Urban, suburban housing plans must work together
Acolleague of mine used to live in High Park. He and his wife were dedicated urbanites and he would say of places like Whitby or Brampton: “I will never live in the suburbs; it’s urban sprawl.” He now lives happily on the Oakville/Burlington border and rails against the term being applied to the community that is his family’s home.
The lesson here is that we should be careful in using subjective terms such as urban sprawl, especially when we are using them as the rationale for regulations that affect our region’s housing supply.
Urban sprawl refers to the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas. In the Greater Toronto Area, concerns about urban sprawl have been used as the justification for far-reaching government policies regulating land use, density and zoning. However, a number of factors complicate the application of the term to our region.
First, growth in the GTA has long been governed by planning and zoning rules at various levels of government, which inform and regulate what goes where. Far from being uncontrolled, urban growth is strictly regulated, often by rules going back decades.
Second, in the GTA, urban growth happens not just in one city, but in five regions with 25 separate municipalities, each expanding and densifying at a pace and in a manner unique to that area. Third, and to state the obvious, the dominating geographic feature of Lake Ontario to the south creates a barrier that pushes growth east and west, and to a lesser extent north, creating a string of municipalities 150 kilometres wide by approximately 35 km deep.
Last, and most importantly, people have different needs, preferences and means when it comes to housing, and what some urbanites speeding down the QEW towards Niagara call urban sprawl is what others comfortably and happily call home.
When discussing the concept of urban sprawl some perspective is also beneficial. The GTA has 6.4 million people in 7,124 square kilometres, less dense than the London Metropolitan Region with 13.6 million living in 8,383 sq. km. But cities such as London are the exception, not the rule. Consider Sydney with 5.1 million people living in 12,286 sq. km, the Munich Metropolitan Region with 5.2 million people in 27,000 sq. km, Houston with 6.7 million in 24,460 sq. km, Milan Metropolitan Region with 7.5 million people living in 13,110 sq. km or Greater Paris with 11.5 million people in a geographic area of 14,500 sq. km.
Sensitive ecological regions should be protected, urban intensification should be encouraged and new communities should be thoughtfully planned out. But we should also keep some perspective when value-laden and subjective terms are invoked as a basis for land policies that can have far-reaching implications.
With 115,000 new residents expected in our region every year, we need to build housing, both urban and suburban, to accommodate them. In the lead-up to this year’s municipal election, let’s make sure we are having an informed discussion.