City council should be commended for reviewing all the implications of smart growth prior to putting it into practice.
The term smart growth covers a very broad range of ideas and concepts, including higher density, walkability, mixed use, low impact development (LID), Transit Oriented Development (TOD), form-based zoning, narrower pavements, road diets, innovative standards, etc. Some of these notions will be appropriate for various parts of St. Albert, and some of them won’t. Several smart growth ideas, such as walkability, boulevards, pocket parks, and tree-lined streets are already features that make St. Albert such a pleasant (smart?) community.
The basic flaw in the current proposal is not the concept, but its proposed location. A fundamental component of smart growth is to create a compact community in order to optimize the effectiveness of existing and future servicing systems. Putting higher density on the northwest periphery of the city, beyond the less dense areas, is not achieving a more compact overall situation. In fact this will require larger utilities, including roads, to be constructed to service this sector of the city.
MacKenzie Towne in Calgary has been noted as a smart growth development that was not a very successful experiment. In contrast, Garrison Woods, an infill project close to downtown Calgary, is regarded as one of the most successful innovative projects in the country. This 160-acre redevelopment of the former army base is sometimes described as being MacKenzie Towne at the right location. Smart growth principles are generally most appropriate and successful when used in infill situations, such as the redevelopment of Grandin mall and St. Albert’s downtown.
Another important aspect of smart growth is to customize solutions and to abandon the one-size-fits-all approach to development. Many communities have implemented smart growth by encouraging higher densities and more “urban” standards close to the city centre and transitioning to larger lots and almost rural standards on the city periphery. The notion that all smart growth aspects will be applied in blanket fashion across the 1,337-hectare annexation area contradicts this important principle of smart growth.
Under the current proposal the city will specify the approximate location of mixed-use nodes and three TODs. It can be argued that this infringes on the landowners’ rights. Building the infrastructure to service intense land uses, and particularly TODs, will be costly. It also creates the problem of what comes first — the services or the higher density residential development. Nobody is going to buy an upscale apartment on the basis that a transit facility may be built near it sometime in the future. And, conversely, the municipality is not going to build a transit centre in an empty field on the basis of “if you build it they will come.” Even small-scale commercial developments need a surrounding population of at least 10,000 people to have any chance of success. This is why TOD projects are usually located on existing busy (often rail) transit routes. Given the demographics of the region, it is unrealistic to expect that many people in the northwest sector of St. Albert will be taking transit to work.
Anthony F. Druett, St. Albert
