<– London, Ontario
Dear Readers;
Our much loved, and mostly maligned ‘Perspective Research Department’ conducted a survey yesterday on Toronto’s transit plans and the results amongst Torontonians were as follows;
- 51 per cent believe Toronto should “keep the light-rail lines as voted on by City Council”, while 49 per cent agree with the mayor’s preference to “stop the light-rail lines and build subways instead.”
- Only 33 1/3 per cent agree that “we should build subways because it’s what Rob Ford promised in the election, and he has a mandate, even if it means overriding the city council’s vote on the matter.”
- 98.6 per cent believe that “smart transit planning is done for the long term and should not be changed every time a new government is elected.”
- When asked to choose between subways and light rail in abstract terms, respondents prefer subways by a margin of 60 per cent to 40 per cent. However, 88 per cent agree that “Toronto should have a mix of subways, light rail, streetcars and buses, depending on the number of people living in the neighbourhoods.”
Almost 100% of people who live outside of the GTA responded that they couldn’t give a shit one way or the other, Montrealers said que est-ce que ce est Toronto, and B.C residents didn’t even bother with an answer.
Meanwhile, people who live here in London are laughing their asses off because we are just like Toronto was 30 years ago. Big enough, yet small enough, quiet enough, interesting enough, cultured enough, a rush hour that lasts one hour, reasonable priced housing, and most of all …………….. still civilized!
(Matter of fact, the only thing Toronto has that we don’t, is a subway!)
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Nearly all of Canada’s population growth over the past five years occurred in the suburbs, according to a new analysis of the 2011 Census data by an urbanist who says government policies are driving people out of the city — and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
While the downtowns of Canada’s six largest metropolitan areas made modest gains, urban cores have been “dwarfed by the scale of suburban population increases,” which made up 93% of the nation’s growth, Wendell Cox, principal of Demographia, a St. Louis, Mo., demographics and urban policy firm, wrote in an analysis this week posted on the website NewGeography.com.
This continued growth comes despite what Mr. Cox calls “anti-suburban policies” that outlaw development on large swaths of land, creating scarcity and increasing housing prices. He believes governments should build more highways instead of trying to get the public riding mass transit. More highways, he argues, will cut down on traffic congestion, which leads to air pollution and less productive cities as workers spend more time on the road.
“All things being equal, more people prefer to live in lower density surroundings with a little patch of ground than they prefer to live in the condominiums and the high rise. It’s a wonderful lifestyle and we need to recognize that,” he said. “In the long run, people’s preferences are really going to drive how things work regardless of the policy instruments that are used to try to change their behaviour.”
Mr. Cox, who used federal electoral districts and the 2011 Census data released last week to compare growth in city centres and their outer regions, found that in some cases, central municipalities account for only one-fifth of the growth of their metropolitan areas — Montreal being the slowest growing major metropolitan area at a rate of 5.9%. It saw the area outside the core make up 95% of the population increase there.
Major metropolitan areas Calgary, Edmonton, Ottawa-Gatineau and Vancouver also saw significant growth around their core, Mr. Cox’s analysis showed, with non-core areas making up for 97% of growth in Calgary, 98% in Edmonton, 94% in Ottawa-Gatineau and 87% in Vancouver.
The Census data revealed that Toronto was surpassed for the very first time by the ballooning population of its neighbouring “905” region.
National Post
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The numbers don’t surprise Glenn Miller, vice-president of education and research at the Canadian Urban Institute, a not-for-profit organization that has been tracking the outward expansion of Canadian cities. It has watched businesses move out of cities’ downtown financial cores and into the suburbs; a report it released last April showed only 20% of the Toronto region’s office jobs are in Toronto’s core, compared to 63% three decades ago.
Most of these companies have moved out to the “905,” to places like Mississauga, Brampton and Vaughan, suggesting a need for expanded transit systems so those who have moved out to the suburbs don’t need to drive to work or “get in their cars to go buy lunch,” which they still often do, he said.
There’s also a need to make the suburbs a better place to age, Mr. Miller said. “The more we can design our communities so that you’re not designing for just one segment of your lifespan when people are in their family formation years moving to the edge of Brampton because it’s affordable, the better,” he said. “That’s acceptable for 10, 15 years. But the suburbs are no place to grow old.”
National Post
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Mr. Cox thinks governments should not be trying to limit sprawl — often deemed a dirty word in urban planning circles, he said.
A more efficient agricultural industry uses far less farmland than it did 50 years ago and, according to a Sierra Club of Canada report he cites, doubling the density of a neighbourhood will increase traffic congestion by 60%, thus leading to more air pollution.
“You can’t improve commute times if you make the city more dense. You can’t have housing affordability if you make it more dense.”
It makes less sense for a Canadian to live in an urban centre as housing prices in the city continue to skyrocket and employees commute to work in suburban offices, he said.
“You start drawing down a line around cities like they’re doing in Toronto and like they’ve done in Vancouver, you drive housing prices through the roof, young people won’t be able to afford houses…[As well, all the] data indicate the more dense you make a city, the higher you make the traffic congestion.”
Jebb Brugmann, an urban strategy consultant and author of Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities Are Changing The World, said that if high growth suburban municipalities had more authority over their expansion (much of that tends to rest with provincial jurisdictions or otherwise), they could create more innovative communities that can “urbanize” these regions with fewer big box stores and more mixed-use residential and business buildings.
Brent Foster/National Post files
He said an exodus to suburbia is really just the product of uneven market regulation, and points to the subprime market crisis in the United States, which saw almost 50% of the housing foreclosures in 2008-2009 happen in nine suburbs of major cities.
“What does that tell you? It tells you overall cost to the household of living in the suburbs, when you factor in cost of time it takes to maintain this mini-mansion. It’s rising at a rate that’s faster than the rise in wages.”
http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/02/16/city-hall-take-note-you-cant-fight-suburbia/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+NP_Top_Stories+%28National+Post+-+Top+Stories%29&utm_content=My+Yahoo