Happy February,
And what a month it has been for spreading the love indeed. This most romantic of months has been an incredible introduction to the next phase of our life and Anne and I are happy to share these moments with our fellow REIN members.
Ecospace Consulting, our new company, is now alive and well, and entering the planning phase of our upcoming developments, which will tie together our love for real estate with our love for the environment. It will also offer opportunities for our fellow REIN members to join with us as we revolutionize the way that humans and nature co-exist. I know it sounds like a tall order, but someone wise once told me "If you`re going to dream, dream big", so I do.
And in so doing, that brings me to this month`s big topic: Next Generation Cities.
What will the cities of the future look like?
Will they be filled with McMansions sprawled out over thousands of square kilometres under the `business as usual` suburban sprawl scenario?
Maybe.
However, this is highly unlikely. With the cost of fuel and building materials constantly rising, and people placing higher and higher demands on improving their quality of life, the odds of more people wanting to spend even more time commuting than they already do is doubtful. This means that continued sprawl with even more reliance on the automobile and the inevitable traffic it creates is almost a total non-starter (even though many of our current development commitments completely and utterly fail to address this).
In fact, after attending a recent Sustainable Calgary "Plan It Calgary" event it is more evident than ever that in our future cities (Calgary being one example of many just like it) the buzzword that will be getting more and more attention is `smart growth` and `densification`.
The planning session illustrated clearly that the automobile needs to begin taking a back seat to more environmentally benign, community based modes of transportation like walking, cycling, rapid transit, and the like. In order to achieve this, mixed-use land use planning will become the norm as urban planners strive to create more pedestrian friendly communities where one can live, work, and play all within walking distances of each other. Imagine that! I wonder if this would have a side benefit on our society`s ever expanding obesity rates, too? Hmmmm....
This might sound like a pie in the sky approach compared to the asphalt-centric `steel and wheel` conveyor belt systems of today (after all, over 90% of the fuel we buy and consume is used just to move our vehicles – not us), but most people are already in agreement that they`d rather spend more time with their families and less time with their neighbour in the car idling next to them in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
The Europeans, bless their hearts, have already shown significantly more leadership on these issues (largely out of necessity, mind you) compared to our more short sighted `energy and land is limitless` North American view of things. The following is a link to some very progressive things that a community in Germany is doing when it comes to `Smart Growth`.
http://www.vauban.de/info/abstract4.html
I highly encourage all my readers to have a look at this site to get a sense for the possibilities that are out there. It`s pretty amazing what our minds can conceive when we break free from the `business as usual` chains. It turns out we`ve been compartmentalizing our cities by way of ill-planned and short-sighted urban planning and land use choices for decades. All you have to do is look around and you`ll see evidence of this everywhere -- you just have to know what to look for.
So how will these changes create opportunities for us as eco-investors? Well, for starters, inner city properties will continue to be placed in higher and higher demand. Also, opportunities to re-zone and go for higher density will increase over time, so if you can pick up properties with solid fundamentals for today and re-zoning opportunities for tomorrow you can really leverage your long term ROI.
In addition to this, new `transit oriented communities` are likely to start popping up along rapid transit routes. In fact, we`re already seeing this in some parts of Calgary. One good example is Bridgeland. Another is the North Hill Mall area by SAIT. Condos, Seniors Housing, Medical Facilities, Professional Offices, A Post-Secondary School, and a large shopping mall all within walking distance of two LRT stops. So, if you follow REIN`s advice and buy in areas close to these future `transit oriented developments` your odds of long term success will also greatly improve.
For those of you who are bigger players, I would also encourage you to start assembling multiple properties in these areas (i.e. 4 adjacent homes on the same street within 400m of an existing (or, even better, proposed) LRT station. These future developments will typically lean towards multi-storey mixed use developments, so those investors with 100` of frontage or more assembled will create significant re-development opportunities and reap massive rewards.
In summary, many of our cities have been steadily declining as `communities` in the quest to become `megacities`. Yet sadly, if you took a random poll, you would find that what most people really want is `walkable communities with all your basic amenities covered within the social & infrastructure framework of a larger city with more robust amenities, facilities, and culture`. These next few years will be critical for determining the future of our cities. Make your voice heard by contacting your local members of parliament, alderman, and community associations. And let`s put on our eco-investor hardhats and go buy some properties so that we can be an instrumental force driving these positive changes -- and building wealth at the same time!
Until next time…
Happy Eco-Investing,
Kevin Ablett
---
Kevin Ablett is a licenced realtor in the province of Alberta with Keller Williams Realty South. He is also an eco-investor specializing in joint ventures. He manages a multi-million dollar portfolio of single family, multi-family, mixed use, and vacation properties in Calgary, Turner Valley, Innisfail, Crowsnest Pass, Panama, and Costa Rica. He is also the President of the Board of Directors for the Clean Calgary Association (www.cleancalgary.org) and the author of "Secrets of the Student Millionaires" (www.studentmillionaires.com), an online real estate investing course designed to help students avoid the pitfalls of large student loans by wisely investing in real estate at a young age. For more information on how to invest with Kevin or to send him your comments, he can be easily reached at greenrealestate(at)mac.com.
And what a month it has been for spreading the love indeed. This most romantic of months has been an incredible introduction to the next phase of our life and Anne and I are happy to share these moments with our fellow REIN members.
Ecospace Consulting, our new company, is now alive and well, and entering the planning phase of our upcoming developments, which will tie together our love for real estate with our love for the environment. It will also offer opportunities for our fellow REIN members to join with us as we revolutionize the way that humans and nature co-exist. I know it sounds like a tall order, but someone wise once told me "If you`re going to dream, dream big", so I do.
And in so doing, that brings me to this month`s big topic: Next Generation Cities.
What will the cities of the future look like?
Will they be filled with McMansions sprawled out over thousands of square kilometres under the `business as usual` suburban sprawl scenario?
Maybe.
However, this is highly unlikely. With the cost of fuel and building materials constantly rising, and people placing higher and higher demands on improving their quality of life, the odds of more people wanting to spend even more time commuting than they already do is doubtful. This means that continued sprawl with even more reliance on the automobile and the inevitable traffic it creates is almost a total non-starter (even though many of our current development commitments completely and utterly fail to address this).
In fact, after attending a recent Sustainable Calgary "Plan It Calgary" event it is more evident than ever that in our future cities (Calgary being one example of many just like it) the buzzword that will be getting more and more attention is `smart growth` and `densification`.
The planning session illustrated clearly that the automobile needs to begin taking a back seat to more environmentally benign, community based modes of transportation like walking, cycling, rapid transit, and the like. In order to achieve this, mixed-use land use planning will become the norm as urban planners strive to create more pedestrian friendly communities where one can live, work, and play all within walking distances of each other. Imagine that! I wonder if this would have a side benefit on our society`s ever expanding obesity rates, too? Hmmmm....
This might sound like a pie in the sky approach compared to the asphalt-centric `steel and wheel` conveyor belt systems of today (after all, over 90% of the fuel we buy and consume is used just to move our vehicles – not us), but most people are already in agreement that they`d rather spend more time with their families and less time with their neighbour in the car idling next to them in bumper-to-bumper traffic.
The Europeans, bless their hearts, have already shown significantly more leadership on these issues (largely out of necessity, mind you) compared to our more short sighted `energy and land is limitless` North American view of things. The following is a link to some very progressive things that a community in Germany is doing when it comes to `Smart Growth`.
http://www.vauban.de/info/abstract4.html
I highly encourage all my readers to have a look at this site to get a sense for the possibilities that are out there. It`s pretty amazing what our minds can conceive when we break free from the `business as usual` chains. It turns out we`ve been compartmentalizing our cities by way of ill-planned and short-sighted urban planning and land use choices for decades. All you have to do is look around and you`ll see evidence of this everywhere -- you just have to know what to look for.
So how will these changes create opportunities for us as eco-investors? Well, for starters, inner city properties will continue to be placed in higher and higher demand. Also, opportunities to re-zone and go for higher density will increase over time, so if you can pick up properties with solid fundamentals for today and re-zoning opportunities for tomorrow you can really leverage your long term ROI.
In addition to this, new `transit oriented communities` are likely to start popping up along rapid transit routes. In fact, we`re already seeing this in some parts of Calgary. One good example is Bridgeland. Another is the North Hill Mall area by SAIT. Condos, Seniors Housing, Medical Facilities, Professional Offices, A Post-Secondary School, and a large shopping mall all within walking distance of two LRT stops. So, if you follow REIN`s advice and buy in areas close to these future `transit oriented developments` your odds of long term success will also greatly improve.
For those of you who are bigger players, I would also encourage you to start assembling multiple properties in these areas (i.e. 4 adjacent homes on the same street within 400m of an existing (or, even better, proposed) LRT station. These future developments will typically lean towards multi-storey mixed use developments, so those investors with 100` of frontage or more assembled will create significant re-development opportunities and reap massive rewards.
In summary, many of our cities have been steadily declining as `communities` in the quest to become `megacities`. Yet sadly, if you took a random poll, you would find that what most people really want is `walkable communities with all your basic amenities covered within the social & infrastructure framework of a larger city with more robust amenities, facilities, and culture`. These next few years will be critical for determining the future of our cities. Make your voice heard by contacting your local members of parliament, alderman, and community associations. And let`s put on our eco-investor hardhats and go buy some properties so that we can be an instrumental force driving these positive changes -- and building wealth at the same time!
Until next time…
Happy Eco-Investing,
Kevin Ablett
---
Kevin Ablett is a licenced realtor in the province of Alberta with Keller Williams Realty South. He is also an eco-investor specializing in joint ventures. He manages a multi-million dollar portfolio of single family, multi-family, mixed use, and vacation properties in Calgary, Turner Valley, Innisfail, Crowsnest Pass, Panama, and Costa Rica. He is also the President of the Board of Directors for the Clean Calgary Association (www.cleancalgary.org) and the author of "Secrets of the Student Millionaires" (www.studentmillionaires.com), an online real estate investing course designed to help students avoid the pitfalls of large student loans by wisely investing in real estate at a young age. For more information on how to invest with Kevin or to send him your comments, he can be easily reached at greenrealestate(at)mac.com.
