[archited]

^ UCP and their funding mandates for primary and secondary schools.

 

[wormwood]

Granted that the chances of reversing the decision on the Spruce Avenue school seems slim—who actually controls these decisions that we can complain to? Even if this one's as good as gone, we can still try to put on pressure to preserve the rest.

Write to city council and Knack. Write to the minister of education. May fall on deaf ears, but its always worth trying.

 

[archited]

We should start a club called 'The Grand Write-in Petitioners' with our own website and Youtube channel. It would help turn up the volume on items important to the City of Edmonton.
Those who are interested in joining sign up here

 

[JNO1]

Granted that the chances of reversing the decision on the Spruce Avenue school seems slim—who actually controls these decisions that we can complain to? Even if this one's as good as gone, we can still try to put on pressure to preserve the rest.

The Spruce Avenue School Replacement Project page on the EPSB website has a contact email and phone # at the bottom. I sent a rather harshly worded email to that address last week and am going to call the number next week to hopefully try and chat with an actual human being about this. As you said, slim chances of reversing the inane decision but there is zero chance if those of us who actually give a $#!t about this kind of stuff don't try. Expanding on what @archited said above, maybe we could start some sort of campaign to save and repurpose this little gem via issuing some sort of RFP. Similar to the old RAM (fingers crossed). Dare to dream!!!!

 

[constance_chlore]

The engineering podcast Well There's Your Problem has a wonderful episode on everything wrong with five-over-ones that look like this:

(would start around 1:21:00 if you want to skip the background)

 

[policyenthusiast]

Spruce Avenue School, which is slated for demolition, is on the National Trust for Canada's 2025 Endangered Places List.

Would be a shame to lose this building. It's half the character of this neighborhood, that and the house with all of the ugly tree bark on the outside.

 

[wormwood]

We should start a club called 'The Grand Write-in Petitioners' with our own website and Youtube channel. It would help turn up the volume on items important to the City of Edmonton.
Those who are interested in joining sign up here

Anne Stevensons office requested that I also advocate for the school with the school board trustee and MLA.

 

[johnnyboy]

Frank Gehry, legendary architect of some of world’s most iconic buildings, dies at 96​

https://archive.ph/lgBHD

 

[archited]

Here's a guy who saw his major career projects start later in life; he'll certainly be missed.

 

[constance_chlore]

This post from Brian Potter of Construction Physics argues that prefab housing hasn't meaningfully reduced single-family home prices in Sweden. Along the way we find this chart, which seems to show that as of 2008 construction labor productivity growth in Canada was lagging other countries a bit:

 

[constance_chlore]

A new working paper from prominent urban economists argues that distinctive architecture sells at a 15% premium and generates a positive spillover effect where nearby buildings sell at a 9% premium. However, they're 25% more expensive to build, so builders don't currently recoup the additional costs. The problem is that much of the benefit of distinctive buildings accrues to the neighbors, not the developer. The authors suggest that governments consider providing subsidies for distinctive architecture. (I take it that 'distinctive' is chosen over 'good' here just because good is more subjective and harder to quantify.)

 

[kcantor]

Architect Liu Thai Ker, Singapore’s first master planner, dies at 87

Dr. Liu Thai Ker, Singapore's first master planner and a key figure in shaping its modern landscape, has died at 87. Read more at straitstimes.com. Read more at straitstimes.com.

www.straitstimes.com

 

[policyenthusiast]

This post from Brian Potter of Construction Physics argues that prefab housing hasn't meaningfully reduced single-family home prices in Sweden. Along the way we find this chart, which seems to show that as of 2008 construction labor productivity growth in Canada was lagging other countries a bit:

View attachment 709579

Say the critique of this post is 100% true, and it is completely impossible for offsite fabrication to reach economies of scale. The construction methods in Sweden are still resulting in higher-quality homes built faster (the author barely mentions construction speed, which is one of the primary benefits.) There's also a broad critique of the relative construction cost difference between the U.S. and Sweden, without any consideration given to differences in building code. The envelope of a home built in Virginia would not work in northern climates like ours.

Further to that, there are a LOT of factors that do not translate in this comparison. For example, Europe has much higher international labour mobility than the U.S. does. A Polish auto worker might move to Sweden because his skills are transferable, it's reasonably close, and any lag in home sticker price increases relative to someone's location is a significant driver of immigration. We're seeing this right now, as Ontarians flood into AB.

I respect the amount of research that went into this, but it is half-baked and shouldn't be used to draw conclusions as the author has.

 

[constance_chlore]

Interesting reporting from Marina Bolotnikova in Vox on a new economics working paper. The whole thing is worth reading for the context it provides, but here are some excerpts on the paper itself:

There is empirical evidence that beauty matters for making housing abundance work, too. A recent working paper contributes to a growing body of research finding that aesthetic concerns play a meaningful role in driving public opposition to new housing. People seem to oppose buildings that break the mold of what’s surrounding them, and they are less likely — a lot less likely — to support building new homes if they think they’ll be visually distasteful. [...]

It might seem obvious that aesthetic tastes have something to do with attitudes toward new housing — “neighborhood character” is a watchword of NIMBYs everywhere, something I can witness every day in my local neighborhood Facebook group in Madison, Wisconsin. But it’s hard to rigorously show whether these aesthetic preferences are, as Elmendorf put it, “real or just covering up for some other concern that people are reluctant to state directly.” Those might be racist or classist attitudes or antipathy toward renters, who are usually presumed to be the residents of multifamily homes. [...]

In the new study (which hasn’t yet been through peer review), Elmendorf, along with co-authors David Broockman, a political scientist at UC Berkeley, and Joshua Kalla, a political scientist at Yale, set out to understand how aesthetic tastes might be shaping public views on housing development.

To get at the heart of the aesthetics question scientifically, the researchers ran large-scale survey experiments (with 5,999 participants broadly representative of the US population, including people across the political spectrum as well as homeowners and renters) where they manipulated the design of buildings and neighborhood context. The findings, they argue, suggest that aesthetic preferences are sincerely held, rather than mere pretexts, and that support for new apartments is strongly predicted by aesthetic factors in a number of different ways. “Aesthetic tastes are typically far more predictive of support for developing new apartment buildings than measures of other beliefs, attitudes, and preferences, such as beliefs about the relationship between development and prices or racial attitudes,” the authors write.

 

[BrettB]

On the face of it, that makes sense. I mean, I would say most (more than half) homeowners take pride in the way their home looks and no one wants to live in an ugly or bland neighbourhood if you can afford otherwise.