In this analyis, I downloaded building permits data from Edmonton Open Data Portal from 2009 to 2022. The data includes information about building permit approvals, which includes demolition approvals. I cleaned, correlated and summarized that. Here I present my key finding in a visual form.
Source
Building Permits by Square Footage
The analysis indicate that there is trend of increasing rate of approval for building permits by square footage. Note the blue dotted line in the graph below. Year 2020 had exceptionally high rate of approvals by square footage mostly due to approval of certain large projects.
Permits Approved by Units
The analysis indicate that there is trend of increasing rate of approval for building permits by units. Note the black dotted line in the graph below. Note that there was an year-over-year increase in permits approved per year from 2009 to 2015. This was interrupted in 2016, possibly due to the oil price decline and subsequent recession in Alberta’s economy.
Demolition Permits
The analysis demonstrates that demolition permits approvals were reduced since 2019. I chose to use a polynominal rather than linear trend as it appears to best describe the data. It is not possible to deduce the cause of increase or reduction in approval of demolition permits from this data.
Conclusion
For this analyis, I studied building permits data for Edmonton. My findings show permit approval by square footage and units. It also show permit approvals for demolition. Approvals by square footage appears be rising over time. Approvals by units appears to have been impacted by Alberta’s recession. Approval for demolition permits appears to have declined since 2019 but it is not possible to explain this trend with the available data.