This is the second in a series of articles that is examining one of the biggest challenges we face in Wellington-Halton Hills and throughout. 

As argued in the previous column, one of the fundamental causes of environmental destruction in is urban sprawl. Sprawl is destroying thousands of acres of habitat for flora and fauna, threatening the Great Lakes, increasing greenhouse gas emissions and endangering our ability to maintain our own basic food supply. In addition, the system of highways and infrastructure required to support these sprawling communities is simply not economically sustainable.

So what can be done?  At a basic level, there are two solutions – adopt a zero population growth policy or significantly overhaul urban and transit planning.

The first solution, zero population growth, does not entail zero economic growth. Environmentalists, like Pulitzer Prize winner Jared Diamond, have pointed this out and Scandinavian countries are evidence of this fact.  In Canada, we have a below replacement birth rate but a growing population due to immigration. Since our birth rate is below replacement, Canada needs immigration to maintain population levels.  A zero population growth policy would entail adjusting immigrations rates so a constant population level of about 33 million is maintained.  Levels of immigration could be adjusted regularly to meet this goal, and as demographics change, immigration rates would be adjusted up or down to maintain this constant population.  However, at this juncture, there appears little appetite to reduce population growth rates.

Since there is little appetite to reduce our population growth, the only other solution – one which allows for population growth while minimizing environmental damage – is to overhaul urban and transit planning.  In other words, we need to ensure that the vast majority of any additional population growth is absorbed within the existing built up urban areas in the GTA, while committing billions from provincial and federal governments for public transit. Cities like Toronto and Mississauga will have to significantly increase their populations, while undertaking significant expansions of public transit systems. This will result in higher populations and densities in cities like Toronto and Mississauga, an easing in the flow of commuters and goods, and in turn, an end to sprawl. But it requires a major rethink of urban planning and massive investments in public transit.  

These increases in densities and populations are required to provide the level of transit ridership needed to justify the operational costs of major dedicated right-of-way public transit systems. These transit systems do not come without a price.  Tens of billions in public monies would be required to build the kind of public transit system needed to move people and goods around these denser cities.  This level of investment is beyond municipal means and would require commitments from both federal and provincial governments. But the alternative – more sprawl – comes with an even higher price.

A denser population does not necessarily require turning these cities into Le Corbusier’s canyon of towering skyscrapers, where entire neighbourhoods are levelled to make way for forty story condo towers, as was done in the building of post-war St. James Town in Toronto.  These increases in population can be accommodated by building five to eight story densities along major transit corridors throughout the city, along streets like Yonge and Bloor in Toronto or Eglinton and Hurontario in Mississauga.  Either way – 40 story condos in the core of the city or five to eight story structures throughout the city – these cities would be the better city for it.  Pursuing intensification by building skyscrapers would create downtown cores of Manhattan-like density, not necessarily a bad thing.  Manhattan is an eminently liveable and exciting city.  Alternatively, pursuing intensification with five to eight story densities would create cities more akin to London or Paris, also eminently liveable.  Either one of these two approaches – skyscrapers in the core or consistent five to eight story density along major corridors – is viable.  But what is not viable is building more single unit, tract housing on agricultural lands. The era of building tract housing must come to an end if we are ever to tackle our environmental and economic challenges.  What happens in Toronto and Mississauga will have a profound impact on us in Wellington and Halton.

More on these solutions in the following column.