| Springbank area residents are vowing to keep fighting a controversial annexation proposal by the City of Calgary that has raised questions about urban sprawl.
The debate centres on Calgary’s plan to expand westward into Springbank, an area currently occupied by small agricultural operations and scattered acreages.
Springbank residents opposed to the plan say losing the land to the city would destroy their sense of community, and would be another loss of crucial agricultural land to the bulging city. City planners, however, say the land is needed to accommodate Calgary’s growth, and if Springbank residents are worried about urban sprawl, they should look in their own backyards.
Ena Spalding, a member of the Springbank Community Planning Association, says many Springbank residents are bitterly opposed to the annexation proposal because they spent years working on their own development plan that would maintain the community’s character. They also worry their community will end up like areas of neighbouring east Springbank, which were annexed by the city several years ago and have been subject to "a total mishandling" of development, according to Spalding.
"We don’t want to become part of the city," she says. "We’re not anti-development, we just want good development. There’s a community here that has its own value.
"Urban sprawl is a big problem – what do we, as people who live in a community, want to pass on to our children?"
Brenda Goode, a Municipal District (MD) of Rocky View councillor which is negotiating the annexation with the city, says there is a lot of opposition to the plan in Springbank. She wouldn’t divulge information about the confidential negotiations – which have been drawn-out and complicated by Calgary Mayor Dave Bronconnier’s recent initiative to snap up future parkland in areas outside the city – but says the proposal will swallow a dwindling amount of producing agricultural land.
"We can’t keep transferring the best lands out of agricultural production," Goode says. "This area supports some of the best agricultural land in the world.... This is the fourth (recent annexation proposal). We have to maintain a viable and workable MD."
City planners say the annexation is necessary to keep enough land available within the city to accommodate 30 years of growth. Annexation project leader Tim Creelman says the city is careful not to waste its land and is conscious of the sprawl problems that have plagued other North American cities.
"All suburbs in the city have six to eight units per acre, which is very dense by suburban standards, and twice as dense as some U.S. cities," Creelman says. "If you really want to see sprawl, look at Springbank (acreages) or, say, (nearby) Bearspaw – there are two-acre lots."
Creelman says the city is looking to redevelop inner-city land to allow more people to live on less space, but the vast majority of growth will continue to come in outlying areas, so it must plan accordingly. |
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