Is Ontario’s anti-sprawl policy actually smart?
Economics professor says plans are throwing fuel onto the fire of supply-limited housing market
Paul Cheshire thinks Ontario’s antisprawl Smart Growth policies might just be one of the dumbest ideas that Britain ever exported.
The London School of Economics professor is the latest economist to suggest that Smart Growth is pouring fuel on the Toronto region’s overheated housing market by limiting the supply of developable land.
He was expected to share his research on Britain’s own land containment policies with a conference at Ryerson University’s Centre for Urban Research and Land Policy on Friday.
By limiting how far development can sprawl from critical infrastructure such as transit, “You try and force people to live in houses they don’t want to live in, in places they don’t want to live and they end up bidding up the prices of those houses that they do want to live in,” he told the Star.
Britain’s policies pre-date Ontario’s 2006 Places to Grow growth plan by decades.
The result is that workers are commuting four hours a day by train to London from all over the south of England be- cause they can’t afford a house closer to the city.
Cheshire’s comments come as the deadline approaches for feedback on the province’s Co-ordinated Land Use Planning Review, which looks at Places to Grow, the Greenbelt Plan, the Oak Ridges Moraine Conservation and Niagara Escarpment plans.
The review recommends increasing population intensification targets in the Toronto region — from 50 to 80 jobs and residents per hectare on greenfields, approved for more development, and from 40 to 60 jobs and people per hectare in areas that are already urbanized.
Even some municipalities encouraging the transit-supportive communities supported by Smart Growth say the revised targets may be too ambitious. Implemented before 2031, Peel could face densities of 140 people and jobs on its outskirts.
“These new communities would be some of the most dense and would lack significant infrastructure, including transit, to support these densities,” said an Oct. 3 report to Peel Region council.
The province has to make sure targets are realistic, said Kevin Eby, Waterloo Region’s former planning director, who calls himself one of the Growth Plan’s biggest supporters.
“If the targets are unrealistic, people will spend more time trying to figure out how to circumvent them than on meeting them,” he said.
Smart Growth doesn’t have to result in U.S.-style sprawl, Cheshire said.
U.S. sprawl is encouraged by large minimum lot sizes — used to discourage the poor from moving in to some jurisdictions and by a fiscal system that keeps development taxes in local hands.
“Stand on the Golden Gate Bridge and look north into Marin County, which is about 20 minutes from San Francisco’s downtown; they have
“If the targets are unrealistic, people will spend more time trying to figure out how to circumvent them than on meeting them.” KEVIN EBY FORMER PLANNING DIRECTOR FOR WATERLOO REGION
minimum lot sizes in many communities of 60 acres,” Cheshire said.
Plus, he adds, “Gas is cheaper than Coca-Cola. So if you’re not charging for commuting and you’re insisting people consume much more land than they really want to, you get very low densities.”
It makes more sense to tax energy than regulate land use, Cheshire said, because everyone is affected by those costs.
“If you control new development, it only affects the margins, which is only about 1 or 2 per cent of the total stock of housing in any year, so it would take you 50 years to have any impact on behaviour,” he said.
There is no evidence that Smart Growth even reduces carbon emissions, Cheshire said, who, in reference to Greenbelt protected farmland, notes that industrialized farming is environmentally toxic.
Burkhard Mausberg of the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation calls these “desperate arguments trying to bolster an outdated way of building communities; the last gasps of a dreadful approach to planning.”
“Just as the agricultural sector is investing in changing practices to reduce emissions, the development sector should invest in building complete communities that reduce sprawl, support better transit and reduce congestion. It’s not an either/or proposition,” he said.
Home prices are complicated. But York Region chief planner Val Shuttleworth said she doesn’t believe land policy alone is driving up prices.
“I’m not even sure if it’s a factor,” she said.
Municipalities are required by the province to have a 10-year supply of land designated for housing. York Region is exceeding that by five to six years. It has four years’ supply of serviced land when the province only requires three, said Shuttleworth.
Bryan Tuckey, CEO of the Building Industry and Land Development Association, says municipalities urging a go-slow approach on higher densities are right because the region doesn’t yet know the full impacts of the first 10 years of Places to Grow. Most of the development that has taken place so far is a result of plans made before 2006.
“It’s only been 10 years. It is a long time,” he said. “But in the span of development of cities and regions, it’s a relatively short period of time.”