- Ecology-Survival
- Canada and Global Warming
- Canadian Industry and Climate Change
- Electric Generating Stations
- Transportation Pollution Canada -Road Freight
- Transportation Pollution Canada, Rail Roads
- People, Cars and Urban Transit
- Commercial and Residential Heating
- The Canadian Responsible Consumer
- Renewable Energy Canada
- Ethanol and Food Prices
- Urban Sprawl and Canada
- Sustainable Growth and Development
- Ecological Sustainability in Question
- Kyoto Protocol, Canada's Commitment
- Is Our Planet Already Lost?
Urban Sprawl and Canada
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Urban Sprawl and Where We Live
Neighbourhood; that 5 kilometer radius around our home that circumscribes most of our daily lives. This is our space, our personal, even if shared, piece of Canada. We spend most of our time here, it becomes familiar, and we become acutely sensitive to any changes. This is where we live, where we shop, where our children go to school, where most of our friends live. This is our environment and our comfort zone. For the more fortunate, this is where we also work.
This is the sphere in which we have some control. We know what is happening and what needs to happen. What development we would like to see and what development we don't desire. We can count on the support from our family, our friends and our neighbours. We are community.
But our comfort zones are changing. We are becoming more spread out, our boundaries are being stretched to the point that we are no longer living in comfort, in familiar surroundings. For whatever reasons, mostly what we believed to be economic, we are choosing to live further and further away from employment, away from major shopping, away from centers of entertainment, often away from family and acquaintances. We are moving to the suburbs. Where we can fulfill our dreams of home ownership; the costs of living are less expensive here. – or are they?
Over the past 30 or so years, there has been a constant trend to build cities outward and many people, mostly families, have moved out to these new developments. What used to be rural countryside has now become the bedrooms of the buisiness, commercial and industrial centers. We have moved from community into suburbia. We have created Urban Sprawl, fractured community.
Possibly the greatest downside of urban sprawl is the social changes it brings. Sprawl is characterized by an ever changing landscape as these newly formed townships are constantly trying to keep in stride with growth. Ever changing surroundings creates instability in peoples lives where seldom does the all important sense of community develope. The future character of our neighbourhoods is unclear and is reflected in the instability of many lives. Vandalism and crime are the most obvious consequences.
Back in the old town that instability is even more manifested as buisineses close due to lack of support and older buildings become derelict, the once vibrant city core is left to rebuild a totally new face.
There are whole new challenges to building stable communities for the 21st century. One challenge being costs, finding the capital to rebuild. The greatest obstacle though is people. Changing the attitudes of people to an adaptation of changing lifestyle is the most crucial task. There is no sense or purpose in attempting to restructure any fragmented community back to the way it was, it just can't happen. The realities of today's world call for whole concept in what community means and looks like.
The Costs of Urban Sprawl
It costs more financially to live in sprawl developments, and those costs to Canada are in many cases, overwhelming.
In order to develope these new suburban areas, a whole new infrastructure is required, everything from roads, to water lines, to sewer systems, to schools and hospitals, just to name the more obvious. Many of the services that were built when the first suburban expansion took place are now requiring upgrading. As more people are moving out lured by less expensive purchase prices for homes, the infrastructure originally built can't handle the demand. The developers are paying the charges levied for new construction but, the bulk of the monies required is pushed on to the taxpayers.
Christopher Leo of the University of Winnipeg has studied the problem. “When a metropolitan area is divided into neighborhoods where poverty predominates and others where comfortable circumstances are the rule, it is inevitable that there will be a concentration of social problems in the poor areas. And where social problems predominate, lawlessness follows. Increasing crime and growing poverty lead to the decay of some downtown neighbourhoods.”
Urban sociologist Peter Marcuse points to the changes in North American cities. “Ghettos are neighborhoods that are socially isolated primarily because their residents cannot afford to live elsewhere.” In contrast, “enclaves are neighborhoods that are socially isolated because people of a particular category choose to gather there, usually for mutual support and companionship.” Thus in Toronto one finds the enclaves of Chinatown, Little Italy, and the gay district. “In contrast, ghettos tend to imprison their residents and limit their opportunities.”
Sprawl development has its costs. Inner city schools are shut, parks and playgrounds are not upgraded, public transportation declines, crime increases, the inner city tax base erodes as housing deteriorates, new roads are built and inner city streets decay, snow removal costs rise, and school busing increases. Then there are the externalized costs which are rarely measured, including noise pollution and congestion, the stress and time lost driving cars, toxic air and water pollution, increased greenhouse gas emissions, the disappearance of green space, and the loss of high quality farmland.
The uneven pattern of development with less density has increased the demand for more roads than normally should be required to service the number of homes. Likewise the extended distances required for all the services demanded by these new homeowners.
While the suburban sprawl is increasing, the city core is left mainly to retirees and renters. Their services also need upgrading because of age, but fewer are left with the ability to pay. Families have moved away and schools are closing, becoming redundant to the newer schools built in suburbia.
It is less expensive to operate, maintain and replace infrastructure in compact communities. CMHC estimates savings of $11,000/unit over 75 years, a reduction of 9%. A compact community of 7,000 homes will save a municipality $77 million over 75 years – or $1 million per year. The approximate 200,000 homes built in Canada every year, if built on single lots adds up to $1.1 billion in costs in services each year.
“The cost of servicing sprawl is greater than the tax assessment we get from it,” says Jack Diamond, a Toronto architect and vocal opponent of sprawl. “Niagara-on-the-Lake measured that, for every dollar assessment they got from low-density development, it cost them $1.40 to service. That’s going broke.”
Sprawling subdivisions place time burdens on families with longer commutes and children who cannot travel independently. Those in the sprawl are finding that car ownership and maintenance costs increase as families move farther from the downtown core. They are driving further and more often. The drive to work each day that should have only been 35 –40 minutes, is now taking upwards of 2 hours each way. About 70% of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from transportation are from cars and trucks and 2/3 of greenhouse gases are generated within urban areas. The more urban areas extend outward the more GHG emissions grow, making it more difficult for Canada to meet its Kyoto targets. Sprawl’s excessive reliance on cars strains Canada’s energy supply, and adds to pressures to find new supplies.
Lands, Wildlife and Water Quality
Sprawl consumes green space and forests. Woodlands and wetlands are being sacrificed to sprawl, depriving wildlife of habitat and destroying native flora and fauna. Sprawl also threatens many rare and endangered species and contributes to exotic species invasion. Creating small isolated forest patches can disrupt pollination, seed dispersal, wildlife migration and breeding.
Increased pollution and elimination of the natural filters forests and woodlands provide results in declines of water and water quality wherever development takes over naturally forested areas. There is a reduction in rainwater absorption which interferes with the recharge of groundwater.
See Also How we contaminate groundwater The Green LaneTM, Environment Canada's World Wide Web site
From the David Suzuki Foundation Sprawl facts (PDF) Learn why sprawl is a problem
The Bank of America describes the impact of sprawl:
“Urban job centers have decentralized to the suburbs. New housing tracts have moved even deeper into agricultural and environmentally sensitive areas. Private auto use continues to rise. This acceleration of sprawl has surfaced enormous social, environmental and economic costs, which until now have been hidden, ignored, or quietly borne by society. The burden of these costs is becoming very clear. Businesses suffer from higher costs, a loss in worker productivity, and underutilized investments in older communities.”
“The business climate becomes less attractive. Suburban residents pay a heavy price in taxation and automobile expenses, while residents of older cities and suburbs lose access to jobs, social stability, and political power. Agriculture and ecosystems also suffer…We can no longer afford the luxury of sprawl.”
Putting the brakes on urban sprawl
by Lawrence Herzog Inside Edmonton | Vol. 23 No. 19 | May 12, 2005
Urban sprawl is threatening our environment, our health and our quality of life. Poorly planned and unbridled development is driving up our taxes, increasing traffic, pumping more pollution into the environment, devouring precious wetlands, farmlands and forests and burdening our communities with immense social and economic costs.
The isolated neighbourhoods furthest from the heart of the city, devoid of amenities, could well become the slums of the 21st century. By building on the fringes of our cities, we are adding to the cost of maintaining an ever more expensive infrastructure.
Developments on the fringes of an ever more spread out city are remnants of the old way of urbanization. For growth to be smart, we need to stop building low density, single use, auto-centric communities.
Sprawl gobbles up tax money, as dollars go to subsidize new developments instead of improving existing communities. It includes millions of dollars for new water and sewer lines, new schools and increased police and fire protection. The money to pay those bills needs to come from somewhere and that means higher taxes on existing residents, hastening the decline of our urban tax base.
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