Building More Does Not Have to Mean Damaging More
There is a story people tell about small towns that grow.
It goes like this: the town is charming, quiet, a good place to raise a family. Then development arrives. Houses go up. Roads get busier. The character changes. And the people who loved it the way it was feel like they lost something.
Sometimes that story is true. But it does not have to be.
Strathmore, Alberta is in the middle of a growth story right now — and it is doing something interesting. It is growing without becoming the thing people were afraid it would become.
What growth looks like when it is done thoughtfully
Walk around Lakewood and you will notice something. The community was not designed around the car. It was designed around the water — the ponds, the pathways, the green space that runs through the neighbourhood and connects to a 24-kilometre trail network. The recreational lake is under construction. The wetlands and natural areas were not cleared to make more room for houses. They were made part of what makes the neighbourhood worth living in.
That is a choice. It costs more to plan a community that way. It is easier and cheaper to clear a field, put in roads on a grid, and sell lots. Many developers do exactly that.
The ones who plan it differently are making a bet — that the community they build will hold its value precisely because of the things they chose to keep.
Industry is arriving with the same thinking
Three major investments have been announced in the Strathmore and Wheatland County area in recent years:
Phyto Organix Foods is building a $225 million facility to process plant-based protein. That is not a coincidence. Companies that work with plant-based food production tend to be thinking about sustainability from the ground up. They chose Strathmore.
DeHavilland Aircraft Canada announced their new manufacturing facility south of Strathmore — with 1,500 anticipated new jobs. CGC is building a $210 million wallboard plant nearby.
These are not small bets on a small town. They are significant companies choosing a specific place for specific reasons. Part of that reason is the infrastructure, the land, and the community that already exists there.
When industry arrives with this kind of investment, it brings jobs. And jobs bring families. And families need homes.
The homes we build in those communities matter
Here is where it connects.
A town can plan its green spaces beautifully and then fill it with homes that leak heat, run inefficient furnaces, and cost owners more to operate every month than they need to. That would be a contradiction — a sustainable community with unsustainable homes.
The way a home is built has a real environmental footprint. The insulation standard, the furnace efficiency, the mechanical systems — these are not marketing words. They are decisions that affect how much energy a house consumes for the entire time someone lives in it.
At Livinfuture, we build every home with a 96% high-efficiency furnace and an Active Heat Recovery Ventilator. The HRV recovers heat from outgoing air and uses it to warm the incoming air — which in an Alberta winter is a significant energy saving every single day. We make these choices because they are right, not because they appear on a feature sheet.
The real argument
Sustainability and development are not opposites. They are compatible when the people doing the developing actually think about what they are building — not just for the sale, but for the family that will live in it for the next twenty years.
Strathmore is a good example of a town growing in a way that makes it better, not just bigger. The ponds stay. The pathways expand. The green space is integrated, not leftover. And the homes being built there — the ones built properly — reduce their mark on the land rather than adding to it unnecessarily.
That is what smart development looks like. It is possible. It is just not the default.