Should cities start blocking urban sprawl?

[doady]

The trouble with high density is that not everyone is for it. In the 1960's, the Bloor-Danforth was under construction, and developers were acquiring and demolishing home along the subway line opposite High Park. Gothic Avenue development was halted by the controversy. (The current Mayor of Toronto, David Miller, now lives on Gothic Avenue.) Even today, the area was in the news, with a stubborn tenant who refused other better accommodation, was eventually evicted, due to her over the top "allergies".

That is one reason to go with medium density along light rapid transit lines.

European cities don't have a lot of high-rises either, and they still build a shit load of subways. There aren't that many high-rises along the Bloor-Danforth line either, but the subway line along it seems to have adequate ridership, doesn't it?

 

[AnnetteMeetsJane]

Well said!

As a European, I believe that urban sprawl is the product of (1) N. American's insatiable need to hoard vast amounts of stuff that they don;t really need in basements and garages and (2) en-suite bathrooms.

In London most of the population is housed in older housing stock, at very higher occupancy rates. Brixton, Wandsworth, Clapham, Finesbury Park, Acton etc. etc. consist of old Victorians which have either a family or a number (3-4) of single people occupying EACH FLOOR. A three storey victorian terrace may easily have 15 or more people living in four or maybe 5 flats. Unlike Toronto it is almost impossible for a 25 yr old Londoner to own (or rent) personal space - all young professionals rent basically one (bed)room and shared use of a kitchen and bathroom.

Historically, the homes in High Park were occupied at similar density levels to London - it was common until very recently to find kitchens in the basement, first and second floor of houses. A significant proportion of the houses now have two dwellings in them - the main house and a separate basement apartment. As the value of property increases, I think that inevitably the houses will be increasingly sub-divided back to historic levels - a family or group of single people on every floor. This already happens in some areas to the east. This is a much more sustainable solution to the need to increase density than knocking everything down and then stacking up units made of poor insulators, as high as profitable for developers.

 

[spider]

Well said!

As a European, I believe that urban sprawl is the product of (1) N. American's insatiable need to hoard vast amounts of stuff that they don;t really need in basements and garages and (2) en-suite bathrooms.

In London most of the population is housed in older housing stock, at very higher occupancy rates. Brixton, Wandsworth, Clapham, Finesbury Park, Acton etc. etc. consist of old Victorians which have either a family or a number (3-4) of single people occupying EACH FLOOR. A three storey victorian terrace may easily have 15 or more people living in four or maybe 5 flats. Unlike Toronto it is almost impossible for a 25 yr old Londoner to own (or rent) personal space - all young professionals rent basically one (bed)room and shared use of a kitchen and bathroom.

Historically, the homes in High Park were occupied at similar density levels to London - it was common until very recently to find kitchens in the basement, first and second floor of houses. A significant proportion of the houses now have two dwellings in them - the main house and a separate basement apartment. As the value of property increases, I think that inevitably the houses will be increasingly sub-divided back to historic levels - a family or group of single people on every floor. This already happens in some areas to the east. This is a much more sustainable solution to the need to increase density than knocking everything down and then stacking up units made of poor insulators, as high as profitable for developers.

London is the Gold standard to which we all should be aspiring? I'll take sprawl please.

 

[Ladies Mile]

Perhaps think more of Cheektowaga, Tonawanda, Amherst, i.e. Cold War Rustbelturbia, aimless, entropic, and all too often Eminem-ish or worse. And by "worse", think analogous to Harvey, Illinois (home of the long-abandoned Dixie Square Mall, star of the Blues Brothers movie).

So that's what the negative American suburban stereotype's come to over the past half century. From Jerry Mathers' TV family to Marshall Mathers' real-life family...

This is bullshit.

There is a substantial swath of extremely wealthy suburbs in Wayne County, Grosse Point and its satellites being only the most conspicuous.

Not sure where your view of it all as unmitigated blight comes from.

 

[gabe]

London is the Gold standard to which we all should be aspiring? I'll take sprawl please.

Me too. No wonder so many Europeans immigrated to Canada.

 

[howl]

The key to controlling sprawl isn't regulation - regulations preventing development can be changed with a few public meetings and one council meeting. The key to controlling sprawl is to stop making it cheap to live in the outskirts and expensive to live in higher-density areas. How can the government do that? Get rid of 'market-value' property tax assessments and base property taxes on the area of your property. A 1ha residential property in downtown Toronto should be paying the same property tax as a 1ha residential property in Malvern, regardless of how many people are living on each property. The result would be people living in higher density areas would pay a lot less property tax per unit.

Right now it costs the City a lot of money to pay for all those roads and sewers and snow clearing and transit in the low-density suburbs, yet with market-value property taxes the small high-density units in the more efficent and compact city centre pay more per unit. Therefore the city centre people are subsidizing the suburban people.

Obviously this would be a huge change in policy that, if implement too quickly would have serious negative effects, but the concept could be worked in over a decade or two so that in the future you would have to pay for the services and infrastructure you actually used more fairly.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Unfortunately, there are still people who think the car is the way to go and everyone should as well. (Hint: Rob Ford)

They have become so used to the car lifestyle, that they don't know how to live without it. In fact, a lot of developments (commercial, industrial, residential) are still zoned to be separated, no if's, and's, or but's.

 

[Danielinthecity]

Right on!

The key to controlling sprawl isn't regulation - regulations preventing development can be changed with a few public meetings and one council meeting. The key to controlling sprawl is to stop making it cheap to live in the outskirts and expensive to live in higher-density areas. How can the government do that? Get rid of 'market-value' property tax assessments and base property taxes on the area of your property. A 1ha residential property in downtown Toronto should be paying the same property tax as a 1ha residential property in Malvern, regardless of how many people are living on each property. The result would be people living in higher density areas would pay a lot less property tax per unit.

Right now it costs the City a lot of money to pay for all those roads and sewers and snow clearing and transit in the low-density suburbs, yet with market-value property taxes the small high-density units in the more efficent and compact city centre pay more per unit. Therefore the city centre people are subsidizing the suburban people.

Obviously this would be a huge change in policy that, if implement too quickly would have serious negative effects, but the concept could be worked in over a decade or two so that in the future you would have to pay for the services and infrastructure you actually used more fairly.

That would be a great idea...as would location-efficient lending practices (http://www.locationefficiency.com/). For those who say they prefer sprawl over dense compact pedestrian/transit oriented development must prefer congestion, pollution, social separation and ugliness. Suburban sprawl is unhealthy for society in so many ways and as the inevitable peak oil gradually becomes more of a reality (c'mon China/India!), the suburbanites will come to realize that their self-imposed 'dependance' on their 'babies' (car) and their grossly oversized houses to store all their 'stuff' will be the ultimate cause of their own economic downfall.

Bring on higher gas prices I say!

With this election, we can already see how many people are so out of touch still...it seems no amount of warnings about the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels will deter them...nor will sensible arguements (like the one made above about the unfair tax system) about 'good' planning to ensure a 'sustainable' future for our chilldren, so alas it seems the best thing for me to hope for (reluctantly) is that gas prices continue to rise...so that at some 'high enough' price point even they will finally 'get it', and realize that their chosen form of organizing themselves in space has no future.

 

[Danielinthecity]

Serious

London is the Gold standard to which we all should be aspiring? I'll take sprawl please.

Mississauga over London? Are you serious?

 

[lafard]

, That would be a great idea...as would location-efficient lending practices (http://www.locationefficiency.com/). For those who say they prefer sprawl over dense compact pedestrian/transit oriented development must prefer congestion, pollution, social separation and ugliness. Suburban sprawl is unhealthy for society in so many ways and as the inevitable peak oil gradually becomes more of a reality (c'mon China/India!), the suburbanites will come to realize that their self-imposed 'dependance' on their 'babies' (car) and their grossly oversized houses to store all their 'stuff' will be the ultimate cause of their own economic downfall.

Bring on higher gas prices I say!

With this election, we can already see how many people are so out of touch still...it seems no amount of warnings about the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels will deter them...nor will sensible arguements (like the one made above about the unfair tax system) about 'good' planning to ensure a 'sustainable' future for our chilldren, so alas it seems the best thing for me to hope for (reluctantly) is that gas prices continue to rise...so that at some 'high enough' price point even they will finally 'get it', and realize that their chosen form of organizing themselves in space has no future.

Great idea, but what happens then is you end up with a political revolution about the government's hands being in your pocket and end up with Rob Ford for mayor.

Suburbanites will be slow to change their attitudes. If gas goes up to 1.50 they won't respond by considering moving closer to transit. No, they'll elect someone that will reduce gas taxes.

 

[Action Jackson]

Toronto is the obvious outlier here, hopefully moving closer to the European cities. Also interesting to see that Australian cities have the same area per person as American cities, but use less gas. Is it because it has more public tansportation?

Part of it. Another part is that the cars tend to be more efficient. Australia's fuel costs are about the same as Canada, which are significantly higher than the US, and people tend to drive cars or smaller vans/SUVs than the monstrosities that rule American roads. One of my opinions is that somebody who buys a Ford Expedition just to drive to work is either paranoid about safety or just plain nuts.

 

[adma]

This is bullshit.

There is a substantial swath of extremely wealthy suburbs in Wayne County, Grosse Point and its satellites being only the most conspicuous.

Not sure where your view of it all as unmitigated blight comes from.

Grosse Pointe (sic) and its like are but blips amidst (and in their insular turn affirming) the "unmitigated blight". It'd be like taking campus towns like Ann Arbor as representative of *all* the USA...

 

[Action Jackson]

That would be a great idea...as would location-efficient lending practices (http://www.locationefficiency.com/). For those who say they prefer sprawl over dense compact pedestrian/transit oriented development must prefer congestion, pollution, social separation and ugliness. Suburban sprawl is unhealthy for society in so many ways and as the inevitable peak oil gradually becomes more of a reality (c'mon China/India!), the suburbanites will come to realize that their self-imposed 'dependance' on their 'babies' (car) and their grossly oversized houses to store all their 'stuff' will be the ultimate cause of their own economic downfall.

The problem with the "peak oil" bit is that technology has already made peak oil irrelevant. There is hundreds of billions of barrels locked in America's Green River Basin in oil shale. Technology to produce oil from coal already exists and has been used on a commercial scale in South Africa since the 1950s, and researchers at Los Alamos have made it possible to make any hydrocarbon from its base parts - carbon and hydrogen - by getting the carbon from CO2 in the atmosphere and hydrogen from splitting water. The reason these aren't widely used is the cost of such fuel. But give sustained high oil prices, those technologies will come into their own and in the process make the idea of running out of oil virtually obsolete, particularly with the synthesis option, which only requires carbon dioxide, water and electrical energy, which could easily be made via environmentally-friendly sources such as hydroelectric dams, wind turbines or solar cells.

IMO, one way of countering sprawl would be to make sure downtown neighborhoods are suitable for families with children. Most people who are younger without kids tend to live in urban areas, while ones with children prefer areas outside of the city in homes, to give more room to grow and yards to play in. One could fix the space problem with developments meant for families, such as ones with two, three or four bedrooms and parks/playgrounds nearby. (Heck, one could put one on the roof of a building.) One other concern a lot of young parents have is the safety of their kids, which tends to be easier in less dense neighborhoods (As if somebody who wants to kidnap a child hasn't figured out that many of them live in the suburbs) so keeping crime to a minimum would be needed here, too. (That said, Toronto is a very safe city by most standards, so this isn't a really big problem for us.)

With this election, we can already see how many people are so out of touch still...it seems no amount of warnings about the environmental damage caused by burning fossil fuels will deter them...nor will sensible arguements (like the one made above about the unfair tax system) about 'good' planning to ensure a 'sustainable' future for our chilldren, so alas it seems the best thing for me to hope for (reluctantly) is that gas prices continue to rise...so that at some 'high enough' price point even they will finally 'get it', and realize that their chosen form of organizing themselves in space has no future.

Truthfully, many people in general are reluctant to change. It's easy to say move to the city, but how many of us have actually done it? Truthfully, I'm a suburb dweller myself. (Albeit one of the better Toronto suburbs in terms of transit and community facilities.) Many people also see a big house as a status symbol - "I made it, I can afford a 4000-square-foot McMansion!" sort of thinking. I think its dumb myself (my current residence, which includes myself and three others, is just 950 sq ft, and I like it a lot ) but people do want status symbols. You can do that in Toronto, though - who would not boast of living in a good part of town or in a prestigious building, for example. And there are just some people who want the huge house on the big lot with the backyard swimming pool and jacuzzi in the garage. Those people probably won't be changed. But there is plenty of people where if you gave them a good option in town, they'd take it.

 

[Ladies Mile]

Grosse Pointe (sic) and its like are but blips amidst (and in their insular turn affirming) the "unmitigated blight". It'd be like taking campus towns like Ann Arbor as representative of *all* the USA...

I am not defending Grosse Pointe, but the place goes on for miles. As for Ann Arbor, it's much, much, much uglier than Detroit and is inhabited by insufferable middle-class cretins. Not sure what your argument is.

 

[cfloryan]

"Should Cities Start Blocking Urban Sprawl?"

NO. Most people don't want to live in towers.