|
April
2001 Newsletter
Smart
Growth Summit
Submitted
by a member of Friends
Concerned
citizens of Hamilton are fighting many battles these days.
The proposed Red Hill Expressway, the urban boundary expansion
on the East Mountain, and the decaying downtown core are
issues that have mobilized activists and brought them into
conflict with politicians and business interests. At the
same time, we read about the "infrastructure crisis"
- billions of dollars must be spent on crumbling sewers
and roads in our city.
The
underlying connections between these issues were brought
into sharp focus at the "Smart Growth" summit
held at the Burlington Convention Centre on April 5. The
gathering was organized by Rob MacIsaac, Mayor of Burlington,
a city that feels the effects of unmanaged urban growth
in ways different from Hamilton (such as Burlington's QEW
turning into a parking lot every day during rush hour.)
I thought it was appropriate that a member of Hamilton's
activist community should be present at this conference,
so I called Mayor MacIsaac's office to invite myself.
The
day started with a "networking breakfast" at 7:30
am. They gave me a conference package that included a list
of attendees. I was stunned to see nearly 250 people were
signed up for the day, many of them with high profiles in
business and political circles.
The
first familiar face I saw was Dave Braden, councilor from
rural Flamborough and long-time advocate of sensible urban
planning. With a look of joyous bewilderment on his face,
Dave asked me "are all these people here for the sprawl
conference? I thought it would be much smaller." As
a member of one of Ontario's most regressive councils for
the past seven years, we can't blame Dave for being pessimistic
that anyone shared his concerns for rationality in municipal
planning.
At
the breakfast table I met Mr. Peter Walker of a Toronto
planning consulting company. He wasted no time pointing
out that there was no urban sprawl problem in the Greater
Toronto Area; these new developments in Mississauga and
Brampton actually had quite high densities. He came to the
conference, he said, to "see the myth of sprawl get
perpetuated," and no doubt to take the opportunity
to spread an opposing view. I wondered how many more of
the 250 guests were there for that reason.
The
day got rolling with some opening remarks from host Mayor
MacIsaac. He pointed out a few obvious but usually overlooked
facts: growth has big-ticket costs, the way we grow is as
important as whether we grow, and that the traffic just
won't stop. His remarks were followed by a rather flat and
uninspiring speech by Municipal Affairs Minister the Hon.
Chris Hodgson. With his statements that "growth is
a good thing" and that "Smart Growth is not meant
to be a straitjacket," Hodgson reassured the developers
in the audience that they have nothing to fear from all
this Smart Growth talk coming from Mike Harris lately.
After
his speech, Minister Hodgson jumped into his limousine and
headed back to Queen's Park. Ontario Liberal Leader Dalton
McGuinty at least stayed around till lunch. McGuinty made
the following comment to a Spectator reporter about the
Mike Harris Smart Growth initiative: "Harris has been
a proponent of Dumb Growth for the last six years. He has
clearly been in favour of developers. It's much like the
arsonist who wants to take credit for putting out the fire."
Since
the urban policies of the U.S. state and federal governments
are generally more advanced than those of Ontario and Canada,
it was fitting that the first keynote speaker was an American.
John Frece is the Smart Growth Special Assistant to the
Governor of Maryland. Maryland passed comprehensive Smart
Growth legislation in 1997 and Mr. Frece had many success
stories to share after just four years.
Maryland's
Smart Growth initiative was incentive-based and developers
could expect state assistance if they built within specially
designated high-density zones. Other aspects of Maryland's
program: State funding of inner-city schools went from 20%
of the education capital budget to 80%, in order to entice
young families back to neighbourhoods that had become distressed
(contrast that with the recent inner-city school closings
in Hamilton and Burlington.) Under the "Live Near Your
Work" program, the state paid bonuses to Maryland workers
who relocated into urban neighbourhoods within a specified
zone near their workplace.
The
University of Maryland had campus expansion plans into farmland
on the outskirts of town; a planned courthouse was to be
out near the interstate; and a social services agency had
plans to relocate at the edge of the urban boundary next
to the airport, miles from anyone who used their services.
The Governor's Smart Growth Team worked with all these groups
and successfully convinced them to build in the downtowns
of their respective communities.
Of
interest to Friends of Red Hill: The state of Maryland
cancelled no less than five "highway bypass projects"
for the following reasons stated by Mr. Frece: The highways
would have done damage to the urban cores they were bypassing,
they would have consumed scarce infrastructure dollars,
and they would have continued to promote dependence on the
automobile. Terry Cooke of Fluke Transport and Hamilton
Mayor Bob Wade were in the audience, as well as representatives
from the Hamilton Chamber of Commerce/Get Hamilton Moving
Task Force. I hope they were listening carefully.
I
didn't expect to hear such radical notions as canceling
highways being preached by anyone at the conference, so
I was pleased that the keynote speaker gave the idea some
respectability first thing in the morning. At this point
I neatly added "Friends of Red Hill Valley, Hamilton"
as my organizational affiliation on my nametag.
The
tales told by Mr. Frece were positive and inspirational,
but we would be brought back down to earth by the next speaker,
Jim Balfour, P. Eng., president of Dillon Consulting. Mr.
Balfour laid out the lamentable realities of the GTA, Ontario
and Canada in contrast to the great work that is being done
in dozens of other U.S. cities and states.
According
to Mr. Balfour, GO Transit and the Toronto Transit Commission
are both "gasping for life," the sewage treatment
infrastructure of the GTA is from the 60's and 70's with
nothing new happening in that area, and the province of
Ontario has "left the field" in the critical area
of infrastructure planning and investment. The 250 people
attending the conference were informed that there is a "leadership
vacuum" in Ontario with regard to the basic infrastructure
so critical to our lives, economic and otherwise.
Mr.
Balfour pointed out that while there was an obvious lag
in new infrastructure investment, there was a less obvious
and more dangerous deficit in the maintenance funding of
old infrastructure. (Again, it was refreshing to hear one
of the core messages of FORHV reaching a larger audience.)
He gave credit to the staff of the City of Hamilton for
at least recognizing there was a problem with our water
rates being too low. He certainly had nothing good to say
about anything Hamilton was doing to fix these problems.
The
summit sponsors gave us a wonderful lunch with a truly exquisite
ice cream dessert. I had the pleasure of dining with Mr.
Chris Murray, Environmental Planner for the Red Hill Creek
Expressway project. Like myself, Mr. Murray had not been
formally invited to the summit, but successfully "invited
himself" due to his interest in the issues being discussed.
The
lunch was enhanced with more good news stories from George
Puil of the Greater Vancouver Regional District & Transportation
Authority. When the Vancouver region sat down to develop
their future growth strategy, they started with two core
concepts: the preservation of Green Zones between developed
areas within the region, and promotion of alternatives to
the automobile (the Get Hamilton Moving Task Force folks
must have been squirming in their seats by this point.)
Under the framework that was developed, municipalities voluntarily
devoted one half of their "developable lowlands"
as permanent greenspace.
Urban
planning idealists talk about "mixed zoning" with
residential and commercial uses side-by-side. This kind
of zoning was allowed in the Vancouver region with great
success. Mr. Puil boasted that there are 110,000 people
in downtown Vancouver who are able to walk to work (he added
that this is very helpful in light of the current transit
strike underway there.)
Provincial
gasoline taxes in BC amount to 15 cents/litre. Transit advocates
in Ontario would like to see a portion of our gasoline taxes
be used to support transit expansion; this idea is met with
hostility from the federal and provincial governments. By
contrast, in Vancouver, 10 cents per litre (as well as a
portion of the sales tax collected from parking lots) is
handed over to the Greater Vancouver Transportation Authority.
(They even get a cut from the property taxes collected from
"free" parking areas at malls and institutions.)
This money is used to expand Vancouver's highly successful
SkyTrain and SeaBus public transit programs.
For
us discouraged Ontarians, this all sounds fairly utopian.
Utopian is probably the right word; Vancouver was designated
as the world's most livable city (again) by an international
human resources company.
Mr.
Puil mentioned one problem that Vancouver shares with the
GTA: the neglect shown by the federal government for Canada's
urban centers. Unlike the U.S. where Washington generously
supports transit and urban redevelopment, Ottawa only seems
to understand the "take" part of its give-and-take
with Canadian cities. Mr. Puil has repeatedly made representations
to federal politicians and bureaucrats; from his experience
he described federal Finance Minister Paul Martin as a major
"stumbling block."
The
people that attended this excellent conference were fortunate
to have the problems and solutions of GTA sprawl explained
to them so clearly by such well-informed, experienced guest
speakers. I congratulate Burlington Mayor MacIsaac, first
for his vision of a meeting where "Smart Growth"
is brought to the attention of local and provincial decision-makers,
and secondly for the very successful realization of that
vision.
As
always, it "remains to be seen" how quickly the
solutions proposed at the summit are put into practice.
To be cynical about it, I would guess that maybe one third
of the persons attending the summit were conscientious leaders
like Dave Braden, or local business people who are being
hurt by congestion and want a solution, or high-minded idealists
like myself with nothing better to do on a Thursday. Another
third would be individuals looking for a new trend to profit
from, either politically or financially (half of the guests
were developers or consulting firms.) And a final third
were likely present to make sure that we keep doing things
in Ontario like we always have, and call sprawl an "invention"
or a "myth" (see the quote from Peter Walker at
the beginning of this article.)
The
last word on the day came from Ms. Kris Mackenzie, an 18-year-old
high school student who wants a future in politics and environmental
issues. She was another one of those of us who read about
the summit in the paper and invited ourselves. In trying
to arrange her ride home, Kris pointed out that of all places
to hold a summit on "Smart Growth," could they
not have picked a location that was on a bus route?
|
