key shortcoming in the guidelines is as follows: Neighbourhoods as described in the Station Area Type Characteristics (page 11) make the assumption that all communities have predominately single family homes. This is clearly not the case. No references are made in the guidelines to the baseline densities and housing mix. If you fall within 400 meters of a station, the guidelines apply generically. There are no triggers or exemptions and no front end analysis of core service provision before stations and accompanying densities are approved. It may be elementary to note, but necessary to emphasize that the majority of Edmonton's mature neighbourhoods were built to accommodate predominately single family homes as 50 percent of the housing stock. What happens to core service costs and infrastructure if large multi-story developments suddenly appear in neighbourhoods with aging fire equipment and already stretched garbage collection and police response?

Intensifying is philosophically admirable, but it must be backed up with some reality. Densifying cannot be successful if it results in a further loss of green space, an erosion of core service provision or two few commercial and recreational amentiies to support the neighbourhoods population.