Updates to Volume 3 (Drainage) and Volume 4 (Water) of the City of Edmonton Design and Construction Standards

Over the past year the EPCOR, the City of Edmonton, IDEA and other industry groups have been participating in working groups tasked with updating the City of Edmonton Design and Construction Standards to align with the zones in the new zoning bylaw. IDEA would like to thank IDEA board members, Jason Cunha and Joshua Schmaltz for their involvement in this initiative. Addenda to the standards have been published to the epcor.com website (January 2, 2024) to reflect updates to Volume 3 (Drainage) and Volume 4 (Water). Please refer to the addenda at the links below:

City of Edmonton Design and Construction Standards Volume 3 – Drainage



City of Edmonton Design and Construction Standards Volume 4 - Water


These updates are the product of work between EPCOR, the development industry and the City of Edmonton. Throughout 2023, EPCOR hosted a series of consultation sessions and technical working groups with our industry partners. These engagement sessions included industry associations, consulting firms, industry business leaders and City of Edmonton planners, Fire Rescue Services, and climate adaptation professionals. The sessions focused on how best to modernize the design standards and approval processes for water consumption and sewer generation, fire flow requirements, stormwater, and green infrastructure implementation.
Through these consultation efforts, it was identified that a two-pronged approach would best meet the diverse needs of the development community. The first approach was an update of the design standards based on the new zones, recognizing that this would still be conservative, but could be updated to reflect modern water conservation and building materials, and on-site stormwater management opportunities. This approach supports developers that want to move quickly through the approval process and reduce engineering design costs.

The second approach is a new process where the developer can engage with EPCOR earlier in their planning and work collaboratively through the design assumptions for the specific requirements of the development they are proposing. This process can, for example, include discussions on where best to orient buildings with higher water consumption or higher fire flow requirements to maximize the use of existing capacity for infill developments, or reduce pipe requirements in greenfield developments.

For developments that wish to pursue the second collaborative approach to planning water and drainage infrastructure, please reach out to boundaryconditions@epcor.com early in the development process. Green infrastructure, planning for high water consuming industries,

Moving Forward

These addenda are to be followed for planning all NEW developments and associated hydraulic network analyses, neighbourhood design reports, and other water infrastructure planning instruments.

For inquiries related to how these addenda may affect EXISTING area and neighbourhood level planning, please contact One Water Planning at boundaryconditions@epcor.com. In cases where updates to plans are required, EPCOR will work with the developer to reduce the amount of additional analysis. This is especially important in cases where a lift station, pump station,booster station or reservoir is planned.

Keep an eye on IDEA’s website for more infrastructure resources from EPCOR to support your 2024 development projects!

Establishing a Consistent Criteria for Quality Infill

While some would contend that no infill is good infill, we must be realistic and recognize that no city is perfect and no neighbourhood is perfect.  Infill is an opportunity for improvement.

Here are some criteria that IDEA believes will enable an infill project to improve a neighbourhood:
 

Densification

Densification is the process of adding more units to a property.  This can mean housing units, and commercial and retail spaces.  Replacing an existing older home with one new home is not densification. 

Diversity Enhancing

The project allows people to live in the neighbourhood who previously couldn’t, and for people to stay in their neighbourhood as their housing needs change.  For example:

  • Homes that are affordable for young families and new immigrants

  • Secondary suites and other rental units

  • Seniors housing that allows people to stay close to their friends and neighbours and everything they have become familiar with

  • Barrier-free housing that welcomes people with diverse mobility needs

Our neighbourhoods should reflect the rich diversity of our city.
 

Durable

The project is constructed of high quality, long lasting materials, inside and out.
 

Energy Efficient

As a result of advances in building science, improved quality of construction materials, and stricter building code requirements, new houses are more energy efficient than most of the original housing stock in mature neighbourhoods.  Net Zero Energy, PassivHaus, and other highly energy efficient projects should be encouraged.
 

Pedestrian Friendly

Many of Edmonton’s mid-century neighbourhoods were designed to be car-centric. There was little consideration for the impact of urban design on our health, our energy use, and our relationships with our neighbours.  In the intervening years we have learned that moving our houses closer to the street creates opportunities for neighbours to get to know each other and to watch out for each other.  It makes our neighbourhoods more vibrant and interesting and encourages people to walk through them.  
 

Enhanced Streetscapes

Mature trees add significant value to our mature areas, and should be preserved where possible and replaced by new trees when not.  Care should be taken to ensure that the front yard and front façade of the house improve the quality of the public space it faces.  For healthy neighbourhoods, public streetscapes must be attractive to pedestrians and enhance neighbourly relationships.

According to Vitruvius, an architect of the first century BC, a building must exhibit the three qualities of solidity, usefulness and beauty.  If our infill projects can follow these principles our mature neighbourhoods will necessarily be improved.

IDEA supports municipal budget approach to reduce subsidy on suburban growth 

Mayor Don Iveson presented his five point approach for the municipal budget on Tuesday, Sept. 11, 2018. He stated, "analysis shows that suburban growth has been significantly subsidized by existing tax payers and #yeg businesses. It's time to reset our approach to paying for this growth". The Infill Development in Edmonton Association (IDEA) strongly supports this approach to the budget, particularly rolling back the subsidy on suburban growth, and protecting the investments made in the city's core infrastructure. 

"At IDEA, we work to drive change toward people-centred communities. Our mission aligns with the Mayor's new vision that promotes sustainable growth. And part of the answer to sustainability is infill and redevelopment activities." says Mariah Samji, Executive Director of IDEA. 

 

"Infill is not just about developing on land in mature neighborhoods, it is also about promoting an integrated approach to transportation, infrastructure, community design and land use zoning. Infill helps to build a city that is livable, sustainable and affordable for all of us today and generations to come."

The Missing Middle: Your Guide to Identifying an Emerging Housing Type


You may have heard the phrase missing middle, but what, exactly, is it? 

The phrase ‘missing middle’ refers to multi-unit housing forms like duplexes, triplexes, row housing, and low-rise apartments – bridging the gap between small scale single-family homes and larger scale apartment buildings. Coined by architect and urban planner Daniel Parolek (Principal and Founder of Opticos Design Inc.), missing middle Housing was once common (think pre-World War II), but has more or less vanished over the last 60 to70 years, giving way to single detached houses and soaring apartment towers. 

Driven by consumer demand, small-scale multi-unit housing is coming back into vogue. This type of infill housing has the ability to blend relatively seamlessly into a typical mature neighbourhood, it offers a bit more affordability than a typical house, and it often boasts nearby shopping and transit, amenities that appeal to millennials and downsizing baby boomers alike.

How to Identify Missing Middle Housing

Still relatively rare, it helps to have a guide in hand to help you spot this emerging housing form.

  • It’s usually within walking distance to various amenities and services, and tends to have less on-site parking than a typical house.

  • It typically offers a small to medium-sized living area. Missing middle residents are often trading square footage for good design and a convenient location.
    - It adds housing options, but remains unobtrusive in existing neighbourhoods.

  • It tends to sell at a lower price point than single detached housing in the same area, since unit sizes are smaller.


What Makes Missing Middle Housing so Great, Anyway?

  • *Since most infill housing is situated within mature communities that are close to commercial destinations and various amenities, opportunities to use alternate transportation such as walking, cycling, or transit are more easily available. This helps reduce overall emissions within the city.

  • *Infill also encourages better utilization of existing infrastructure and services, so that city spending can be focused more on maintenance and/or upgrading costs as needed (vs continuously building new infrastructure as the city continues to expand outward).

  • *Another advantage is an increase in housing options. Whether you’re looking to upgrade, or downsize, missing middle housing provides options to stay within a neighbourhood that you love while choosing a home that best suits your needs and budget.

  • *Local businesses and community services can be sustained through increased density and usage (for example coffee shops, grocery stores, schools, recreation facilities, etc.)

The missing middle is an key form of infill. IDEA recognizes that the missing middle will help shape Edmonton into a collection of dynamic neighbourhoods. As our city grows infill will play a greater role in the redevelopment and overall sustainability of our city. We are excited to see Edmonton evolve as the missing middle takes shape. IDEA is working actively with administration and Council to promote the missing middle in Edmonton.

Canadian Urban Transit Association: Housing Report

Back in July, IDEA had the opportunity to engage with the Canadian Urban Transit Association to provide feedback on the role public transit and transit-oriented development sites play in addressing Canada's housing crisis. The result of that engagement can be found in CUTA's recently published report, "Housing is on the Line: How Public Transit Can Tackle Canada’s Housing Crisis."

This report provides 17 recommendations across five policy pillars, aiming to better integrate public transit and housing supply. In total, CUTA gathered insights through seven in-person engagements across the country and online sessions, involving 200 participants from government, development, and stakeholders. An advisory committee provided valuable feedback, and the recommendations were reviewed by Infrastructure Canada and the Canadian Mortgage and Housing Corporation.

Key recommendations included activating land around transit stations, evolving transit authorities' mandates for housing development, ensuring inclusivity, streamlining approval processes for Transit-Oriented Developments (TOD), and maximizing investments through regional collaboration.

Read the full report here and check out the video linked below released by CUTA to complement the technical report. In it, CUTA covers the five policy themes on the intersection of housing policy and transit with examples from several cities across Canada.

Infill Development and the Distribution of Open Space in Melbourne

Melbourne’s open space system spans property boundaries over public and private lands, and provides key social and ecological services. With significant population growth predicted over the next 50 years, high levels of infill housing will be required. Increasing house sizes and infill development practices are directly modifying the quantity and quality of private open space in inner and middle belt suburbs. The distribution of public open space in Melbourne is uneven, with most inner municipalities, and 6 of 13 middle municipalities, having a shortage of public open space per capita. 

The changing political economy of the compact city and higher density urban renewal in Sydney

The evolution of higher density renewal policy in New South Wales might be described as at first reactive, then passive, and then vigorously proactive. While both Labor and Coalition governments have advocated urban renewal, the methods and mechanisms employed to bring this about have been different. The end result is that the overall policy remains messy and opportunistic, as well as systemic and complex. In order to understand this complexity, it helps to begin with a brief overview of the policy’s historical roots, before turning to examine recent developments in more detail. 

An Urban Development Case Study of Hammarby Sjöstad in Sweden, Stockholm

This case study is a part of China Development Bank Capital’s Green and Smart Urban Development Guidelines. The study is framed around the 12 Green Guidelines, hereafter referred to as the “Green Guidelines.” These 12 Green Guidelines define the foundational sustainability metrics that should be used to evaluate an urban development project. Our study shows that the 12 Green Guidelines are not only the foundation for sustainability, they are also key conditions for economic and social success. 

Tacoma — TacHOMEa: Infill Tools for a Happy City

Tacoma is a city of neighborhoods. These neighborhoods have distinct natural and built environment features that make them unique urban places. Each of these neighborhoods have an instrumental role to play in the collective need to accommodate future growth in the city. Current policies encourage the densification of neighborhoods to manage growth while other policies mandate the protection of the character of single-family residential areas. Some recent residential development in the city has caused backlash from community members and illustrates the difficulty of achieving the goals of density and compatibility simultaneously. The challenge ahead for the City of Tacoma is to meet the needs of its current and future residents in a way that recognizes evolving trends while still preserving the important qualities that lead to unique and cherished neighborhood character.

Nordic Urban Strengths and Challenges

An increasing population and historically unprecedented urbanisation characterise the 21st century. When resource-scarcity, climate change and growing demands for liveability are added into this mix, thinking of innovation and sustainability in the built environment becomes critical. The Nordic countries are in a strong position to address many of these challenges.

Malmö, Sweden

This case study portrait is part of a series of 20 case studies on urban green infrastructure planning and governance in European cities, undertaken in the course of the GREEN SURGE project. GREEN SURGE is a trans-national research project funded through the Eu-ropean Union’s 7th Framework Programme. GREEN SURGE is an acronym for “Green In-frastructure and Urban Biodiversity for Sustainable Urban Development and the Green Economy”. The project is identifying, developing and testing ways of connecting green spaces, biodiversity, people and the green economy, in order to meet the major urban challenges related to, e.g., climate change adaptation, demographic changes, human health and well-being. 

The State of Asian and Pacific Cities 2015

This report on the state of Asian and Pacific cities is the second in the series first published by UN-Habitat (the United Nations Human Settlements Programme) and ESCAP (the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific) in 2010 then 2011. Building on the findings and baseline data provided in the 2010 report, and in capturing both rapid change and new policy opportunities, The State of Asian and Pacific Cities 2015 seeks to further contribute to policy-relevant literature on the region’s urban change. Specifically, as reflected in its subtitle, the report highlights growing gaps between current urbanisation patterns and what is needed to shift to a more inclusive and sustainable urban future, in which the role of the region’s cities is unquestionably tied to national, regional and global development prospects.

Redefinition of Territorial Scales and Spatial Planning in Denmark

 Spatial planning in Denmark has been exposed to important reorientations over the course of the past two decades. The comprehensive character associated with plans and policies and at different administrative levels has notably shifted after the implementation of a structural reform that changed the country’s geopolitical subdivisions since 2007. Based on the principle of framework control, comprehensive spatial planning was based on the idea of achieving a high degree of cohesiveness and synchronisation amongst policy instruments and institutions across different levels of planning administration. Amongst the many implications of such reform, however, the county (regional) and metropolitan levels of planning administration were repealed and their physical (land-use) planning functions and responsibilities re-scaled to municipal and national levels, respectively.

Denver — Infill and Redevelopment

In Colorado, local governments are authorized by state statutes to adopt comprehensive plans outlining goals, strategies, and policies related to local land use, among other topics. Although comprehensive plans are policy documents and are not regulatory, they do provide appointed and elected officials with a basis for decision-making. Most comprehensive plans include a future land use map coupled with a narrative section describing potential growth scenarios and desirable uses in the community throughout the life of the plan. Local comprehensive plans frequently address infill and redevelopment as a major topic and identify areas where infill is most desirable. These plans are not always aligned with local market conditions or supply and demand, or local zoning regulations, leading to difficult decisions by elected officials. Because rezoning for higher development intensities typically associated with infill and redevelopment can be challenging, clearly identifying the community’s desired direction in the comprehensive plan is an essential precursor. 

Intensifying Melbourne: Transit-Oriented Urban Design for Resilient Urban Futures

Australian cities are some of the lowest density and most car-dependent on the planet: intensified urban development and improved public transport to meet the imperatives of population growth and a low-carbon future is a major challenge. Despite decades of compact city policy there has been little change to the practice of ever-expanding suburban fringe development and freeway building that entrenches and exacerbates car-dependency. One of the major blockages to transformational change has been a lack of design vision that can capture the public imagination for more sustainable urban futures. In 2010 we commenced an ARC Linkage research project called 'Intensifying Places: Transit-Oriented Urban Design for Resilient Australian Cities'. This project seeks to analyse the potentials for Australian cities through developing visions for transit-oriented futures that can achieve broad community acceptance in a democratic framework.

Melbourne — A Reality Check: Metropolitan Plans, Progress and Prospects

Despite the frequent production of metropolitan strategies in recent years, there has been little examination of how successful they have been in guiding urban growth and change. This is curious considering there are many common features among these plans in pursuing the orthodoxy of the compact city. An examination of the available evidence on the progress and performance of the plans indicates some messy, inefficient, partial and uneven headway. The response of governments to these signals is to make another long-range plan, although a change of government is also a reason for doing this.

One reason for this disjunction is suggested to be the gap between planning proposals and the reality and dynamics of urban development identified when the first of these plans was produced in Melbourne. There is growing recognition of this gap and the need to bridge it. The paper ends by suggesting a couple of current initiatives that could help to do so. Integrating urban research and planning practice may lead to a change in the metropolitan planning process itself and in the nature of the plans.

Vancouver — Appendix J: West End RM Design Guidelines for Infill Housing

The wider laneways that are typical of the West End present a unique opportunity to develop ground-oriented family housing that will increase the diversity and availability of rental homes in the community while still maintaining integral right of way and utility functions. 

In line with the West End Community Plan, infill development will be encouraged on suitable sites to deliver residential buildings on the lanes. The process of infilling existing under-utilized frontages to the lane with additional buildings requires sensitive and creative design, with a focus not only on creating neighbourly relationships with adjacent development but also on the manner in which lanes are treated and their resultant public realm character. It is important that lanes are treated properly based on their intended role within the neighbourhood’s public realm as smaller and more intimate in scale pedestrian routes with less traffic, while at the same time ensuring that they still support the necessary service functions.

Saskatoon — Neighbourhood Level Infill Development Strategy

The Neighbourhood Level Infill Development Strategy addresses infill development for individual residential lots in established neighbourhoods throughout the City of Saskatoon, including the Pre- and Post-War Neighbourhoods identified in Section 1.1.5 Study Area.

The study recommends design qualities, guidelines and regulations to ensure new infill development complements the character of established neighbourhoods. Consideration is given to development standards such as height, massing, setbacks and site coverage; parking provisions; architectural guidelines; site servicing; and design guidelines specific to garage and garden suites.