Speaking Municipally

Happy New Year! Edmonton continues to deal with the fallout from all the recent snowfall. Plus, we look at some statistics showing what types of housing were built, and where, in 2025.

Here are the relevant links for this episode:

Snow removal
Missing middle
Growth projections
This episode is brought to you by SkirtsAfire, which happens from March 5 to 15. Be entertained and inspired by theatre, music, dance, comedy, visual arts, design, and more. Taking place in various venues in the heart of Old Strathcona and the French Quarter, there's lots to see and do at SkirtsAfire, so take it all in! Festival passes are available now. Sign up for SkirtsAfire's newsletter and get updates direct to your inbox!

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Creators and Guests

Host
Mack Male
Co-Founder and CEO of Taproot Publishing Inc.
Host
Stephanie Swensrude
Stephanie is a curator and reporter at Taproot Edmonton. She attended NAIT's radio and television program and has worked at CBC, CFJC in Kamloops, and 630 CHED.

What is Speaking Municipally?

Taproot Edmonton presents a weekly discussion on key stories in municipal politics. We pay attention to City Council so you don't have to! Join us as we delve into conversations about the context surrounding decisions made at City Hall.

Mack:
The snow has to end eventually, right? This week, the city continues to deal with the fallout from all the snowfall recently.

Stephanie:
Plus, we look at some statistics showing what types of housing were built, and where, in 2025.

Mack:
Hi. I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.

Mack:
Oh, yeah. We nailed it, Stephanie. What a great way to come back to the new year. Welcome back to…

Stephanie:
Eee!

Mack:
Speaking Municipally, Episode 338. How was your holiday?

Stephanie:
It was amazing. Lots of rest. Just watched lots of movies, barely did anything. Hung out with my family. It was super chill. How about you?

Mack:
It was fun as well. Very relaxing. I didn't do a whole lot. This is where my age comes in though, Stephanie. I walk a lot, and over the two-week holiday, I barely walked at all, and I think my back was feeling it.

Stephanie:
Oh, no.

Mack:
When I came back, you know, I'm just I'm getting a bit old, I guess.

Stephanie:
Oh, no.

Mack:
Back into the swing of things now though, so feeling physically better. It's a new year. Do you make resolutions? Are your resolutions kinda go?

Stephanie:
Yeah. I am. I'm So, dedicated listeners, I don't know if you remember this, Mack, but last year, you asked me the same question, what my resolution was gonna be.

Mack:
I don't remember. Yeah.

Stephanie:
And I said I remember this, like, so vividly 'cause I said that my resolution was to do a backflip, and you were like, "That's such a great goal 'cause it's achievable."

Mack:
Yes. Specific. Yeah.

Stephanie:
"And it's specific."

Mack:
Did you do it?

Stephanie:
And Absolutely not. I didn't even, I didn't even come close to starting any of the steps that would get me there. Complete failure. But this So this year, I'm choosing even more achievable goals. One of them is to stretch every morning instead of, like, sit crumpled up on my couch reading, which is what I normally do.

Mack:
Yep.

Stephanie:
Second one is to get better at feeding my cats wet food. I'm lazy in that way. Third one is to not use my phone in groups generally, but especially when other people are talking, like, 'cause I think that it's an epidemic that needs to stop. What about you?

Mack:
Well, I probably said this last year. I'm not, like, huge on specific resolutions, but I do like to try to make changes. And to me, the new year is just a good excuse to put things into place or tweak some things. And so, I'm a bit of a systems kinda guy, and I saw you saw my LinkedIn post I did this week about a change I made. It's really I guess if I had to reword all of that into a resolution, it would be, "Spend less time doomscrolling," you know, and less time on social media and that kinda stuff. I don't spend a ton of time there anyway, but I got an eReader, a new eReader, and kinda got it set up so that I can have even less reason to pick up my phone, as you were saying…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And spend time on the phone and instead read stuff that is actually beneficial and healthy, potentially, for me. So…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
That's as close as I come to a resolution, I think.

Stephanie:
Great.

Mack:
Did you get any fun gifts? Did Santa visit your place?

Stephanie:
I got a second monitor.

Mack:
Ooh.

Stephanie:
A portable second monitor, so I can go work in a café or something, and, like, socks from my mom.

Mack:
Yes.

Stephanie:
Oh, And she's listening probably right now. Thanks, Mom.

Mack:
I got some socks too. Those are, You have to get socks at Christmas, I feel like.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
It's a really important Christmas gift.

Stephanie:
They're great.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Well, you did get another gift because a box arrived At my house over the holidays from Councillor Reid Clarke, who is I don't know if he's been a longtime listener of the show. He's definitely a listener now that he's on Council. And, thank you, Councillor Clarke, for sending over a couple of gifts for us. So for me He sent over a blue City of Champs ball cap.

Stephanie:
Ah, it's I love that. It's so cute.

Mack:
Because he knows how much I hate the conversation about City of Champions. And for you, I think he was inspired by, an episode just before the holidays. He sent you a foam brick, which I don't have here. It's in the coworking space. I'll give it to you in person when we meet next. So you can throw it at all those cars.

Stephanie:
Threaten people.

Mack:
Yeah, who are speeding through playground zones.

Stephanie:
That's the like, I, o-… When I record this podcast, we, like, sign off at the end, and I go, "There you go. No one is gonna listen to this." And I just forget about all of the insane, unhinged things that I say. And then I get an, a foam brick from a city councillor, and then I'm like, "I need to watch what I say on the podcast." 'Cause I'm gonna be known as this insane person that throws or threatens to throw bricks at cars. No, but seriously, don't be speeding in my neighborhood.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
You will regret it.

Mack:
You're gonna be in trouble now, yeah. There's also a couple of, nets, basketball nets from the Freshnets program, which of course Reid Clarke was involved with, so thank you for that. Lots of fun stuff to come at Christmastime.

Stephanie:
Yes, thank you, Reid Clarke. This does mean that I will only report on you in a positive way, and if any other politicians would like this, I can easily be bought with gifts, so keep them coming.

Mack:
I'll leave that as an exercise for the listener, to believe you or not. All right. Well, I'll give you the brick in person next week, Stephanie. I look forward to hearing more about how that goes. Before we get into this week's episode, we do have an ad to read.

Stephanie:
This episode is brought to you by Skirts of Fire, Edmonton's annual festival featuring the work of women in the arts. This year's festival takes place in Old Strathcona in the French Quarter from March 5th to 15th. It will see four bold and brand new shows: Ms. Pat's Kitchen by Jamila J. McNeil, I am Eagle by Matricia Bauer, Put Your Lips Together by Louise Casemore, and Things I Shouldn't Tell You by Shannon Calcutt. Plus, there will be music, dance, comedy, visual arts, and more. Festival passes and individual tickets are on sale now at skirtsoffire.com. Taproot is proud to be a media sponsor of Skirts of Fire, and we look forward to seeing you there in March. And again, learn more and get your tickets at skirtsoffire.com.

Mack:
Thanks, Stephanie. I always look forward to, the creative stuff happening at Skirts of Fire, and Taproot's been happy to be involved with the festival now for a number of years. So, it's one of the signals that it's the new year. Skirts of Fire is back. Okay. Well, over the holidays, in addition to gifts and New Year's resolutions and all that fun stuff, we got a big dump of snow…

Stephanie:
So much snow.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Like every day I would 'cause, for me, in the holidays, I do a lot of driving 'cause my family lives in the suburbs. So I would go to my dad's place, to my mom's place, to my sister's place, and I have to drive out there. And every day, I came out of the house and I was like, "There's another foot of snow on my car," like Ah. It was very frustrating.

Mack:
I live in a condo, as you know, so I don't generally have to shovel snow, but my in-laws have been away and so we've been helping look after their place. And so I've had to get out and shovel, and I was shocked at how much snow there is out there. I drive a lot less, but every time I had to go out in the car too, it was a bit, it was a bit dicey. You know, there's only a few days a year in Edmonton where I feel like you really need to use an air conditioner. Like, it doesn't get that hot.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And I feel like it's the same with snow. There's only a few days a year where I, who drive a little car, feel like, "I should have a truck or an SUV because I'm gonna get stuck in all this snow." It's not often, but there are a handful of days a year, and I think we definitely experienced those recently. So I feel like this should be an SNL thing almost, but or, what was it? Jay Leno used to do this on his show all the time. "There's a lot of snow, Stephanie. How much snow is there?"

Stephanie:
So as of December 29th, in the whole month of December, 49 millimeters of precipitation had fallen. Now, the 30-year average is just under 12 millimeters, so we experienced 416% of the average, amount of snow or precipitation in December. It was the sixth snowiest December on record.

Mack:
That is a lot of snow.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
I presume we're talking about precipitation also because some of what fell in December was a bit closer to rain.

Stephanie:
Yes. Yeah, they don't necessarily split it up into precipitation and, like rain and snow, like Environment and Climate Change Canada. So, yeah, she, this meteorologist told CBC, Terri Lang, she said, "What's been happening, it's been happening across much of the prairie provinces, is the systems that produce the snow have been going along almost the same path every single time they come through." And I just feel like that is really what it felt like, is that it was like the cloud moving past and dumping all this snow and then, like, 24 hours later again.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
And I did also want to give a quick shout-out because a lot of this happened on, like, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day. So shout-out to the city employees who spent the holidays clearing snow and making it safe for the rest of us to travel around the city and see our families. You are very appreciated. We love the snow clearing team.

Mack:
Absolutely. Just an incredible amount of work with that much snow and, as we've talked about on the show, thousands of kilometers of roadways to clear, which they didn't all do right away and we'll get into that in a bit. But, before we talk about what I think you are expecting us to talk about, dear listener, which is windrows and all the pain that has gone along with this let's do a fun little quick segue first. So, one of the good things about all of that snow, Stephanie, is you can play in snow. And, it was super cold, right, for a lot of this time.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
But it did get up to around zero degrees there a couple of times. It got warm. So the first time it really got warm after the huge first dump of snow, I took the kids out to O'Damon Park, brand new park, which is fantastic. Shout-out to Paths for People for using the slowness of the holiday to call out the city on clearing that. Every time I've walked through that park since that story came out over the holidays, it's been super clear and easy to get to, so that's great. But there was a ton of snow. The kids loved it. And it got warm enough that we could build really good snowmen. You know, like when That snow is a bit wet and heavy and it packs really nicely and you can roll it and we could do that? So we had these amazing snowmen built. There's a dog park there, and a woman came over after. I don't know if she walks around with these in her pocket, but she had a carrot and she gave us a carrot For the snowmen, which was awesome. We went back the next day. The snowman had either been knocked down or melted or both or whatever, but it had also gotten cold again overnight and so all the snow had kind of frozen, and so we were sledding down the hill that is, you know…

Stephanie:
Just like … (imitates car revving)…

Mack:
O'Damon Park. And it was, it was great. It was nice and fast. So there are good things to snow and the weather that we've had, and we live in a winter city and we wanna make the most of it. But there's also a downside to those things. So you were talking before about, you know, snowman and sledding weather has a different impact when you're trying to get places, right, on the sidewalks or on the roads.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Yeah, definitely. So obviously, just when it's snowing, it's a pain to get around. But of course, then you see the snowplows working diligently to clear that snow and then they pile it, in the middle or on the side of the street and there's a humongous windrow. And those are, like, genuinely dangerous. There was They sometimes they take up, like, a whole travel lane. They often, like It By my place, they got high enough that I couldn't see when I was, like, turning. I couldn't see the cars very well. So Andrew Knack, Mayor Andrew Knack posted on Substack I think we should call it the Sub-Knack.

Mack:
I love that.

Stephanie:
He said, "I understand the challenge faced by continuing to focus on windrow removal when local roads are in rough shape. This is not an easy trade-off. I know no one wants to have to choose between the removal of windrows on main roads or blading local roads, but that is the situation we are facing with the volume of snow we have recently experienced." So yeah, they were cleaning the windrows away, for a couple of days there. At least in my area, they're mostly gone at this point and it's a lot easier to kind of get around. But yeah, I guess it's They the city has, like, a priority list of snow clearing, especially when we get such a large amount. It can, it can get really frustrating for folks.

Mack:
Absolutely. And those windrows have been all over the place and quite large. As you say…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
They take up, you know, in a lot of cases a whole lane or at least eliminate all of the parking. You know, downtown I noticed, like the turning lanes off Jasper Avenue were just completely full of snow from the, windrows. And I was thinking, downtown, surely we are a priority one road, but it turns out no. So the city has four priority levels for roads and there's different rules and frequencies about how we clear them. So priority one, we clear to bare pavement and we do it in 24 hours. And you can look at the, snow and ice control map, which we'll link to in the show notes, and you get a nice visual of where these roads are. Jasper Avenue is not a priority one road, which is why, I suppose, for several days, there were huge windrows blocking all of the turning lanes down Jasper Avenue. So they had cleared it, but they hadn't taken away all the snow yet. So that kinda makes sense, and it was a good reminder to, for me at least, that just because I live downtown doesn't mean we get everything first.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
You know, there are some other priorities here.

Stephanie:
Yeah. Hey, if the city wasn't going to narrow Jasper Ave from eight lanes in the, Reimagine Jasper Ave project, at least Mother Nature did it, right?

Mack:
Yeah, that's right. That's right. Jasper Ave, it turns out, is a priority two, roadway, and so for priority two roadways, we clear to bare pavement, but cleared within five days. And then there are priority three, and there's hardly any of these. They're much less frequent, and those are cleared within six days. And then all of the residential ones, which we're talking about, in particular when you're trying to drive in and out of your neighborhood or whatever, those are priority four, and those are cleared within 10 days. So…

Stephanie:
Oh no.

Mack:
That's a lot of snow to clear When you think about all those different types of roads, right? It's easier on the big roads, and then it gets harder and harder as you get down, so this is why we have parking bans to make sure the roads are clear and all of that. I have to imagine, Stephanie, that with four times the snow, it's gonna cost more money than we might have thought. What do you think?

Stephanie:
Yeah. We, so it's probably too early to tell, especially because, knock on wood, mm, there might be more coming. 'Cause I remember last year, in like late March, we had a, like two feet of, we got two feet of snow. But anyways, in the last couple years, we've gotten a little bit less snow than thought, and then that's resulted in a favorable budget variance, AKA, a little bit of a surplus in the snow budget. Now with four times the regular amount of snow, I'm gonna assume that's not going to be the case this year. So yes, like I said, it's a little bit too early to tell, but I think we can make an educated guess. Right, Mack?

Mack:
Well, I have an idea about this. Yeah, so we know that our snow and ice control budget is $67 million, right? That's what we…

Stephanie:
Six-seven.

Mack:
Don't do it. Don't do it.

Stephanie:
I'm sorry. It was like an…

Mack:
Oh.

Stephanie:
Involuntary reaction.

Mack:
Man, my kids do, my three-year-old does that. I can't Okay, anyway.

Stephanie:
I'm so sorry.

Mack:
I'm gonna guess that we're gonna spend closer to, I don't know, nine to $100 million a in this snow and ice control season on snow, assuming that we get a, you know, good amount of snow in the, in the 2026 part of it as well. Like you said, we are we're likely to get more snow. And the reason I say that is because if you look at the city's Snow and Ice Control Annual Report, which is just an incredibly rich source of information about all this stuff. If you chuck that into ChatGPT, you can learn everything you want to know about snow and ice control. We look at the 2021 to 2022 winter. We had quite a bit more snow that year, precipitation that year than in any of the other 10 years, in this report. Most of it was snowfall, but there was some freezing rain and regular rain as well, so it was quite a bit higher. We were already budgeted that year to spend quite a bit on snow removal, 75 million bucks, and we ended up spending another $20 million on top of that.

Stephanie:
Whew.

Mack:
So pretty close to, what, $95 million or so, for that funding year. And you can see in the chart that essentially what you're saying is true. Years where there's less precipitation than maybe average we spend a little bit less, and years where there's more we end up spending more. So, I think it's a safe bet that this 2025, 2026 winter is going to result in a higher budget for snow clearing. And to the extent of that we can you know, guess how much, that's my guess. You know, close to the same kind of increase that we saw in 2021, 2022.

Stephanie:
Right. And, Mayor Naack did address this in his SubNAAC. He said, "We need to invest and catch up with our city's growth. We've added thousands of kilometers of roads, but our snow and ice control budget hasn't kept up. While I never want to overreact to the excessive snow we've seen in December, I think we could still benefit from greater service even in an average year."

Mack:
Yeah, and there's different types of service, right that I'm imagining council would want to get into. We've had the debate in the past about should it be bare pavement or not. So back to those priority levels, the priority four roads, it's not bare pavement. It's about five centimeters of snow pack, which I always find fascinating 'cause I'm like, "Is anyone getting out there with a ruler to measure how much snow is on the road?" I don't know how they do that, but setting on the blades, I guess. So one level of service could be the amount of snow. Another obvious one is the frequency or the, amount of time that you have between snow clearing snowfall and snow clearing. Or, I guess another type of service improvement you might make is make more roads higher priorities, and so maybe not all of the roads that are priority four stay priority four. Maybe some of those get bumped up to a higher priority.

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
I think that's a discussion that council's likely to have, but as we know, snow and ice control discussions typically happen in the summer because we now have all the data from the previous winter, and we can plan a little bit more for the new winter. And heading into a new, four-year budget cycle, I imagine snow and ice control will be one of the big things they talk about. I mean, it's a relatively large line item, in our, in our budget.

Stephanie:
Mm-hmm. Right. And I just wanted to talk about moving from the roads discussion to the more active transportation side of things. I walk around my neighborhood almost every day going to like the gym or the grocery store, and, some days, I didn't need the gym because walking in that amount of snow was a workout in and of itself. But, I jest, but it is actually quite serious because, you know, those sidewalks, if they're not cleared, folks with mobility aids, like a wheelchair or a walker, they A lot of them simply cannot leave the house…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
If the sidewalks are cleared, are not cleared. So, I don't know, I guess just a little reminder, if you, are responsible for that, please make sure you're clearing your sidewalk. But yeah, it was just very difficult to get around.

Mack:
There's so much snow, I think we all need to be a little bit forgiving, right? But still, the expectation is you get out and clear your sidewalk pretty soon after a snowfall event. You're not supposed to put the snow back onto the roadway, though I notice…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
When the city's going through with the graders, they're often building the windrows on the sidewalk, which isn't ideal. I know they have limited space and you gotta do what you gotta do, but, that's a bit frustrating. What about bike lanes? 'Cause, you know, I'm sure this'll come up in discussions people are having, so you're talking about sidewalks and the city's responsible for clearing some active pathways, right? Things around facilities, around the bike loop, around rec centers, things like that. And then, you know, city property, sidewalks and bridges and things like that. But most people are responsible for clearing the sidewalk in front of their houses, right? But bike lanes…

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
The city does and…

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
What's the experience like there?

Stephanie:
So within one day, 24 hours of the snowfall stopping, the city's goal is to clear the winter priority bike loop to bare pavement. So, if you're ever cycling around and you see, like, the little blue sticker on, I'm pretty sure it's, like, the 83rd Ave, bike lane, the 102 Ave one, and, you know, to complete the loop, you know, the ones in the core that see the most, people going on them. Complete those within 24 hours down to bare pavement. And some folks, are wondering, "Well, why is it they're so spick-and-span clean within one day, whereas, like, the residential roads are not?"

Mack:
Right.

Stephanie:
And that's essentially because it's a lot more dangerous to cycle on a little bit of snow and ice than it is to drive in a car on four tires when you're protected on all sides on a bit of snow. Like, that's basically, it's just, it's just a lot more dangerous. And then also, if you leave the snow there, it's a lot more likely to create ruts, which is then makes it basically impossible to cycle on.

Mack:
That all sounds true and I have no dispute with any of that. I would think there's probably two other factors. One has to be there is just way more kilometers of residential roads than bike lanes.

Stephanie:
Oh, yeah, of course.

Mack:
For one thing.

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And the other is, we don't have to declare a parking ban for bike lanes.

Stephanie:
Yes, exactly.

Mack:
So what's next with the parking bans here in Edmonton?

Stephanie:
Okay, so, starting on Monday, which is the 12th, the city will declare the phase two of the parking ban, which means that they're gonna start clearing out the residential roads. That is, like I said, or like we were talking about, the very last, level on the parking or the snow clearing priority list. And hopefully, that will address those ruts, those big ruts that you see now on the, residential roads that, like, can potentially bottom out your car, so just be careful.

Mack:
Yeah, totally. I was just grateful when I had to go through a residential neighborhood the other day that it was a bit soft, like it had melted a little bit and so you can hear it scraping under the car, but you're not, like, bouncing and getting quite as stuck, but…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
It's a challenge out there. I guess the other thing to keep in mind, all of us are in this together. There's not, like, a neighborhood in this city where the city has already cleared it. Like, they're…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
They're all priority four. So, a little bit of patience is appreciated and some gratitude as well, like you said, Stephanie, for all the hardworking staff who are going overboard to try and make this city traversable again.

Stephanie:
Exactly. We appreciate you, city staff.

Mack:
Anything else on snow? Good?

Stephanie:
Nope.

Mack:
Okay. All right, well, that seems like a very appropriate topic to kick off the new year, a big budget item it's winter, all of that kind of stuff. But let's look back a little bit for, the next topic, I love this topic, missing middle. So you got some information about what we built last year in 2025…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
When it comes to housing.

Stephanie:
Yes. So, Jacob De Wong, put together this blog post, and he is a housing advocate with Grow Together Edmonton. And then during the day, you know, as his normal people job, he's a data scientist with Capital One Canada, so he went and compiled some data about what types of housing were built and then also some about where they were built in 2025. And, just, this is just using data that's available on the city's website, and he found that the city permitted more homes in 2025 than ever before. And when I say homes in this, I mean dwelling units, which is obviously a very dry term but, you know, it's important to say, to clarify that this is, like, housing units, because that's, like, a pretty common metric used across these discussions. But anyways, permitted more homes in 2025 than ever before and increasingly of the missing middle type. So that's providing options between large scale high-rise apartments and single family homes. You know, you look somewhere like in Toronto is kind of the stereotype is that they have along the main road, they have all these, like, 40 tower, 40 floor towers, and then a one block away, they have sprawling, single family housing, right? And for the first time ever, according to, Jacob's analysis, more units were permitted in the five to eight unit row house category than in single family homes. So he is saying that there were more townhouse units than single family home units, permitted in 2025.

Mack:
For the first time in the data that we know about.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
So that is a really interesting thing to pause on. So a couple of thoughts come to mind when I hear that. One is, fantastic. We're moving in the direction of building up rather than out to some extent, and we know we've gotta increase the density. We, you know, it's a little bit like we have to do everything, we have to continue to grow, add more houses outside, but also grow up, and this is a good thing there. So that's a positive thing that comes to mind. When I saw this earlier, I stopped and I thought about it a little bit more though, and I thought, "It's kinda shocking that's the first time."If you're building things that are five to eight units, like in a way that should have been a higher number than the single ones a long time ago and it hasn't been. So that's kinda shocking that it took until now to get to that point. And I guess that speaks to the effectiveness of the zoning bylaw changes and all the other things that the city has done over the last number of years to try to make it possible for us to build, more multifamily units or multiunit, structures, I should say. And then another thought I had about this was, I wonder what this will do for affordability, right? Because we've been talking a lot over the last couple of years about Edmonton's relative housing affordability advantage. That you can buy a single family home in Edmonton for quite a bit less than you can in other major cities. If the supply of those things is not growing as rapidly as the demand, then obviously that's gonna put upward pressure on prices and we've seen that to some extent. And I wonder, you know, if we need to be building more single family homes as well. So that's interesting that he pulled that out of the analysis. What else did he find when he looked at the data?

Stephanie:
So he also found that in 2025 more homes were permitted close to transit than ever before. So, one of the graphs, and we will link the blog post in the show notes so you can take a look at all these graphs. I love graphs. So it's a little bit hard to describe this without showing you, the graph, but it just, it just, shows that an increasing amount of, these, new homes were added, close to transit. And then even if they weren't within 800 meters, they were still pretty close. So even if it wasn't How 800 meters I think is supposed to be, like, a 10-minute walk, maybe it's within a 15-minute walk of transit. So that is definitely gonna be getting the city closer to its, goals.

Mack:
And it's quite visible on the chart when you look at it. Like, this is a sort of XY axis and it's up and to the right. And, you know, if you just follow the line straight up the diagonal all the way up to the top right, you know, that's far away from where the LRT stops are. If the line was going straight up vertically, you'd be building right next to LRT all the time and this 2025 line is much steeper at the beginning. And, like, we'll put this in the show notes like you said, but much steeper. Like, it's not just a little bit. It's pretty apparent that…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Much more was built close to transit. So that's fantastic.

Stephanie:
And then another interesting thing that he puts in this blog post is that 50% of these five to eight unit row homes were within 800 meters of an LRT stop. So that kind of puts the two trends together, is that we're building more five to eight unit town homes, that we're building closer to transit, and we're building these five to eight units close to transit. 50% of them are being close to transit, which are kind of where they're supposed to go, because then that enables people to live without a car and it helps the city reach its goals of, you know, 50% of, new residents added through infill and, you know, increasing mode share to have more active transportation in transit.

Mack:
Absolutely, yeah. And he's got a whole bunch of other data you can dig into here. He's got, interactive tables where you can go and look at the number of row homes and things that were permitted by a neighborhood, which is pretty cool actually. So you can go find your neck of the woods and see exactly what that looks like. He's talking about the magic of density here, which is, I think a little bit what you're getting at, right? And that density can have a really positive impact on quality of life for people. It makes a lot of the other things that we've been talking about as a city possible, such as whether you wanna call it that or not, the 15-minute city idea, and you know Being able to live and get around and have things closer to where you are. Like, density makes all of those things much more doable. It, you know, lowers the cost of maintenance and all, and all that kind of stuff. But one of the other things you mentioned there was parking which always comes up. What did he find around parking and what are we hearing from council about this?

Stephanie:
Well, one thing that I saw in one of the end of the year, or beginning of the year, you know, Christmas break, kind of stories that a lot of news publications do because it's a slow time of year…

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Is that CBC was looking forward to the parking decisions in store for, City Council coming up. And Councilor Erin Rutherford said that she is looking to reopen the parking minimum discussion.

Mack:
So we got rid of parking minimums in Edmonton a number of Years ago. And so what this means, if you've not heard it before is when a developer builds a building, they're not required to have any parking. We used to require, I think, two stalls for every unit or something crazy. Like, there had to be a lot of parking on every, on every site. And we don't have to do that anymore. Edmonton has won awards for this change for getting rid of parking minimums. Why on earth would Council Rutherford wanna reopen the Debate about this?

Stephanie:
Well, it's not like she's saying that we should bring them back and have to require that insane amount of parking for every single building. But, I'm reading from the CBC article here, she's bringing forward a motion to discuss parking minimums, and while she doesn't think that they should be put back into zoning rules, she says that there might be circumstances where they should be considered, such as areas outside of reliable and frequent transit service.

Mack:
Which is interesting, and I can understand the motivation there, like if you are choosing to live in a place because it's what you can afford or it's where it's close to work or whatever but there isn't good transit service there. Maybe you need a car in that situation to get around and if there isn't available parking, it's like, well, what do you do with the car? The challenge I have with the conversation around parking minimums in any shape or form is that it's a really bad way to solve a problem for the long term, right? Like, we create these parking spots that maybe they solve this short term problem, but a better way to solve that would be increase the transit service to those areas so that you don't need the parking stall. Or what might happen, you know, that is to some extent outside of the city of Edmonton's control is if we really do get further along on self-driving vehicles, which is happening in a much more intentional or intensive way in some American cities now, -… then you don't have as much need for parking, right? You can call up the robot car and it'll take you where you need to go. And it's kinda like on-demand transit, but individualized and those things don't need a parking stall. So that's kind of a longer term vision of where this could go. But if we build a parking stall today, and then we get rid of cars in the future, or we boost transit service in the future…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Then what is that parking stall gonna do? Maybe we can convert them into other things, but it just doesn't seem like the right way to tackle that problem.

Stephanie:
I mean, it's how we got into this problem of having sprawling, spread-out cities with terrible density and terrible transit services because, you know, take, I don't know, like, Bonnie Doon Mall you know, which was one of the first malls in Edmonton built in, like, the '50s or '60s, and there's, like, what, 2,000 parking spots around there? Don't quote me. But because they built that with such an enormous sea of parking around it, now that Now, 50 years later, 60 years later, it's a terrible, place to be a pedestrian, even though it's right beside a train station. And then it also Because there's all that parking though, it encourages everyone that lives in the nearby neighborhoods to drive there.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
Makes the traffic worse. There's the train, like And that's how we get there. So parking, like exactly what you said, it's a decision that we make now, but in the future hopefully we won't there It won't be an area without reliable frequent transit service, and, hopefully in the future, we will get to a point where we won't need that parking spot.

Mack:
Yeah. I mean, at least in that situation, it's surface parking, which…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
Is bad in general, but for redevelopment purposes could be quite interesting. There's quite a bit of available land there to redevelop.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
And there's plans to redevelop Bonnie Doon, right? And so that's an opportunity.

Stephanie:
Yes.

Mack:
When you're building a tower and you've got three or four levels of parking in the tower because of a need for parking minimums or whatever the case may be, that's much harder to redevelop. You're not likely to go into a building 20 or 30 years in the future and convert a whole row of parking into units. Like, it That's It doesn't work that way. You can't convert those levels into housing. So it's like we'd rather have more housing units than parking stalls, right?

Stephanie:
Yeah. And I have this, not argument, this discussion with people in my life all the time who aren't as orange-pilled as me maybe. If you know, you know. Right now, it is really difficult to live in Edmonton without a car, especially if you live, you know, outside of the core.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
But if you want things to change, you have to change things.

Mack:
Yeah.

Stephanie:
You know what I mean? Like, it There's going to be this weird puberty era of awkward change where not everything completely lines up, but the idea is that Like, y-… We could put parking minimums back in the zoning bylaw. I know that's not what she's saying to do, but we could put parking minimums back in because right now it's hard to get reliable transit service everywhere. That is not going to help us get reliable transit service everywhere. In fact, it's gonna do the opposite. It's gonna continue the sprawl issue, and it's also because these, developments have parking, well, people aren't gonna be motivated to use transit because they have a car. And yeah, if you want to change things, you have to change things.

Mack:
I mean, I hope this is an opportunity for council to have that conversation because you're right. Like, we need to make choices today for where we wanna get to, and…

Stephanie:
Exactly.

Mack:
I understand the challenge that a city councilor faces because they need to both make decisions for the long term, for the future that they think are going to be in the best interest of the city, but also for the people they're hearing from right now who are finding it really hard to live in the city right now, who find it really difficult to get from A to B today. Like, those are two both very important, difficult to trade off things. This is where having a vision and a strategy and having agreed upon a city plan and all of those kinds of things should make those kinds of conversations easier at least. They should provide us with the framework in which to make those conversations, and I'm not sure council has done a great job of enacting that kind of framework. So when you and I talked to the mayor shortly after he was elected, he was talking a bit about that, right? That idea of having, like, a policy almost for council about how they go about doing these kinds of things. I think that it'll be interesting to see how that unfolds throughout 2026.

Stephanie:
Yeah. I think that concept is why, like, politics is so difficult, because I know all the people on council, especially the incumbents that all have been working on this sort of thing, this density, transit, active transportation, this agenda if you wanna call it that. But I know that all these people on council, like, are working together to try to get to this point, but then at the same time, they do have to listen to their constituents and take their concerns seriously. And, like, this is why I would be a terrible politician because I'm, like, so I bind myself so much to policy and rules that I kind of I'm too, like, long-term focused and not short-term focused enough. And so I get it, listeners. Like, I get that it's hard to live, and we should also take that into account. And it's just Yeah. It's a hard thing to balance.

Mack:
Definitely. All right. Well, one more thing before we wrap up for this week. Because it's the new year, we're starting to see all kinds of projections and predictions and things like that, and the Conference Board of Canada has some new projections you wanted to highlight.

Stephanie:
Yes. So the Conference Board of Canada is projecting a big cooldown in our region's population growth after several years of, you know I mean, I feel like every few weeks we talk about this, how the city is just growing, but it's expected to slow down, which is, Well, I won't say it's a good or bad thing because, I'm a objective journalist, but, you know, there's pros and cons. So getting a little bit into the background here, Edmonton's population grew by approximately 140,000 people between 2021 and 2024, and, so that's, like a well, of course we've been one of the fastest growing cities, if not the fastest growing one in all of Canada, but this report, estimates that in 2025 We only grew by about 8,900 people, and then is projecting that in 2026, we'll see about 5,500 new people, and it'll go back up a little bit again in 2027 to about 10,000 people. So, definitely a lot less than we saw in the past three, four, five years, but, I mean, still a little bit of an influx of people.

Mack:
Yeah, I think there's some more to dig into to really understand this, and, you know, they'I think they're conflating a bunch of different terms, right, with,…

Stephanie:
For sure.

Mack:
Net immigration versus population growth and all of those kinds of things. So, maybe the specific numbers aren't as important for the purposes of this conversation, but just the general projection that our really rapid, red-hot growth is gonna slow a little bit. Probably still gonna be growing faster than most other jurisdictions, and it seems like there's still a lot of opportunity or headway for growth in Alberta, both in terms of jobs and available housing and affordable housing and those sorts of things. So, I feel like that growth is gonna continue to go up, but maybe just not quite as red-hot as it has been. So if it…

Stephanie:
Yep.

Mack:
Isn't quite as fast as we've seen in previous years, what does that mean?

Stephanie:
So, Ward Nakoda-Isga Councilor Reid Clark, best friend of the show Love you forever. No. He was quoted in a CBC Edmonton article saying that the slowdown in the population growth, it actually might be a opportunity for council as they head into the next four-year budget cycle. He said, quote, "We welcomed a ton of people into our city. We're glad to have them, but there's a lot of catch-up that comes with that, and especially in a lot of the new neighborhoods."

Mack:
I guess that's a good way to look at it, or, maybe it's a way to look at it. Maybe it's not necessarily a good way to look at it. So yes, we do have some growing infrastructure and service debt, potentially, that we want to catch up on, but I don't think it's wise as a councilor to go into the four-year budget thinking that, "Oh, it's gonna be nice and slow. We'll just be able to catch up and then things will be hunky-dory." Like, I think they need to be planning and looking further ahead on, how do we avoid getting into a similar kinda crunch in the future?

Stephanie:
Right.

Mack:
We want things to grow. We want growth to continue, and there's lots of things that Edmonton and everyone in Edmonton is doing to continue to make it thus, so let's plan for that growth rather than, you know, take our foot off the gas. I don't think that's exactly what the councilor is suggesting they do here…

Stephanie:
Yeah.

Mack:
And I can understand how there might be just a little bit of breathing room that comes from, slower growth, but that can't be that can't be the focus. I think we've gotta continue to expect that growth is gonna happen, and we need to be able to figure out how to more effectively grow alongside our population.

Stephanie:
I mean, I guess the city council will have to strike a balance between, like, taxing the heck out of Edmontonians, being like, "There's so many people moving here, we have to tax you so high," versus not preparing at all. There will be a middle ground, right?

Mack:
Yeah, and I saw some reporting over the holidays about the mayor talking about his new approach to the budget and, the kinds of changes he wants to bring in there, so I look forward to that. All right, well, I think that's a good place to end it for our first episode of 2026, Stephanie.

Stephanie:
Whoo.

Mack:
Incredible.

Stephanie:
Yeah, amazing. So happy to be back, so excited. Another one of my New Year's resolutions I didn't mention at the top of the show is to be better at being a podcast host, so hopefully, this first episode, I've, improved a little.

Mack:
Oh, you're a great podcast host. I hear…

Stephanie:
Thank you.

Mack:
Positive things from our listeners all the time, absolutely.

Stephanie:
Amazing.

Mack:
Well, if you have any feedback for Stephanie or any questions about Anything that we've talked about, you can always feel free to reach out to us, at any of our socials, or just hit reply on the newsletter or hello@taprootedmonton.ca. We'd love to hear from you, and we'll be back next week with another episode. Until then, I'm Mack.

Stephanie:
I'm Stephanie.

Mack:
And we're…

Both:
Speaking Municipally.