This is a part one of three posts outlining our “two sides of the coin” approach to advocacy, or our focus on achieving what is known as “co-benefits”.
In this post, we focus on the first side of the coin, which is planning our communities in a way that is more efficient and that enhances the quality of life for residents.
Spend just a little while with us, and you’ll quickly understand that when we say “environment”, we mean it in the classical sense, which is, “the area in which something exists or lives”. In other words, it includes the areas of our homes, our neighbourhoods, and our cities, as well as those areas more commonly associated with “the environment”, such as the wilderness or the global commons.
In this post, the first of three that are planned in this series, we cover why planning our communities in a way that maximizes what are known as co-benefits makes a lot of sense, including by reducing the burden on the taxpayer and increasing quality of life and enjoyment.
Part two, which focuses on environmental benefits, and part three, which ties parts one and two together, as well as provides more specific information on our efforts, are in the pipeline, so keep an eye out!
As an organization that focuses primarily on issues surrounding the Greenbelt, you might be a bit surprised by our focus on municipal planning and urban areas. The Greenbelt is a crown jewel on Ontario’s planning regime, and it helps to both direct development toward areas where it’s most beneficial, by, in large part, restricting sprawl, this, in turn, helps protect the valuable natural assets, such as farmland, fresh water, and clean air, that enable our high quality of life.
We think it is important to view the Greenbelt in this context, as a policy that serves as the foundation stone of Ontario’s prosperous and sustainable future. The Greenbelt, in other words, is a valuable tool that our Province has to shape land-use in a way that improves our cities, towns, agricultural areas, and natural habitat.
It’s crucial to underline, accordingly, the fact that, as a tool, the Greenbelt can be further implemented – enhanced and expanded – for the benefit of all Ontarians.
Land-use and climate action! What could be more exciting than that!?
But seriously, land-use is a pretty dry topic on the surface – zoning, development applications, approval processes and appeals… (although the right of citizens to appeal has been severely curtailed in Ontario of later by the Ford government).
For evidence of how dry this stuff is, one need look no further than council meetings, where the vast majority of attendees are suits, representatives of developers. The reason they are there is pretty obvious – they stand to make money if they are able to get a decision going their way.
For citizens, on the other hand, attending these meetings is taking time from family or other social obligations – and it’s time they aren’t paid for, or, for the most part, time that would result in financial benefit to them.
Thus, the decks tend to be stacked at these meetings.
Councils, elected by the public, generally do their best to ensure decisions aren’t outrageously at odds with the public’s interest. But, councillors are often overworked and under-resourced, and need to rely on information given to them by city staff (also often overworked and under-resourced). In this scenario, it isn’t difficult to see the opportunity for developers to step into the gap and provide information and resources that buttress their claims.
For us at SCGC, a lot of our focus is on these processes because they determine where houses get built, and conversely where houses don’t get built (which happens to be where farmland and natural habitat is preserved!).
To be clear, building houses in not the issue – it’s where they are built that is typically the problem.
Below we briefly sketch out the first of these components.
Our suburban style of living, while there are a lot of nice things about it, is putting a huge hole in municipal budgets.
The roads that we use to get to and from work, to drop our kids off at school, to purchase groceries and to visit the mall, all cost a lot to maintain.
In 2021 the Financial Accountability Office of Ontario (FAO) released a report that puts the municipal infrastructure deficit at more than $50 billion. This is how much it would cost to bring roads, bridges, and other municipal infrastructure to a state of good repair.
Spread out infrastructure is less efficient and more expensive to maintain. The cost is likely to only increase as climate change results in more extreme weather, placing additional stress on it. (The FAO did a report on this, too.)
One of the biggest bang-for-buck transformations that a municipality can do is convert farmland into urban development. This goes for developers, too, which is why many of them love to build sprawl.
The purchase price of farmland is low, relative to a similar size of land with existing infrastructure and development. When this land is brought into the urban envelope, its value increases dramatically.
(Witness the recent Greenbelt scandal, where plots of land value at $240 million prior to being given permission to build skyrocketed to a value of $8.523 billion once lands were removed from protections.)
This, of course, is extremely profitable for developers, and municipalities can, for a period of time, also feel like they have come out ahead. The newly added tax base contributes much needed revenue, which can be used to address those infrastructure needs outlined above.
But, over the course of several years, that spread-out infrastructure in the newly developed area, along with pre-existing spread-out infrastructure, starts to act as a drag on municipal coffers, and ultimately creates a net-negative revenue flow – more goes out to maintain it than comes in from the tax base it services. (By some estimates, municipalities receive just 10 – 20% of revenue vs liability over the lifetime of these developments. Any business run this way would have been bankrupted long ago, and yet that’s what we demand of our elected leaders.)
Factoring in the costs of pollution associated with needing a car to access amenities, like groceries, not to mention the contribution to climate change those cars make, and those costs only grow.
This is why experts in the area have taken to calling sprawl a “Ponzi scheme” and “Ontario’s tar sands“.
A recent study by the City of Ottawa found that, every year, it cost $465 per capita to service residents in low density areas, while it took in $606 more per capita than it spent from those living in high density areas.
Sprawl is an expensive, and inherently inequitable form of development. Those living in suburban sprawl areas don’t pay the full cost for the infrastructure servicing them, with those living in more dense parts of the jurisdiction, which often tend to be those who are also less well off, subsidizing their cost.
Click the image for a larger version.
When our local governments are constantly needing to increase revenue simply to maintain what we’ve already got, it puts a huge amount of pressure on other services, including many that we place high value on.
These services include cultural activities, funding for public transportation, for affordable housing and mental health, parks, libraries, schools and emergency services all have to compete for a slice of the funding pie, and many are limited due to the pressure on budgets that municipalities face, in no small part thanks to unsustainable patterns of urban development.
Even more pressure is added to the mix when costs associated with a rapidly changing climate are factored in.
As severe and unpredictable weather events ramp up, investments need to be made to ensure infrastructure, such as storm water systems, are able to cope. What were considered “100-year storms” just a decade ago are now likely to happen on an almost yearly basis, and the rare events – those 100-year storms – will be even wilder.
Over the past few decades, there has been a growth in the number of planners interested in how the way that we build our communities can improve quality of life for residents, enhance economic vitality, as well as promote a healthy environment. Much of the impetus behind this emergent practice is in response to the negative impacts that car centred planning, such as sprawl, has had on the livability of the places we call home.
Practices like promoting walkability in neighbourhoods, ensuring there is a range of housing choices and a mix of building types, with proximity between residential and commercial areas, accessible schools and other services, such as transit, as well as green-spaces such as parks and playgrounds, are some of what advocates of this form of planning promote.
Well-known planners in this area include Brent Toderian, former Chief Planner for the City of Vancouver, Jennifer Keesmaat, former Chief Planner for the City of Toronto, as well as Charles Marohn, of Strong Towns, to name a few.
And, while more conventional approaches to urban planning remain dominant, these ideas have filtered through. Concepts like complete streets, transit oriented design, along with a growing awareness of the risks of and vulnerabilities to climate change impacts, are increasingly present in high-level policy and planning documents.
(Until it was effectively scrapped by the Ford government, the Growth Plan placed a premium on complete communities, reflecting many of the principles outlined above.)
This image, taken from the City of Toronto’s website outlining their efforts to create more complete streets, illustrates how many municipalities are trying to reinvigorate streetscapes and enhance the experiences of the residents who live around them.
Credit: City of Toronto
We can build our communities in a way that improves our quality of life, that supports a thriving economy, and that promotes a healthy environment. Cities like Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver, and Montreal are implementing projects in-line with many of the goals outlined above.
By enhancing the livability of our urban areas, including with increased public transit and active transportation like walking, we mitigate negative impacts like carbon emissions and health risks associated with sedentary lifestyles. These are some of the co-benefits of better planning.
In our next post in this series, we look more closely at how poor planning impacts the environment.
-/-
This work by Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0
Sharing builds awareness and helps achieve a better, more sustainable future.
By building spaces that prioritize equity, diversity, and inclusion, we are setting the foundations for a future that is more sustainable. Sprawl, including vertical sprawl, is not the right way to do this.
There are a lot of misconceptions, myths, and misunderstandings regarding the role that highways and cars play in our economy, and the impact they have on our environment and communities. Many of these are coming to the fore with the Bradford Bypass. Here we address some of them.
We can no longer treat land use as its own issue, nor can we always assume that growth is always a net benefit to our communities. This is simply not true. We can grow our communities in ways that provide affordable housing, protect our natural spaces and water and aspire to create healthy, vibrant centres where people can live and work.
York Region is planning to increase its capacity for wastewater treatment. The rationale is that this is required to meeting a projected increase of roughly 150,000 in population by 2031.
A key aspect of this project that is important to recognize that it is more than the sum of its parts. The EA for the project, on its own, does not capture the impacts the wastewater treatment facility will have on the region.
The provincial government is proposing a highway that would connect the 404 with the 400. The proposed route passes along the northern edge of Bradford, and through portions of the Holland Marsh.
The 15-minute community (sometimes also called 15-minute ‘city’ or ‘neighbourhood’) is a vision for development that is human and community oriented.
15-minute communities occur where the basic things we need, like groceries, workplaces, doctor’s offices, community services and childcare, are all available within a 15 minute walk or roll from home.
SCGC, along with other organizations, has been advocating for a move towards establishing 15-minute communities in Simcoe County before development occurs outside of the built-up area.
What this would mean, in practice, is that existing communities would continue to be developed until residents are able to access basic amenities within a 15 minute walk. Only after that condition has been met would development to expand the community outward be allowed.
Read on below for reason why this makes sense, financially, for our health and safety, and for the environment.
The 15-minute community (sometimes also called 15-minute ‘city’ or ‘neighbourhood’) is a vision for development that is human and community oriented. 15-minute communities are communities where the basic things we need, like groceries, workplaces, doctor’s offices, community services and childcare, are all available within a 15 minute walk or roll from home.
Many of us live in suburbs because this has been the norm since urban sprawl was adopted in the 50’s. But more municipalities are realizing that this is a really inefficient way of organizing our communities.
Developers give money to municipalities when they build that is meant to pay for infrastructure, but this up-front cost doesn’t cover repairs and upgrades needed later on.
When infrastructure is built in a way that is spread out, like with sprawl, the tax the municipality is able to collect on a per-person basis is also spread out, resulting in a tax-base that is much smaller, or spread out, in proportion to the larger infrastructure build.
Ontario’s current infrastructure deficit is estimated by the Financial Accountability Officer at $52 billion.
Roads make up the largest share, at $21.1 billion, with buildings and facilities at $9.5 billion, wastewater at $7.3 billion, potable water at $5.3, bridges and culverts at $4.3, storm water at $3.8, and transit at $1 billion.
Click on the image for a larger version, or click through here for the whole report.
By building in a way that brings things closer together, mixing different elements that we all need, such as grocery and clothing stores, cafes and other local shops, into the same neighbourhoods, we maximize that use-value of the land.
This means, because it’s more efficient, that we can do more of what we want, such as funding public services like transit, building more playgrounds and parks, or funding community centres and theatres.
Sprawl hurts us all in ways that are often difficult to see, and the squeeze it puts on the public, the difficult choices municipalities are forced to make between maintaining a road into suburbia or building a childcare centre is just one example.
Canadians spend an average of $10,000 per year on owning a car. Multiply that by the number of cars your household has.
What could you put that money towards if you didn’t have to drive everywhere?
Would you retire early? Help with your child’s education? Take time to explore the world?
These kinds of communities improve quality of life and make the places where people live more, well, livable.
As the places we need to go are brought closer to homes, our commutes and need to drive everywhere shrinks. We spend less time in traffic and more time being out in our community, interacting with neighbours, supporting local businesses, exercising and socializing.
15-minute communities are also good climate policy. Low-rise density development produces the least emissions, while sprawl produces the most (with high-rise development somewhere in the middle). This is because these communities require less car and land use, and attached buildings are much more efficient for infrastructure and servicing (especially if this denser development is occurring in already-serviced areas, rather than undeveloped land). With about half of domestic carbon emissions being under control of municipal land-use planning, this is a pretty big deal for meeting our climate targets.
We’ve seen a huge rise in popularity of the idea of the 15-minute community during the pandemic, as many people stopped having to commute for work and were spending more time in their own neighbourhoods. People are realizing what their neighbourhoods were missing and the potential of what they could be.
15-minute communities have the potential to address so many of our current problems with the same planning approach, largely because of the density they require to make things walkable:
Climate Action
Cost Effective
Transportation
Public Health
Local Economy
Affordable Housing
Aging in Place
Social Health
Child-Friendly Communities
In Simcoe County, we’re not all big cities (Barrie and Orillia aside), but we do have Primary Settlement Areas, which are places where the province is directing a portion of population growth that we need to accommodate here. These are the perfect places to embrace the 15-minute community vision.
In existing neighbourhoods, we can introduce gentle density to complete these neighbourhoods and give residents the nearby services that they deserve, while increasing the walkability and sense of community in these places. This means that less additional land will have to be developed and makes the direct and indirect cost (through taxes) lower for residents because it’s way more efficient for servicing costs.
Where new neighbourhoods need to be built, in Designated Greenfield Areas or where an MZO has been approved, these neighbourhoods should be planned as 15-minute communities to give future residents the best quality of life while being the most affordable they can be – for residents and municipalities. If we absolutely need to use more land, we should use it as efficiently, sustainably and cost effectively as possible. Moving towards 15-minute communities improves livability for current and future residents in these existing communities and because they are compactly built, more people can live in these places, so that less people need to move into the more rural areas of the County.
Local MPPs complicit in $8.3 billion dollar Greenbelt land grab.
It is increasingly clear that policies that promote increased vehicle traffic should be seen as a last resort, and implemented only where no other options are possible.
Recent moves by Ontario’s government seem likely to create conditions for a number of crises in the next few decades that, when combined, are greater than the sum of their parts. This is what’s known as a “polycrisis”, a term popularized by economic historian Adam Tooze.
…value in the context of a community is achieved through livability, which in turn drives economic and social dynamism. Propinquity, or the accessibility of the areas we inhabit, whether that’s for people we socialise with or for consumer good or employment, is the key metric to achieve in this regard. Build communities for people and good things happen.
Highways are the gateway drug for sprawl and the Bypass is a perfect example. Developers own over 3000 acres of land around this highway waiting for the greenlight to destroy more farmland and wetlands.
I didn’t know what I was in for, but I knew that helping youth get engaged through a grassroots organization was something I couldn’t pass up. This is exactly what I was looking for – a chance to do something in my community.
The content on this website, by
the Simcoe County Greenbelt Coalition,
is licensed under
CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Hi there!
Use this form to send an email to our general inquiries address.
Hi there!
Use this form to send Adam an email.
Hi there!
Use this form to send Julie an email.
Will you give a small amount to help us continue to do the work that we do?
As a small, grassroots environmental organization, each contribution we receive truly makes a big difference.
A monthly missive, full of information on what’s happening in Simcoe County and beyond, community polls you can vote on, and deep dives into key topics.
Friends. Online censorship by unaccountable tech companies, combined with an all-out assault on the Greenbelt by Ontario’s developers/government, make this a perilous time for the future of democracy and the power of the people in Ontario.
We need to build new ways of empowering those who believe in accountability, in a healthy environment, and in communities ready to thrive in the economy of tomorrow.
Join our supporter network and stay informed about efforts and actions to protect the Greenbelt, to build communities that support the health and well-being of people, and to lay the foundations of a resilient, climate friendly future.
