Saying 'yes' to skinny, tall and long homes: What Winnipeg can learn from Edmonton

Edmonton is so lovey-doveywith putting multiple residenceswhere there was onlyone that city employees made Valentine's Day cards to profess their admiration for infill development.

On thecard, a heart is sketched above a cartoonstreetscape dotted with homes of varied shapes, green lawns and people walking and biking. "You complete my street," the card gushes.

Edmonton has gone out of its way to makeplopping modern, smaller residences on older lots a controversial exercise in densityvirtually everywhere somehow hip. And officials in Winnipegaretaking notes.

Infill proselytizersin Edmonton use a Twitter hashtag, dream up proposals for a design competition attracting top urban minds nationwide, and even started a non-profit advocacy group to promote building in aged neighbourhoods rather thansprawling outskirts.

Meanwhile, the citymade a website andcartoons, formed employee teams focused on infill developmentand pitched infillas a way to make"Everyone's Edmonton" come true.

This is happening while developers in Winnipegcried this week that infill housing would grind to a halt if administrationrestricts how much of a lot a new home can cover. City planners are thinking of limiting the size of homes to 45 per cent of lot size, which developers say would make homes too small and too expensive to sell.

A petition of 600 Winnipeggerswas evensubmitted to council last month calling fora moratorium oninfilldevelopment.

In devising Winnipeg's first plan for a city-wide infillstrategy,officials have vowed no more "skinny, tall and long houses," which they said were lambasted as eyesores by the neighbours.

Jason Syvixay understands where both cities are coming from:he'saWinnipeggerwho is principalplanner with the City of Edmonton'sinfillliaison team.

He saysbuy-in from the community is necessary.

"We realize that infill might be a messy thing," said Syvixay, who posted theinfillValentine's cards on Twitter this week. "Let's try to dive right into that and try to delineate how neighbours and builders can have a really respectful and considerate experience during the construction process."

Near building sites, postcards and brochures are handed out, explaining the housing type under construction and phone numbers to call if neighbourshave concerns, he said.

"It has been less about should we do infill, but more about when, where and how."

It wasn't always this way in Edmonton.

Boom in lot-splitting

Beginning in 2013, the city permitted that 50-foot lots could be split in two in certain neighbourhoods.

"There was a lot of resistance to this," saidMick Graham,presidentof theInfillDevelopment in Edmonton Association board. "People who had happily lived in 1,100-square-footbungalows saw these tall, narrow houses appearing on their street, and it wasn't what they were used to seeing."

It was an onerousslog before infill was metwith acceptance rather than derision,saidHaniQuan, who spearheadeddevelopment of Edmonton's secondinfillroadmap last year.

"At the time, it was really painful because we were trying to push this along and it was the first attempt," he said. "There was definitely a lot of people who found infill a bit of a dirty word and they didn't want to see it filling in the neighbourhoods."

Graham, a home builder, applauds Edmonton officials forrealizing unchecked growth in the suburbs wasn't desirable. It cost the city too muchto keep building roads, sewers and new schools outwards, while the population in mature neighbourhoodsshrunk by 73,000 people over the last 40 years.

"Here in Edmonton, we're closing schools down in mature neighbourhoods," he said.

"I thinka lot of folks are realizingwe'recommuting toofar or we're spending too much time sitting behind the wheel. We're creating too many greenhouse gases and our taxes keep going up to fundthis expansion that's really not serving anyone very well."

Quan understandsthe apprehension from people critical ofinfill, especially residents who grew up in the same neighbourhood for decades and are seeing changes they never wanted.

"All of a sudden you see redevelopment happening and construction happening and it's just disruptive. It's genuinely, legitimately disruptive," he said.

Quan credits the city's work in shifting the public dialogue. He's gone to engagement events where pro-infill boosters are showing up, which wouldn't havehappened muchfive years ago.

Edmonton officials have turned their attention to"missing middle" development. The city's infill stock is comprisedof small detached homes that are too pricey, or massivetowers of condominiums and apartments, but littlein between.

"We're sort of at the point where we're having the next conversation [in Edmonton], which is the missing middle," said Chelsey Jersak, an urban planner in thecity.

The city is setting aside five lotsin the Spruce Avenue neighbourhood for architects and builders worldwide to come up with multi-unit, medium-density plans. The winning team will have the right to purchase the site and build their design.

Hazel Borys, an urban planner in Winnipeg, has been tapped as a jury member for the competition. She's impressed that Edmonton has taken"community engagement to the next level."

"I think Edmonton is signalingto the people that the words are [there], but the actions are also stepping up."

Unavoidable reality

She says Winnipeg is afflicted byNIMBYs the not-in-my-backyard homeownersdisturbed by the idea of narrow homes, while Edmontoniansare moreconcerned about ensuring that infill isdone right.

Quansaid Winnipeg shouldn't get a bad rap if it isn'tas far ahead as Edmonton in promoting infill, and thatmaybe Winnipeg would be on the same trackif it werefeelingthe strain of nearly one million people.

The pushback against infill will always be there, he cautioned, no matter the political will or the size of a city's sprawl.

"Even after decades of doing this, there are still some of the same issues to deal with. There's still NIMBYs."