Walking around our new neighbourhood today we thought once more about the wasteful way Edmonton has been built over many years. Edmonton has the second largest urban sprawl in North America which is obviously due to large residential lots, one-storey houses (bungalows), wide streets and roads as well as back alleys, and of course malls with lots of big box stores and huge parking lots.
Back alleys seem a convenient thing for the city to pick up garbage and residents to park their vehicles instead of using the already spacious street in front of their houses but they sometimes more resemble a landfill, depending on the neighbourhood. I'd love to see Edmonton shrink in a computer simulation that cuts out all those back alleys - must make a huge difference. In my opinion it's a lot of public land that's being used poorly and that keeps neighbours separate. With everyone going out the back door where the car's parked the front streets tend to look deserted and if you were lost you'd have trouble asking for directions ... maybe that's why everybody has a GPS here.
In the newer suburbs city planners learned from the past - there are no more back alleys. Instead there are often walkways now, especially when the neighbourhood borders one of the many ravines in town. But the streets are not logical any more. There are crescents, dead-ends, curves and bends, a far cry from the simply grid system that once started off the city. I guess they try to prevent through-traffic but in the end they get people lost, driving around searching, wasting gas in the meantime.
Urban sprawl is fine when it's for the sake of parks. I, and hopefully nobody else, would ever complain about the river valley being park land instead of residential lots because the river valley is for Edmontonians the biggest recreational space. We just moved away from it but come summer I know I will miss it. Get the bikes out, honey!
I know we chose to live close to a mall for the convenience of shopping with baby by foot. From our new home I have to walk further but we can't see the mall which is very nice. The layout of malls always bothers me, not much space for pedestrians but instead car drivers can stop right outside the shop they are aiming for. Worst of all, there might even be a drive-through to the shop. When I first came to Edmonton I noticed drive-thrus that until then I had no idea they existed, a drive-through for ATMs and pharmacies for example. Excuse my language but for me that's for lazy fat-asses. Your car is not your home, get out of it once in a while.
A Bylaw in Edmonton requires parking space for any facility. Right next to the apartment buildings in Terrace Heights where we used to live is a little park. The South East Edmonton Community League Association would like to build a Skateboard park there. Great idea. But the fact that they have to put a parking lot in where there is terrible road access already kind of screws up the layout. When they had an Open House on the proposed park we let the city know it's a stupid idea. There's lots of parking space already due to shops, more shops and a mall across the road. For the proposal SECLA was not required to have a bus stop, a bike lane or a pedestrian walkway included in the project. Since the skating area will be incorporated in a park with new trees and benches the architect put a walkway in but that's about it. A fine example showing how stiff some of Edmonton's regulations are, harming progress more than helping it.
No comments:
Post a Comment