WITH a whole continent at their disposal, North Americans like to think they’ll never run out of land.
Be it a new subdivision, shopping mall, big box retailer or residential acreage, there is always room. It’s simply a matter of expanding the city’s boundaries into the country.
That’s progress. After all, it’s just farmland that’s being paved over.
But with that attitude, an amazing 1.2 million acres of farmland is lost each year in the United States alone.
Canada suffers from the blight in a similar fashion. It is happening not just in the population hubs of southern Ontario and Vancouver’s lower mainland. Sprawl in an issue in Calgary, which grows by 2,000 people a month, in Edmonton, where the 5,000-acre Heritage Valley residential development is controversial, and in Winnipeg where population growth is slower but still eating into the country.
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Even smaller prairie cities are expanding and are ringed with acreages.
Ironically, cities are consuming the resource that prompted their settlement. Usually, cities sprang up in prime agricultural land to serve the farmers who cropped it.
The increasing pace of urban sprawl has prompted academics, environmentalists and activists to assess the costs.
Aside from loss of productive farmland, forest and wetlands, there are the costs of building roads, sewers, sidewalks, schools, community centres, and providing police, fire and garbage service.
Meanwhile, inner city schools close, and affluent people move to the suburbs leaving old neighbourhoods to the poor. Existing community centres and other resources are under-used.
An extreme reaction might be a moratorium on urban expansion, but it wouldn’t work.
It would be draconian to deny people the dream of owning their own house and lot. It would be unfair to deny farmers the profits of selling to residential developers.
Growing cities can actually help farmers, providing a nearby market for their food, superior health and entertainment services and an audience for agri-tourism ventures.
A more practical strategy is to limit sprawl and make better use of existing infrastructure. Some call it smart growth and it includes incentives to build high density in-fill development in the inner city and disincentives for low density development on the fringe.
Zoning bylaws can be updated to allow for a wider choice of housing in neighbourhoods.
Transportation can be planned so the car’s role is reduced and walking becomes a realistic alternative.
To farmers, these issues might seem remote, but at the heart of smart growth is the realization that the interests of urban and rural are intimately entwined.
Farmers must be involved as equals in this smart growth partnership.
