Having been home for a few days, I can say that I love my parents’ new place – I haven’t even been home for that long, but I’m already dreading going back to school! 😉

I’m liking the new house a lot, as there’s a lot more room and the layout is just less cramped – though maybe that’s just because I’ve been living in Kingston student housing for the entire summer. 😉 Location is pretty good as well, as most of the services are close enough for a bearable bus ride or just a bike ride.

The new neighbourhood is very much the definition of show-home suburbia; most of the houses in this huge neighbourhood are less than a year old, and I would’ve liked to see what this place looked like just a few months ago. With the huge housing boom (and general boom in Alberta), prices have gone through the roof, creating what some call “the myth of the rich Albertan“. I couldn’t agree more – I don’t see how many people can afford any of the new slew of show homes that have popped up in the area, and construction is still on-going, with all the amenities like strip-malls being built as well.

A quick estimate of the money involved – let’s assume 1000 new houses, at an average selling price of $300,000 – this yields $300 million of suburban real-estate going up in a very short period of time. If anyone’s benefiting the most, it must be the contractors, banks, and other related businesses.

While it’s amazing how fast this new neighbourhood is being built, with new houses, and the attendant things like roads, sewer systems and utilities, they did manage to mess up some of the road signs, resulting in this “Twlight-zone” scene.

No, that image was not doctored – I have next to no photo-editing skills. That intersection must be nightmare for parcel delivery services.