The new executive director for the Infill Development in Edmonton Association (IDEA) says he already sees a city policy that could be changed to get more housing built — and it's a waste bylaw.
"The new waste bylaw is making it really complicated for infill developers because it's requiring pretty considerable portions of the lot to be used reserved for bins," Sean Sedgwick, who took over at IDEA in August, told Taproot. "In the past, eight-unit row houses, for example, used to be able to share (waste) carts. That's not going to be allowed anymore. It's going to mean that developers who might have had a garage, or might have had parking, or might have had another bedroom — basically a part of the lot that was leasable area — are now going to have to reserve that for waste."
Sedgwick said the waste services bylaw, enacted in 2023, creates barriers for new multifamily buildings. He said it has forced developers to redesign projects that the city would have approved in the past, and that some developments have lost their financial viability.
Sedgwick is the sole employee at IDEA, a developer-supported organization founded in 2017 that advocates for high-quality infill development. He replaces Mariah Samji, who left the post for an opportunity to move to London, U.K. IDEA was founded by Tegan Martin-Drysdale, who recently launched the Homestead Investment Cooperative and discussed Edmonton's need to promote itself. Today, IDEA has 190 members and 40 volunteers, and has hosted more than 20 in-person events.
Sedgwick said IDEA's advocacy to the city has paid off in the past. The organization successfully lobbied for lot splitting and removing parking minimums, among other things.
"Now when you're building a new building in Edmonton, you don't have to have a (minimum) number of parking spots, which amazingly is something that is the case in most cities — even if whoever doesn't want to build parking, they have to as part of the zoning bylaw," he said.
Sedgwick said he plans to draw on his experience in urban development and psychology at IDEA. He received his master's degree in science (urban and regional planning) from the University of Alberta in 2023, after receiving a bachelor's degree in psychology. He said the two disciplines are not as disparate as they may seem when thinking of housing.
"I think that my psychology background has made me way better at understanding people's behaviour when it comes to planning," he said. For example, he said that he has an idea why people who live in mature neighbourhoods don't always welcome infill development. "The idea of loss aversion (illustrates) how people don't behave rationally in the way that, in an economic model, you might expect. One of the biggest things with loss aversion is that they've found pretty reliably that people are more afraid of losing something they have and understand than they are (open to considering) what they might gain."
Sean Sedgwick, the new executive director of Infill Development in Edmonton Association, is aiming to reduce hurdles that can limit missing-middle housing. (Colin Gallant)
Sedgwick said he understands that people love their neighbourhoods and that change is scary. But he said he hopes to illustrate that change doesn't have to be drastic.
Like many in the infill world, he's passionate about medium-density housing, or what many call the missing middle.
"In North America, we skipped a whole kind of development," Sedgwick said. "I mean, it's literally called the missing middle because in North America there's so little of it."
A current barrier that Sedgwick sees as potentially limiting missing-middle housing in Edmonton is the eligibility criteria for the city's $39-million Infill Infrastructure Fund that's part of the Housing Accelerator Fund. The fund offers up to $4 million per project for eligible, off-site infrastructure costs, but developments must have at least 10 units. Sedgwick said eight-unit developments are one of the most common forms of missing-middle housing.
Sedgwick first locked into his passion for the missing middle and urbanism during his undergrad degree. But, he also remembers seeing room for improvement in the public realm. He lived in several rural Albertan communities growing up and did not drive as a teen. Sedgwick credits this background with identifying ways to improve life in municipalities. In St. Albert, the most cosmopolitan place he lived before coming to Edmonton for university, he used a bus stop that had a single slab of concrete in front of it, but no sidewalk access.
"They knew there was a desire path where people trekked through the grass, and the grass was all dead," he said. "They knew that people were using transit there. They knew people stopped there, but yeah, no sidewalk. I just ran into experiences like that one constantly and it made me interested in urban design."
For more of what IDEA has been up to lately, check out the Aug. 1 episode of the organization's In Development podcast. It features urban planners Chelsea Whitty and Jordan Riemer on transforming Edmonton's urban landscape.