Council must embrace a denser Ottawa
Building up, not out helps the planet,
Ottawa council will shape the city’s growth for decades to come when it votes on expanding its suburbs in the weeks to come. City staff recently released a report that recommended adding up to 1,650 hectares to the urban boundary. This leads to a scenario where nearly half of new housing built by 2046 is on currently undeveloped land. However, if council was serious when it declared a climate emergency last year, it must reject the expansion and embrace a denser Ottawa, because urban sprawl is a catastrophe for the climate.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem to be a priority for city staff. Their report acknowledged council’s climate goals and desires to accommodate most growth through increased density, but still recommended expanding the suburbs. For context, their massive proposal is seven times larger than what council approved when it last considered the issue in 2009.
Why is this bad news for our climate goals? For one thing, the single-detached homes that often come with sprawl use on average 2.4 times more energy than apartments.
What’s more, sprawl leads to ballooning commute times. Ottawa motorists already spend on average 84 minutes a day commuting. Yes, we need more electric vehicles and mass transit, but we must also address the urban planning that feeds our reliance on cars in the first place.
The numbers speak clearly. Doubling density in a city leads to an average drop in greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of 48 per cent for travel and 35 per cent for residential energy. In short, urban sprawl impedes climate progress.
It’s shocking that the climate impacts of sprawl have been largely ignored. Even the Green New Deal, a package of bold environmental proposals endorsed by prominent U.S. progressives, was silent on this crucial issue.
We can rezone single-family neighbourhoods to allow duplexes, triplexes.
Perhaps we can’t chide folks too much for this oversight. For many, density and urbanization are inextricably associated with pollution.
And in the era of Jane Jacobs, opposition to urban development had its place in progressive movements. Parks were paved for shopping malls, Chinatowns were split by highways. In this context, it made sense for environmentalists to oppose change. On a superficial level, it can seem a curious transition. Where once the environmental imperative was to block development, now the imperative is to build up.
Yet, what suburban homeowners who recycle but oppose new apartments in their neighbourhood fail to grasp are the climate impacts of their anti-density stance. Housing demand is regional, so pushing people out of a neighbourhood does not stop them moving to that city. It just forces them to live farther from their jobs.
The hopeful thing is people are starting to get it. Ecology Ottawa has a petition with more than 3,000 signatures calling on council to hold the urban boundary where it is. And fortunately, there are endless ways to accommodate growth without sprawl.
We can rededicate underused urban spaces to housing. A study of more than 700 Californian cities found this policy highly effective at reducing GHG emissions.
We can rezone single-family neighbourhoods to allow duplexes, triplexes and more as councils did in Minneapolis and Vancouver. We can develop apartments and amenities near employment and transit centres. This is partly happening already, but efforts must be scaled up.
Have no illusions, combating sprawl will not be an easy task. The enduring myth of the American dream and its ties to single-family home ownership makes it difficult for us to accept a paradigm where density is desirable. Progress will require fierce political leadership and a shift in societal values. Then again, the same can be said for most necessary changes in the fight against the climate crisis.
Nevertheless, it’s time we face the truth: the suburbs were a mistake, dreamed up in an age of particular hubris when prosperity felt endless. This historical error from 1950s’ North American urban planning has climate consequences that compound today. The sooner we realize this, the sooner we can learn to love density and the vibrant communities it can bring. So council, let’s start building up, not out. Nancy Xue is a longtime Ottawa resident and a current master of public policy student at Simon Fraser University.