Page 12 - 05_July-Aug 2024

ED.
DON’T FENCE ME IN
Many of you wake up to the buzzing of an alarm, whether it be an end-table clock or a smartphone you place by the bed. Some of us stir when sunlight peeks through the curtains. Or maybe it’s the cheerful morning chirping
of birds.
For my family, for years now, we usually wake up to
the beeping of construction vehicles going into reverse. Sometimes, we get jackhammers. The soothing sounds of concrete being smashed. Power tools.
For the better part of two years running, with no end
in sight, our home has been surrounded by construction fencing. If you drive or walk by our home, you won’t totally besurehowtofindyourwayin.Youneedtofindagapin the fence by our neighbour’s place, pop through and then walk back towards our house — that’s how.
My family’s home sits only a few metres from where Glenora LRT station will one day welcome passengers. The running joke is that our property could be considered ground zero for the Valley Line’s western expansion.
The workers often go late into the night. The walls shake. Once, we were stirred at 2 a.m. by welders working away just a few metres from our main-floor window. The light show was fantastic, but rather unwelcome.
It’s the price of progress. And, if this project was in isolation, I would say, well, we knew what we were in for when we bought the house.
But, it’s not in isolation. Our neighbourhood has also been filled with infill projects. Two homes went up behind our place just before the LRT construction began. There were nails left on our property, there was no chance of weekend sleep-ins, and more than a few times our vehicles were blocked in when the contractor decided to use our alleyway as a staging area. Imagine opening your garage door to leave for work, and seeing a wall of pallets, with no warning from the neighbours.
And there are more projects ongoing. At the end of my street, there’s an infill project so big, it feels like it’s going to take longer than it took the Egyptians to mount a pyramid. And with LRT construction blocking one access route to our home, we only have one way out — and that, at times, has been blocked by the people working on this megahouse. A few months back, when I asked a worker on the infill project if he could move his truck so I could get to work, he walked up to my car, wrench in hand, and told me he was much bigger than me, his truck was bigger than my car, and that I could wait.
So on top of the noise and lights, we now have threats, too. Great.
Yes, it is difficult to bring transit and density to Edmonton’s aging and not-very-dense neighbourhoods. And, I hope the LRT makes our neighbourhood a better
place to live. But it will also likely bring more construction, and more infill, and my family and I are just burned out.
In this issue, we look at how modern neighbourhoods are more dense and walk- able than the one my family calls home. We also look at bike lanes and what they really mean to a growing city. And, we discuss what it takes to be a good infill neighbour — to not be the sort of homeowner who causes a ton of grief in order to build the nicest house on the street. We need to have balance, and I’ve yet to see that where I live.
Personally, I’d like to see rotating moratoriums on infill. That is, say, once out of every X number of years, infill would not be allowed in a specified neighbourhood, so the community had some time off from the hammering, the blocked lanes and the nails in their yards.
But, for now, if you’re building an infill home, knock on your new neighbours’ doors. Talk
to them before you build. Give them advance warning of when your trucks are coming in.
I’d be happy to invite all of City Council to live in my home for just one day, to see what it’s like to be in the centre of it all, 24-7.
Steven Sandor
Editor-in-Chief
12 EDify. JUNE/JULY.24
PHOTOGRAPHY BY RYAN PARKER