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  #1  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2012, 12:24 AM
RyeJay RyeJay is offline
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Hunting for Downtown Residential Statistics



If anyone has recently, or even years ago, come across any useful literature regarding downtown/urban residential markets, I would greatly appreciate links to those articles.

I am trying to refine my argument in advocating for investing in Moncton's downtown; however, I am having difficultly in the region as I've found people are totally uninterested in sustainable development.

I am frequently encountering a complete indifference from people in the Greater Moncton Area concerning the climbing debts of municipal governments, and obviously the provincial government, much of which is infrastructural debt.

I am hearing too often that, while debt is a concern, debt from the construction of new roads and highways is necessary for New Brunswick to burden because "no one wants to live in the downtown."

And no one wants to live in a business park either.
The space between where people live and where people work and where people go to school and where people shop is growing in Moncton -- a pattern of city-building that is clearly unsustainable according to the city's budgets.

Many New Brunswickers with whom I've spoken downright say that absolutely no one should be living in downtowns of any city. Downtowns are, apparently, horrible places to raise families.

(For the cities in New Brunswick, this may certainly be the case)

I am trying to combat this mythology, this belief that developing the downtown is a wasted investment. Downtowns are for office towers, restaurants, roads, and nothing else...

I have argued that the majority of the new working demographics in Canada, fresh out of college/university with LOTS of student loan and credit card debt, are desiring to live in more urbanised settings due to the potential for finding a job and the potential for living more affordably, with the use of public transit instead of payments toward vehicle ownership, with the use of public green spaces instead of forking over money toward the property of land, with use of public forms of entertainment instead of paying for everything during your moments when you're not working, etc...

Aside from the monetary factors that are forcing people to live in urban areas, can anyone provide links to information showing that people are wanting to live in urban areas?

Are there statistics showing that families do want to live in the downtowns of cities, in which they raise healthy, happy children? I have seen cities with beautiful, diverse downtowns where many families (which are increasingly non-traditional in nature) thrive quite well. Me telling people what I've personally seen, however, is a poor subsitute to providing numbers to back my support for Moncton's downtown.

Absolutely any reading material is appreciated!
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  #2  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2012, 1:14 AM
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People in Atlantic Canada can have pretty narrow horizons, and a lot of them seem to think their cities and towns are doing great even if they don't stack up very well with other places.

Here's a link about Vancouver: http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2012/05/v...n-census-2011/

The downtown population grew by over 26,000 over the past 10 years. Property values there are also extremely high. None of this would be true if nobody wanted to live there.

Lately the most desirable areas attracting the most talent, especially when it comes to younger people, are the ones that offer an urban lifestyle. The inner cities of New York or San Francisco are very desirable and economically successful on a level way beyond anything in Atlantic Canada. It's not really about affordability of the urban lifestyle in these places -- they are just more desirable, period.

Cities like Moncton are so far behind the curve that I think they'll be pretty handicapped when it comes to attracting people and businesses from other regions.

Halifax is lucky that it has inherited some great old buildings and a pedestrian-friendly urban core but it needs a real transit system and more aggressive urban development.
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  #3  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2012, 6:42 PM
Halifax Hillbilly Halifax Hillbilly is offline
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I can't help you with Maritime specific stats, but Moncton did commission a downtown development vision, which you can find here. I guess it's not that they are totally uninterested, they just aren't very interested. http://downtownmoncton.com/webcura/f...nal_lowres.pdf

As far as where to go to look for stats and info on the return to the city, I would recommend The Atlantic Cities, Planetizen, the Urban Land Institute, and the Lincoln Institute.

You could also look at Saint John as a counterpoint to Moncton. At first glance you wouldn't know, but there is a lot of residential investment in heritage buildings in Uptown. People are renovating above office space and store fronts, adding 6,8,10 units here and there. It all adds up, especially since Uptown is very compact and reasonably dense as is.

It's a tough political problem. Sometimes I think it's willful blindness when people fail to see the fiscal, economic and environmental costs of 'sprawl'. The personal benefits (space, lower housing costs, quiet neighbourhoods) and personal costs (mostly travel) are easy enough to see, but it's very complex to figure out the actual issue of how to pay for services. Change a few assumptions and your whole calculus changes. A lot of road infrastructure that disproportionately benefits the suburbs is regional in importance and justified as such. Same goes for transit, except it often has more benefits to the more central areas. And we haven't even gotten to the central political problem - how do you convince people to pay more for services that they feel entitled to? "I pay lots of taxes." Yeah, but since your taxes are barely linked to how much it costs to provide services, maybe someone else's taxes are subsidizing your services. There's very little political gain in taking on this issues (see Halifax's aborted tax reforms).

It's a bit of a circular problem, you need people in downtown to get investment downtown, but you need some investment to get people living downtown. Maybe you get lucky like Saint John or Halifax and have good bones and the private sector can get the ball rolling by housing people who want to live there. Moncton isn't lucky enough to have quite as many heritage assets.

The other big issue is even if you get downtown sorted and on the right track you still need to get the regional equation right. Toronto's downtown is doing great, it's suburbs are out of control. Montreal's downtown is very dense, but it's one of the sprawliest regions in the country. People are moving into downtown Halifax, and moving into Bedford even faster. You're still back to the same political problem - regardless of how well we treat our downtowns many people will still want a suburban lifestyle, which is their choice and only natural. The problem is making sure that people pay their fair share, and trying to balance good development with property rights and political agendas. It ain't easy.
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Old Posted Sep 7, 2012, 7:27 PM
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I think sprawl is so difficult to deal with politically because it is a "tragedy of the commons" type of situation. It's in the immediate best interests of individuals to buy a nice big house in a newer neighbourhood. Sprawl fails at a collective level but congestion, budgets, and environmental damage are more abstract and nebulous than immediate personal concerns.

It's actually even worse than this because sprawl only becomes noticeably harmful at a certain scale. Toronto commutes are terrible but Moncton is pretty good despite being a sprawlier city with less transit. People won't do anything until the problems are immediate, and they develop a sense of entitlement over time.

The scale issue is interesting. I think Halifax is just getting to the point where its congestion is becoming truly limiting and painful, and where it can afford to implement solutions like LRT. Saint John and Moncton are one level back. A city like Calgary is one level ahead -- they've had rapid transit for years. If they hadn't built the LRT Calgary would not be as liveable today and the downtown area simply wouldn't be able to function like it does now.
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  #5  
Old Posted Sep 7, 2012, 8:20 PM
Halifax Hillbilly Halifax Hillbilly is offline
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Originally Posted by someone123 View Post
I think sprawl is so difficult to deal with politically because it is a "tragedy of the commons" type of situation.
There's the meat of the situation in one sentence. I think the fiscal problems (which in most jurisdictions can only partly be attributed to sprawl and infrastructure costs) and changing demographics will force some significant changes, but there's some decisions we can't go back from.
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  #6  
Old Posted Sep 12, 2012, 2:00 PM
RyeJay RyeJay is offline
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Halifax Hillbilly View Post
You could also look at Saint John as a counterpoint to Moncton. At first glance you wouldn't know, but there is a lot of residential investment in heritage buildings in Uptown. People are renovating above office space and store fronts, adding 6,8,10 units here and there. It all adds up, especially since Uptown is very compact and reasonably dense as is.
You're correct. Using Saint John as an example of a municipality in New Brunswick that is modestly attempting to urbanise inward would at least stand as an instance of downtown market demand in a city close to Moncton. The demand for downtown living does exist, even in New Brunswick! Interestingly enough, I've discovered that mentioning Saint John to Monctonians often produces a sarcastic response, in this context of economics.

"Their economy is horrible, so they're desperate. They'll settle for living and working absolutely anywhere -- even in their grungy Uptown."

This narrative is becoming less common though, as more people are realising that young adults from New Brunswick who currently live in Halifax, either for work or school, are choosing to live as close to Halifax's downtown as possible, even if they have the financial and vehicular options to easily make a suburban choice.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Halifax Hillbilly View Post
It's a bit of a circular problem, you need people in downtown to get investment downtown, but you need some investment to get people living downtown. Maybe you get lucky like Saint John or Halifax and have good bones and the private sector can get the ball rolling by housing people who want to live there. Moncton isn't lucky enough to have quite as many heritage assets.
Moncton's heritage has proven quite dispensable. Old structures are easily tossed aside in favour of new development, which in Moncton's case is usually the expansion of surfacing parking lots, highways, and strip malls.

Your point about downtown investment is actually ringing very true for the city at the moment: There is a proposal for a downtown events centre in Moncton; however, one of the criticisms from the federal government (who would partially contribute the centre's development costs, along with the municipality and province) is that Moncton is still in the progess of eliminating the downtown's density. Speaking of heritage, Moncton's downtown castle-like Moncton High School is being abandoned as a new school is scheduled to be built, not inside the downtown where many spaces are available, but outside of the city's limits, which will require more infrastructure spending of which the province isn't capable (without federal subsidies).

The federal government doubts the logic behind an investment in the downtown in the form of an events centre because the downtown's progress has been stagnant for so long. Without people living in the downtown will this new events centre have to eventually be subsidised just to remain open?...

Will Moncton be tugging on Ottawa's pant leg again?

It will be curious, and perhaps heartbreaking, to see how downtown food establishments and convenience stores cope in the aftermath of the MHS relocation.
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  #7  
Old Posted Sep 12, 2012, 2:13 PM
RyeJay RyeJay is offline
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People in Atlantic Canada can have pretty narrow horizons, and a lot of them seem to think their cities and towns are doing great even if they don't stack up very well with other places.

Here's a link about Vancouver: http://www.vancitybuzz.com/2012/05/v...n-census-2011/

The downtown population grew by over 26,000 over the past 10 years. Property values there are also extremely high. None of this would be true if nobody wanted to live there.

Lately the most desirable areas attracting the most talent, especially when it comes to younger people, are the ones that offer an urban lifestyle. The inner cities of New York or San Francisco are very desirable and economically successful on a level way beyond anything in Atlantic Canada. It's not really about affordability of the urban lifestyle in these places -- they are just more desirable, period.

Cities like Moncton are so far behind the curve that I think they'll be pretty handicapped when it comes to attracting people and businesses from other regions.

Halifax is lucky that it has inherited some great old buildings and a pedestrian-friendly urban core but it needs a real transit system and more aggressive urban development.
Thank you for the link!

The last 10 years of downtown growth in Vancouver has been impressive. Having incredible public transit certainly does help! <---And Halifax needs to take note of this.

I've noticed that while politicians in the HRM occasionally compare the city to other municipalities in Atlantic Canada, actual people living in Halifax frequently compare the city to Canada's larger urban centres.

"Halifax has the best public transit in Atlantic Canada" doesn't mean jack to a lot of Halifax's public transit critics.
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  #8  
Old Posted Sep 12, 2012, 4:20 PM
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"Halifax has the best public transit in Atlantic Canada" doesn't mean jack to a lot of Halifax's public transit critics.
Particularly when Halifax is multiple times larger than any of those other cities.

It would just sound silly if politicians in Vancouver said "look, we have better transit than Winnipeg!". It's also totally irrelevant.
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  #9  
Old Posted Sep 12, 2012, 5:02 PM
Nilan8888 Nilan8888 is offline
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Question: could Halifax use some of the existing infrastructure left over from old CN/VIA/WWII rail lines to implement an LRT solution?

There's a number of rail corridors in the city that aren't really used a lot anymore that could be utilized, I think. In some cases they'd have to build some tunnels and bridges, but I should think it could be done if the political will is present.

Some people local to Halifax should really start up a petition to get an LRT or some other commuter rail in place. It would be a superior solution to high-speed ferries (and they could always implement that too, someday).
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