What Happened to the Push for Urban Green Spaces?

In the summer of 2010, I was asked by the City of Edmonton to moderate a panel discussion on the city’s plans to go green.

The event at the Art Gallery of Alberta was remarkable for the number of people who attended. It included panel experts such as the late David Schindler, the renowned environmental scientist, discussing 22 papers submitted by architects, energy experts, ecological economists, sociologists and conservation organizations. So many people showed up that dozens were turned away.

There was palpable excitement about plans to add green spaces to Edmonton’s river valley, the largest urban forest on the continent. Attendees were even more enthusiastic about creating an affordable living space at Blatchford, the soon-to-be closed city airport.

In the more solid airport plan approved by city council a few years later, 30,000 people would be using a variety of housing options that included townhouses, single-family homes, student residences, four-to-12-storey apartment buildings and 18-storey towers where up to 11,000 were expected to work.

Ground-level garbage chutes would deposit waste into an underground collection system, and an on-site biomass plant would create heat and energy from sewage sludge and wood chips.

An urban beach and skating pond would be created using stormwater runoff. That grey water would sustain 600 community garden plots.

The redeveloped lands had the potential to make Edmonton a world leader in sustainable communities. Stephen Mandel, the city’s mayor, was on board. So was the public.

It never came to be.

Fewer than 100 homes have been built on the airport site. Almost all the environmentally innovative features have been scrapped.

The river valley hasn’t fared any better. More green space has been lost than gained. A seemingly never-ending plan to protect what is left is moving at a glacial pace.

The story has been the same in Toronto, where just about every effort to green up the city’s concreted waterfront has come up short; in Vancouver, where a 2008 promise to be the greenest city in the world met only eight of the 18 targets by the time it wrapped up in 2020; and in Calgary, which has lost more than 16 per cent of its green space in the past two decades, twice as much as the average loss across the country.

Milton, Ontario, and Winnipeg are in worse shape with declines in green spaces of 30.5 per cent and 24.6 per cent.

Ecology Ottawa rang in this new year with a damning statement that could apply to almost every city’s effort to green up and tackle climate change:

“New year, same outdated perspective on climate change.”

Which lands to develop?

It’s not like developers in most Canadian cities — Toronto and Vancouver being the exception — haven’t land to develop for housing or for cities to maintain, restore or expand green spaces.

Edmonton is a classic example.

Not only is there the land at the old city airport, but there are also many areas in the downtown core that could be developed or redeveloped for affordable and luxury housing.

The most striking is the site of the Arlington apartment, a 49-suite, five-storey red brick building that was erected in 1909. It burned down in 2005. All there is to show for it nearly 20 years later is a weedy, fenced-in dirt pile.

Edmonton’s downtown development has stalled. A large part of it has to do with the homelessness problem that is far worse now than it was in 2008 when the mayor established the 10-Year Plan to End Homelessness.

But it is also the failure of city council.

Without incentives to build in the downtown core, and aggressively tackle the homelessness problem, developers have instead focused more on so-called mature neighbourhoods where there are safer havens, spectacular views of the river valley, 70-year-old elm trees lining the streets and... much more money to be made.

Affordable housing should be a priority, but this isn’t the way to go about it.

Nature still prospers in mature neighbourhoods, which is linked to good health, both mental and physical.

A week doesn’t go by when an early-morning or late-evening biker, walker or jogger does not encounter coyotes or deer or peregrines, pelicans and pileated woodpeckers in many of Edmonton’s mature neighbourhoods. Wildlife exists in these areas because there are few cars, plenty to eat and river valley corridors that allow them to migrate to and from wilder places.

Biologist Reed Noss finds that residents who have contact with these animals are more likely to be good citizens willing to support strong conservation measures for their broader environment.

University of Alberta biologist Colleen St. Clair, co-author of a recent study that suggests climate change could worsen the effects of urbanization on native wildlife, couldn’t agree more. She heads up the Edmonton Urban Coyote Project, which has, since 2009, tracked coyotes in and around the river valley and encouraged the public to observe and engage in her research projects.

“I've witnessed many dozens, probably hundreds, of times the passion for caring about nature or species.... That capacity stems from direct experience of being in nature.”

That passion was on display in the 1970s when the city began to develop the Metropolitan Freeway System through the river valley. Work was stopped by residents living in the historic neighbourhoods of Groat Estate and Crestwood. Some vowed to lie down in front of the bulldozers.

Even though trees were cut, sewer systems installed and part of the road built, city council narrowly voted to halt the project.

“If you’ve gone partway down the incorrect path, that’s regrettable, but not as regrettable as going all the way down the incorrect path,” said Mayor Ivor Dent at the time.

It’s hard to see that kind of political rethink prevailing today.

Almost every one of the developers’ wishes has been approved in recent years.

Parts of historic Groat Estate now sit in the shadow of highrise buildings. Under the new city zoning plan, developers are allowed to build three-floor, eight-unit apartments on 50-foot lots anywhere in Edmonton. Developers can and have applied to build bigger and higher units, as one successfully did in Windsor Park, a mature neighbourhood along the river valley that is located directly west of the university.

“If a developer wants rezoning to build a large development, there is a very high likelihood that city administration would recommend rezoning and that it would be approved by city council,” says Edmonton lawyer Joe Miller, who owns a historic house behind one of these proposed developments. “It is impossible to know exactly what can be built where. Rules and guidelines are bent to accommodate increased density.”

Some residents are now wondering whether it’s worth taking advantage of federal incentives to install solar panels.

“No one is thinking this through,” says Miller. “It’s densification at all costs.”

One might assume that this is another example of right-wing, development-at-any-cost politicians prevailing.

But Ald. Michael Janz, left of centre on many issues, recently voted for densification throughout the city.

Janz argues that six-storey apartment blocks are a better use of space and would enable thousands of people to be “car-less.”

“One of the reasons I’m bullish about welcoming redevelopment in central Edmonton, especially near the U of A, is that it is one of the most accessible places to live car-lite in our city. Between excellent public transit, car share and bike share — you can access great transit options here and save a ton of money compared to other city areas.”

Critics concede there is merit for this case, if there were well-defined limits to the size of the buildings, as well as landscape requirements that would save trees from being cut down and prevent green spaces in river valley communities like those adjacent to the University of Alberta from being turned to concrete. Architectural conditions or incentives that would encourage developers to use solar power and other conservation features are also lacking.

‘The city has capitulated’

Denny Thomas, a former Court of Queen’s Bench judge who is now a director of the North Saskatchewan River Valley Conservation Society, says the city’s determination to overdevelop in commercial and high-density residential neighbourhoods has overshadowed river valley conservation. “It’s a shame because the river valley is the one thing that makes Edmonton special. The ecological integrity of the area will diminish or crash if this continues.”

But citizens are rallying to defend the ecological integrity of Edmonton’s North Saskatchewan River valley, and to demand that development more clearly deliver environmental benefits and affordability without obliterating the character of their neighbourhoods.

Community groups have been lawyering up. In some cases, mature neighbourhood properties are being bought up to prevent them from being developed.

The inspiration to do this began many years ago when a quaint commercial strip in the Garneau residential area near the university was being targeted for high-density development. It was the kind of whimsical place that author Todd Babiak described in his award-winning book The Garneau Block.

Among the bricks-and-mortar buildings at the time, there was a bookstore, a bike shop and two restaurants, one of which was owned by Kim Franklin, who opened it in 1982 to offer the kind of wholesome meals that no restaurants served at the time. She and her staff were so beloved that loyal customers once took a night off to cook for them.

When owner Patrick Turner got wind that the university was planning to move in and have the land expropriated for high-density development, he offered to sell it at a very attractive price to Kim and Abel Shiferaw, Franklin’s former employee and owner of the Sugarbowl next door.

"It's more than money to me," Turner said at the time. "It's like a second home. I eat a lot of meals here and I'm fond of the people.... I don't care about the money, and I mean it. I'm 79 years old and long ago I stopped worrying about money."

A group of community leaders that includes neighbourhood members of the Old Glenora Conservation Association summed up the frustrations of many Canadians when they wrote a letter to the local newspaper decrying concessions that are being made to developers in mature neighbourhoods.

“In return for granting these concessions, the city gets nothing in terms of affordability, energy efficiency, family-sized units, solar readiness, or sensitivity to context.

“The city hasn't negotiated with infill developers; it has capitulated.”

“The vast majority of buildings constructed under these changes,” they say, “will be built to the lowest legal standards and will be environmentally unsustainable the day their doors open. If council cannot do this properly, it should slow down.”

While they and others like them across Canada may end up losing, as trending statistics suggest, nature will find a way of getting back as wildfire, floods and heat domes intensify in a rapidly warming world.

Calgary and surrounding towns found this out the hard way in 2013 when floods forced thousands out of their homes, causing $6 billion in financial losses and $400 million in damage to Calgary’s infrastructure.

Experts concluded that the damage would have been far less had the city not drained 90 per cent of its wetlands for development. Peat, which is the foundation for many of these wetlands, absorbs up to 26 per cent of its weight in moisture.

Calgary had a chance to offer up a mea culpa this year when it considered plans to develop in and around 41 wetland sites in the Ricardo Ranch area where there are 18 wildlife species with management concerns. Instead of declining, councillors gave the go-ahead to two of the three proposals, with conditions that no conservation group is happy about. The third development proposal is under consideration.

Edmonton may soon suffer if a wildfire tears through the river valley. The city’s plan to deal with a fire is inching along, stalled by inaction and overwhelmed by highly combustible invasive species, and tens of thousands of dead trees that have been killed by drought and climate change. A fire hasn’t rejuvenated this forest since more than a century ago when Indigenous people traditionally burned to manage the forest to attract game and promote the growth of root vegetables and wild berries.