innsertnamehere
Superstar
http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2013/11/08/ontario_liberals_undermined_own_plan_to_control_sprawl_walkom.html
This is unsurprising, it isn't a failure of the liberals so much as it is a failure of the municipalities. The liberals set out anti-sprawl goals, and certain municipalities have risen to the challenge as the article states such as Toronto and Waterloo. In the other ones, NIMBYism and improper planning create issues where councils won't approve infill condo projects, and rubber stamp greenfield developments. This is because nobody shows up for meetings for a new subdivision on the edge of town, but if someone wants to build a 10 floor condo in your area, you bet there will be several hundred angry neighbours there screaming bullcrap about traffic and shadows. you can see this play out on an almost daily basis across the GTA, and is a major issue for sprawl reduction. Everyone wants there to be no more sprawl, but nobody is willing to move into condos, or live with one in their backyard.
Seven years ago, the Ontario Liberal government trumpeted its new law to curb urban sprawl as bold and visionary.
“People want to see action,” David Caplan, the province’s then infrastructure minister, said after announcing the province’s fully fleshed-out Places to Grow Act in 2006.
Acting in tandem with the Liberal plan to create a green belt, Places to Grow was designed to protect farmland in southern Ontario’s so-called Golden Horseshoe.
Unless something drastic was done, an earlier government study had warned, rampant urban development would result in an additional 1,000 square kilometres of mainly agricultural land — an area twice as big as the entire City of Toronto — being paved over by the year 2031.
Caplan called the new law Ontario’s “last chance to build the future we want.”
The Liberals were lionized for the new scheme by both press and public. The government even won a prestigious U.S. planning award.
But seven years later, it is as if nothing had ever happened.
A new study by the Neptis Foundation, an urban think tank, calculates that the amount of prime farmland slated for urban development by 2031 has in fact increased since the government uttered its first, dire warning.
This is unsurprising, it isn't a failure of the liberals so much as it is a failure of the municipalities. The liberals set out anti-sprawl goals, and certain municipalities have risen to the challenge as the article states such as Toronto and Waterloo. In the other ones, NIMBYism and improper planning create issues where councils won't approve infill condo projects, and rubber stamp greenfield developments. This is because nobody shows up for meetings for a new subdivision on the edge of town, but if someone wants to build a 10 floor condo in your area, you bet there will be several hundred angry neighbours there screaming bullcrap about traffic and shadows. you can see this play out on an almost daily basis across the GTA, and is a major issue for sprawl reduction. Everyone wants there to be no more sprawl, but nobody is willing to move into condos, or live with one in their backyard.