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It's interesting that Montana managed a big change without going past a doubling of occupancy per lot. The thing that has Calgarians Up in Fear is the notion of four families per lot - and all their cars.

But Calgary and Edmonton are already partially urbanized, as touted in this video by Montreal urbanist activists:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qpBVEfO5IwI

I noticed it myself from all the infilling in Calgary. This is a graphic from my GIS of the water system. There's a dot for every new water service installed this century. So the outer-ring of the city is solid blue ring of SFD new water services in the new subdivisions, with a few red dots for duplexes.

...and also, in the centre of town, a couple of thousand new dots that are all infills, since very few people ever have to put in a few water service because the old one wore out. We require every new build to put in new pipes, so it's a cute way to map the new construction in old areas. Calgary, you can see, has been aggressively infilling for 25 years and more, doubling the population of older streets.

http://brander.ca/CalgaryC21.png

...and that may be enough, if it was for Montana.

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I don't pretend to be a particularly well-versed urbanist (my partner, who works in public transit tech and is always showing me Youtube videos from channels like, up, Oh The Urbanity, is the real urban wonk.) But strikes me that you're going to see some particular local flavor of how this actually shakes out.

Like, do we really imagine that Montana is going to be row-after-row of fourplexes? No, probably not. Subdivisions of nice duplexes seems like a perfectly good compromise, there.

I think places like Calgary will prefer a gentler density, but with super-dense blocks around the C-Train. That works just fine, too!

Fact is, we'll never abolish single-family homes — nor should we. The little blue ring in your map (which is very cool) should always be an option for people. But figuring out that infill — and, later, infilling those suburban subdivisions, as the city grows — is going to be the key piece.

Anyway, who knows what this looks like 10 years from now. But I feel like it's going to be exciting.

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Just a quick correction—the Liberals had the Housing Accelerator in their last campaign document, but it spent some 18 months in regulatory hell at the CMHC before it was ready to be rolled out, at which point Poilievre had won his leadership and had come out with his plan to withhold transfers. It looked like the Housing Accelerator was in response to Poilievre, but had been in the works for long beforehand.

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Eh, I think we can say with relative confidence that Ottawa actually moving on it was in response to Poilievre's rise.

Sure, it was in their platform — as was a lot of stuff they never moved on. It sat there for two years, despite being a painfully simple funding tool, and only got leverages after the Conservatives made their pitch.

I think we can also say that the language hardened, from the platform to the budget, in line with what the Conservatives promised.

Anyway, it's not even a dig. It's a good thing!

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+1 "They only did it because people really liked it when the other guy did it." GOOD! That's how democracy is supposed to work!

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Excellent article. I really appreciate the international context and research. Adequate, affordable housing is a complex issue and given the various responsibilities of every level of government - and the various industries & issues involved - this is really only solved through a collaborative effort, and not just governments. Canada can also learn from other countries - as they are.

Another interesting outcome of this housing shortage is a growing interest in improving design & construction productivity through taking a manufacturing approach and an increased use of technology by re-thinking how we design & build. This approach has been in experimental stages for a couple of decades - globally - but is now maturing into a better way to build.

This housing shortage is also revealing a convoluted, linear zoning & permitting approval process. Policy that has only ever been tweaked rather than revised to be more efficient. This lends itself to an opportunity - especially with the use of technology to improve government productivity as well.

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I can't decide whether we're seeing housing as an area with genuine overcoming of polarization or as something serious enough to un-stick things and allow more consolidation to oppose against MAGA/right-populism, but it's definitely welcome. (Just please don't ask me about what will happen to our mortgage if Canada really and truly fixes this.)

And two flags:

"The trends continued into 20222."

"And yet those solutions proved unpopular and political impractical."

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The problem with the plans of Trudeau (bribery) and Poilievre (enacting a law) is that the federal government is encroaching on Provincial and municipal responsibility. One of the take away I have from your article is that the places where this activism has been successful has been at the lower levels of government.

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Yeah, obviously, there's a whole jurisdictional can of worms, here. But Canada is not the only place to take a broader approach, here. Montana, e.g., up-zoned at the state level — as have some other states. Ditto for New Zealand.

Frankly, I think a high-level is the only place where you can do this work. Municipalities are behold to the people who already live there — there's no good political reason to consider hypothetical future residents.

This reality was reflected in post-WWII, when Ottawa embarked on a pretty aggressive plan to use the CMHC to build homes for veterans, under a rent-to-own scheme. It was probably not the purview of the federal government, but I don't think people really cared. Jurisdictional squabbles are secondary for most people, I think.

But you're quite right that this is local activism bubbling up.

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