It’s no secret that Kelowna’s real estate sector is booming, but even people from other provinces are starting to notice it.
An Ontario environmental engineer who has focused for years on visualizing expansion rates in various Canadian cities took particular note of Kelowna.
When Eric MacMillan was studying the city, he said Kelowna seemed to jump out of nowhere.
“I’ve been to a Kelowna area of an online development forum and I’ve seen all of these developments. And I just thought, “Wow, this little town in the Okanagan is just crazy about its density.”
Given that Canada appears to be a real estate hotspot right now, MacMillan wanted to see what this looks like in terms of developments, starting with the city of Mississauga. During his studies he became interested in 3D modeling. He uses this technique to visualize these changes.
Since his first model of Mississauga, he’s made renderings of what Halifax, Ottawa, Barrie, Niagara Falls, Hamilton, London, Windsor, Saskatoon, and Kelowna will look like in about ten years.
His models focus on how the housing boom is affecting smaller cities.
When MacMillan studied Kelowna, he learned that growing up makes more sense than being outside.
“I’ve seen that it makes more sense to grow up than to expand like in other cities. You just have so limited land out there, ”he said.
MacMillan said while undergoing approved developments in Kelowna, his rendering should not be viewed as a completely accurate picture of the future city skyline.
James Moore is the city’s long-term policy planning manager, and he said MacMillan’s model is a reasonable expectation of what the city will be like in about ten years.
“It’s never entirely certain or absolutely clear, and we’re not always sure whether (the skyline) will look like it does on the model,” said Moore.
“This is a reasonable guess, but Kelowna is actually growing mostly on the conservative side.”
Moore said that while MacMillan rendered mostly approved websites, some of these developments actually fail and may not be built. He added that the changes shown in MacMillan’s rendering actually take time to unfold, even if it looks like there’s a lot of building going on.
“Of course we expect Kelowna to grow up more than it does outside in the next 20 years,” he said.
“But this is a great tool for getting people excited about how the city looks.”
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Twila Amato
Video journalist, Black Press Okanagan
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