urban growth

With four million more people expected to flock to Southern Ontario’s Greater Golden Horseshoe by 2031, something has to be done to ease the region’s debilitating traffic gridlock and unchecked urban sprawl. The McGuinty government’s response is a major growth management initiative, referred to as Places to Grow. ­Introduction of the Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt in 2006 was a first step.

Doubtless, people are optimistic that sustainability is possible. Pessimism is enervating and deflating. However, both optimism and pessimism are merely states of mind that have little connection with reality. What we really need is a good dose of realism, and from this perspective much of what we take to be progress is delusional. It creates a false – or at least inflated – sense of achievement, and thus relieves the psychological and political pressure needed for real change. ...

Imagine walking down a street of a suburban subdivision built in 2000, somewhere on the outskirts of Calgary, Vancouver or Toronto. Only now it’s 2020. To your right is one of the single family homes that survived a physical transformation initiated in 2007, when it became clear that surviving the oil crisis required neighbourhood intensification. In his home, a retired minister sells polished and drilled semiprecious stones – amethysts, agates and tourmalines – out of a living room he has transformed into a showroom. His workshop is in the basement. ...