These "Flex" homes in Mill Creek offer family-oriented design combined with extremely high environmental standards. The exterior walls feature straw bale construction, limiting winter gas bills to about $20 per month. Councillor Don Iveson writes: "Given recent concern about school closures in mature areas, encouraging this type of development is part of the transition to moderately higher densities that can better support all manner of amenities including schools."
Infill vs. Sprawl
The Edmonton Public School Board characterizes its space problem as too few kids where there are too many buildings, and too few buildings where there are too many kids. The solution it offers is to close schools in established parts of the city while opening new ones on the outskirts.
A far more cost effective alternative is to create positive alternatives for young families to live where infrastructure already exists. Currently, taxpayers are stuck with a bill in excess of $600 million, about 15 per cent of the provincial deficit, to build 18 sprawl schools in Edmonton and Calgary. They will open in September 2010, and more are on the way: a perpetual drain on the public purse, if suburban growth continues unchecked.
For financial and ecological reasons, change is coming. In large cities, urban properties have held their value during the financial crisis, while new subdivisions are on the verge of becoming ghost towns, "as if Mad Max had come to the cul-de-sac," writes Michael Cannell. As cited by Cannell, formerly House and Home section editor for the New York Times, the Metropolitan Institute at Virgina Tech predicts that by 2025 there will be as many as 22 million unwanted large-lot homes in the American suburbs.
Where will 21st century kids live? David Daddio of the City Fix highlights an advisory issued by the Urban Land Institute: the emerging generation of parents "will orient to infill locations and less edge, (meaning that) increasing numbers of suburban school systems will lose advantages as tax bases falter." In Manhattan, the preschool population has increased by one-third in the last seven years. Closer to home, Vancouver is in the midst of a decade-long urban revival that has included the doubling of the number of children living downtown.
Planning is about seeking the future. The EPSB, by closing schools in central communities and shifting social capital to the suburbs, is looking to the past. While young people embrace sustainability and resiliency, taxpayers are being asked to invest their money in automobility and sprawl. That contradiciton amounts to a bigger grift than Goldman Sachs or Bernie Madoff, says James Howard Kunstler, author of The Geography of Nowhere.
Green Homes for Kids
The main obstacle to increasing the number of school-aged children residing in densified neighbourhoods has been design. Most large infill projects in our city have emphasized adult-living: small units in age-restricted buildings which offer no amenities for young families.
The Community Schools Coalition worked with city planners and councillors to change the rules that govern densification intiatives. The new Municipal Development Plan includes family-oriented housing guidelines -- provide bicycle storage, for example -- and requires that 25 per cent of units in large infill projects be suitable for kids. The initiative is based on bylaws in Vancouver, where new schools are opening in central communities to accommodate rapid increases in child populations.
In the United States, Austin, Texas has "committed to being the most family-friendly city in the country" as part of its mission statement. Its Families and Children Task Force has reported that parents with young children are receptive to urban life, provided their needs are addressed through planning processes. Successful communities offer:
- Affordable homes with multiple bedrooms and bathrooms
- Access to child care
- Pedestrian pathways
- Common outdoor and indoor play spaces
- Grocery stores and other shopping facilities
- Good transit service
- Integrated public schools
While EPSB's closure policies are a response to suburban sprawl, they also undermine hopes that Edmonton could evolve into a more sustainability city. We're stuck in a absurd situation: municipal government says it can't revitalize established neighbourhoods because the district is closing schools. The district says it is closing schools because the municipality won't commit to revitalization.
Imagine the great things we could achieve if our elected leaders would stop squabbling and work together.
The Nexus, a transit-oriented development next to the Orenco MAX light rail Station in Portland, offers family tenants a playground, swimming pool, movie room and clubhouse for birthday parties.