unimaginative2
Senior Member
Urban growth, without the sprawl
MURRAY CAMPBELL
December 4, 2007
There's a group of planners in the Region of Waterloo who are toiling away, with one eye on the clock, to turn their municipality into a model for how to handle the population boom headed its way. The region has until 2009 to make sure its official plan conforms to a new Ontario law that wants 25 communities outside Toronto to stop gobbling up farmland and, instead, start putting up houses and apartment buildings on urban lots that have been passed by.
This is a big - and increasingly contentious - deal. According to the government, the region's population will grow in the next 25 years - to 729,000 from 456,000 in 2001 - and cities including Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge will need to become more densely populated if urban sprawl is to be avoided.
Regional chair Ken Seiling is confident that zoning laws and regulations will meet the provincial standard by the deadline, especially if the McGuinty government follows through with its promise to finance two-thirds of the cost of a 14-kilometre rapid-transit line that will link the three cities. He also knows he has to do it because the hordes are coming.
"We can't turn off the tap, but given the right tools, we can manage the growth," Mr. Seiling said.
The results may not be as satisfying in the other areas identified to handle the 3.7 million growth in Ontario's population by 2031 because few of them are as advanced in planning as Waterloo. Indeed, some municipalities don't want to grow at all, and some are at the mercy of land speculators who have leapfrogged the Greenbelt around Toronto and are betting they will be able to make the new rules work for them down the road.
There is a semblance of order behind the Places to Grow initiative, which allows the government to develop a growth plan for any region in Ontario. But there are also voices that say the government hasn't quite got it right yet.
For example, Ontario Environment Commissioner Gord Miller believes that the government got it wrong by establishing population projections for Waterloo and the other municipalities before establishing whether the ecosystem can support this growth. "The current approach ignores the fact that human communities are an integral part of the ecosystem that surrounds them and that these ecosystems have carrying capacities - or limits to growth - that should determine the human population size that can be supported in a sustainable manner," he said in his annual report, which is being released today.
Others are calling for an expansion of the 728,000-hectare Greenbelt around Toronto to forestall further development. The advisory Greenbelt Council has asked the government to extend the scope of the preserved lands to protect the Lake Simcoe watershed. (Simcoe County is besieged by land speculation. "People are buying up land left, right and centre," said MPP Garfield Dunlop.) As well, Guelph City Council has asked to be in the Greenbelt to protect a moraine that recharges its drinking-water aquifer.
It's not clear yet how the government will deal with the calls for a new look at its growth-management plans.
Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson said the government is open to Greenbelt expansion, but it isn't slated for review until 2015.
Public Infrastructure Minister David Caplan rejected Mr. Miller's assertion that he was emphasizing infrastructure over the environment. "Clearly, he's wrong," he said.
Mr. Caplan also put some of the onus in Ottawa's lap. "The federal government are the ones who decide what the immigration levels are," he said, noting that Ontario is simply dealing with the results.
mcampbell@globeandmail.com
MURRAY CAMPBELL
December 4, 2007
There's a group of planners in the Region of Waterloo who are toiling away, with one eye on the clock, to turn their municipality into a model for how to handle the population boom headed its way. The region has until 2009 to make sure its official plan conforms to a new Ontario law that wants 25 communities outside Toronto to stop gobbling up farmland and, instead, start putting up houses and apartment buildings on urban lots that have been passed by.
This is a big - and increasingly contentious - deal. According to the government, the region's population will grow in the next 25 years - to 729,000 from 456,000 in 2001 - and cities including Waterloo, Kitchener and Cambridge will need to become more densely populated if urban sprawl is to be avoided.
Regional chair Ken Seiling is confident that zoning laws and regulations will meet the provincial standard by the deadline, especially if the McGuinty government follows through with its promise to finance two-thirds of the cost of a 14-kilometre rapid-transit line that will link the three cities. He also knows he has to do it because the hordes are coming.
"We can't turn off the tap, but given the right tools, we can manage the growth," Mr. Seiling said.
The results may not be as satisfying in the other areas identified to handle the 3.7 million growth in Ontario's population by 2031 because few of them are as advanced in planning as Waterloo. Indeed, some municipalities don't want to grow at all, and some are at the mercy of land speculators who have leapfrogged the Greenbelt around Toronto and are betting they will be able to make the new rules work for them down the road.
There is a semblance of order behind the Places to Grow initiative, which allows the government to develop a growth plan for any region in Ontario. But there are also voices that say the government hasn't quite got it right yet.
For example, Ontario Environment Commissioner Gord Miller believes that the government got it wrong by establishing population projections for Waterloo and the other municipalities before establishing whether the ecosystem can support this growth. "The current approach ignores the fact that human communities are an integral part of the ecosystem that surrounds them and that these ecosystems have carrying capacities - or limits to growth - that should determine the human population size that can be supported in a sustainable manner," he said in his annual report, which is being released today.
Others are calling for an expansion of the 728,000-hectare Greenbelt around Toronto to forestall further development. The advisory Greenbelt Council has asked the government to extend the scope of the preserved lands to protect the Lake Simcoe watershed. (Simcoe County is besieged by land speculation. "People are buying up land left, right and centre," said MPP Garfield Dunlop.) As well, Guelph City Council has asked to be in the Greenbelt to protect a moraine that recharges its drinking-water aquifer.
It's not clear yet how the government will deal with the calls for a new look at its growth-management plans.
Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson said the government is open to Greenbelt expansion, but it isn't slated for review until 2015.
Public Infrastructure Minister David Caplan rejected Mr. Miller's assertion that he was emphasizing infrastructure over the environment. "Clearly, he's wrong," he said.
Mr. Caplan also put some of the onus in Ottawa's lap. "The federal government are the ones who decide what the immigration levels are," he said, noting that Ontario is simply dealing with the results.
mcampbell@globeandmail.com