Civic
06-20-2009, 09:21 PM
A similar question of the nature and extent of Kingston intensification will soon be considered by Kingston City Councilors as our Official Plan review process draws to a close.
A question of sprawl: Live in the past or plan for the future?
Globe and Mail June 9, 2009
jsimpson@globeandmail.com
A decision will be made in the chambers of Ottawa City Council that speaks to whether tomorrow's city will look like yesterday's. Cities across Canada make decisions like this all the time. Too many have made the wrong one, as Ottawa might do tomorrow.
At issue is urban sprawl, or the spreading suburbia of single-family housing.
Cities of yesterday planned for and encouraged sprawl. Developers liked sprawl, because they made more money on single-family dwellings. Families liked sprawl, because it provided space for kids.
Municipal councils liked sprawl, because councillors believed in letting market forces prevail and market forces (developers and consumers) wanted sprawl.
Sprawl was built around cars, ***** gasoline and the dream of affordable homeownership.
The future, however, will not be like the past. The era of ***** gas is over. What you see at the pump today is already yesterday's price, because oil, over time, will be more expensive. People and governments should prepare and plan for an era of much higher energy prices.
The future also cannot be like the past, given that automobile emissions contribute significantly to global warming. In Canada, we can (and should) do a great deal to curb "upstream" emissions from electrical generating plants, oil sands and the like, but we will never come to grips with the challenge without "downstream," consumer-led changes, starting with cars.
Every transit planner understands that sprawl is the enemy of transit, because densities are too low to provide enough riders.
Planners also know that suburbanization is financially counterproductive for cities, because the costs of sewers, roads and sidewalks are not recouped by taxes. So tax burdens fall on more central locations that, in turn, tend to crumble.
Ottawa, like other Canadian cities, has designed a new official plan with "intensification" - that is, more density - as an objective for all the reasons just cited, and others that could be added.
But when the proverbial rubber hits the road, and developers intensify their lobbying to build more single-family dwellings outside the city boundary, cities wobble.
In Ottawa, the city's own staff is suggesting the addition of 850 hectares (or about 2,150 acres) to the urban boundary largely for single-family houses - even though the rest of the plan goes on and on about "intensification." The staff is really asking for the city to go in two directions at once: sprawl at the margins; intensification in pockets elsewhere.
The argument is that the city must accommodate future population growth, some of which will need single-family homes. This is, of course, what developers want to hear. If the city believes in intensification, then let it act on its beliefs, although intensification often confronts the not-in-my-backyard opposition of community groups.
It's the dilemma faced by councillors across Canada: Do you plan for the city of tomorrow, or compromise, or yield entirely to the practices of the past.
Ottawa Council committees have approved the staff's recommendations. The whole council tackles the issue tomorrow. The signs are not encouraging that
enough councillors will vote against more sprawl, because this council, like many others across Canada, can't its their eyes from today's city to see
tomorrow's.
You could see this pattern of today trumping tomorrow in Ottawa's list of stimulus projects to the financed by the federal government. Cultural infrastructure got $17.5-million and transit received $104-million, but the sugar-daddy projects worth $192-million were roads, mostly in the suburbs.
Expanding suburban roads is the antithesis of making Ottawa (or any other Canadian city), Ontario or Canada more green or productive or competitive. But road-construction projects are "shovel ready," highly visible, politically attractive and undoubtedly popular with people who live near the roads - although bigger roads invariably attract more vehicles that, in turn, make things no better than before. Build it and they will clog it, is the golden rule of suburban roads.
The classic problem of hurried stimulus projects is that too many are undertaken to meet today's urgency of pushing money into the economy, without much care for the long-term need to build the economy of tomorrow.
It's a small decision, really, that Ottawa Council will make tomorrow, an incremental change of the kind cities make all the time. Not enough people
will see the small decision for what it is: a decision packed with much wider meaning.
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/GAM.20090609.COSIMP09ART2237/TPS
A question of sprawl: Live in the past or plan for the future?
Globe and Mail June 9, 2009
jsimpson@globeandmail.com
A decision will be made in the chambers of Ottawa City Council that speaks to whether tomorrow's city will look like yesterday's. Cities across Canada make decisions like this all the time. Too many have made the wrong one, as Ottawa might do tomorrow.
At issue is urban sprawl, or the spreading suburbia of single-family housing.
Cities of yesterday planned for and encouraged sprawl. Developers liked sprawl, because they made more money on single-family dwellings. Families liked sprawl, because it provided space for kids.
Municipal councils liked sprawl, because councillors believed in letting market forces prevail and market forces (developers and consumers) wanted sprawl.
Sprawl was built around cars, ***** gasoline and the dream of affordable homeownership.
The future, however, will not be like the past. The era of ***** gas is over. What you see at the pump today is already yesterday's price, because oil, over time, will be more expensive. People and governments should prepare and plan for an era of much higher energy prices.
The future also cannot be like the past, given that automobile emissions contribute significantly to global warming. In Canada, we can (and should) do a great deal to curb "upstream" emissions from electrical generating plants, oil sands and the like, but we will never come to grips with the challenge without "downstream," consumer-led changes, starting with cars.
Every transit planner understands that sprawl is the enemy of transit, because densities are too low to provide enough riders.
Planners also know that suburbanization is financially counterproductive for cities, because the costs of sewers, roads and sidewalks are not recouped by taxes. So tax burdens fall on more central locations that, in turn, tend to crumble.
Ottawa, like other Canadian cities, has designed a new official plan with "intensification" - that is, more density - as an objective for all the reasons just cited, and others that could be added.
But when the proverbial rubber hits the road, and developers intensify their lobbying to build more single-family dwellings outside the city boundary, cities wobble.
In Ottawa, the city's own staff is suggesting the addition of 850 hectares (or about 2,150 acres) to the urban boundary largely for single-family houses - even though the rest of the plan goes on and on about "intensification." The staff is really asking for the city to go in two directions at once: sprawl at the margins; intensification in pockets elsewhere.
The argument is that the city must accommodate future population growth, some of which will need single-family homes. This is, of course, what developers want to hear. If the city believes in intensification, then let it act on its beliefs, although intensification often confronts the not-in-my-backyard opposition of community groups.
It's the dilemma faced by councillors across Canada: Do you plan for the city of tomorrow, or compromise, or yield entirely to the practices of the past.
Ottawa Council committees have approved the staff's recommendations. The whole council tackles the issue tomorrow. The signs are not encouraging that
enough councillors will vote against more sprawl, because this council, like many others across Canada, can't its their eyes from today's city to see
tomorrow's.
You could see this pattern of today trumping tomorrow in Ottawa's list of stimulus projects to the financed by the federal government. Cultural infrastructure got $17.5-million and transit received $104-million, but the sugar-daddy projects worth $192-million were roads, mostly in the suburbs.
Expanding suburban roads is the antithesis of making Ottawa (or any other Canadian city), Ontario or Canada more green or productive or competitive. But road-construction projects are "shovel ready," highly visible, politically attractive and undoubtedly popular with people who live near the roads - although bigger roads invariably attract more vehicles that, in turn, make things no better than before. Build it and they will clog it, is the golden rule of suburban roads.
The classic problem of hurried stimulus projects is that too many are undertaken to meet today's urgency of pushing money into the economy, without much care for the long-term need to build the economy of tomorrow.
It's a small decision, really, that Ottawa Council will make tomorrow, an incremental change of the kind cities make all the time. Not enough people
will see the small decision for what it is: a decision packed with much wider meaning.
http://v1.theglobeandmail.com/servlet/story/GAM.20090609.COSIMP09ART2237/TPS