| Instead of continually annexing land in order to grow outwards, the City of Calgary should consider capping its physical boundaries and focusing on denser development within city limits, says the Canada West Foundation, a Calgary-based think tank.
"Urban growth boundaries alone may not be the answer, but they can be part of the solution to control the never-ending, outward expansion of urban areas. Even if the effectiveness of urban growth boundaries is debatable, at the very least the idea draws attention to the possibility of a new urban form that is compact, innovative, and ecologically responsible and comes with a smaller price tag," states a recent foundation newsletter.
In the newsletter, the foundation also calls for greater co-operation between the city and rural municipalities in land use planning in order to preserve agricultural and environmentally sensitive land.
Harvey Buckley, president of Action For Agriculture and a Cochrane-area rancher, says both recommendations are long overdue.
"Our cities can’t continue to sprawl out over our agricultural land," he says. "We can’t afford to lose that land."
He says the way communities are currently being built "is totally nuts" and he says taxpayers should no longer have to subsidize new roads and infrastructure for the burgeoning number of new suburban or country residential communities.
Currently the City of Calgary maintains a 30-year supply of land on which to grow. However, the logic of this strategy is starting to be questioned because of mounting problems that come along with urban sprawl, such as longer commutes, more traffic congestion and demand for costly new roads and infrastructure. Meanwhile valuable agricultural and environmentally sensitive land is disappearing underneath new suburbs.
Canada West Foundation policy analyst Karen Wilkie says because there are no geographical boundaries preventing Calgary from growing, the city has just always had a tradition of growing out in every direction.
"The idea of growth and getting bigger has always been a sign of success and a healthy city," says Wilkie.
However, she says other cities in North America have consciously decided to limit their physical boundaries in order to maintain a better quality of life for residents.
If Calgary decided to cap its boundaries, Wilkie says the city would have to focus on creating much denser neighbourhoods as well as cleaning up and redeveloping old industrial areas, such as those that exist in the Ramsay area.
Wilkie says just capping the City of Calgary’s boundaries would not protect agricultural and environmentally sensitive land outside the city because rural municipalities are allowing an increasing number of country residential areas to spring up.
"Right now there’s unco-ordinated growth," says Wilkie.
City of Calgary alderman Ric McIver agrees that the city needs to do more to combat urban sprawl, such as creating higher density housing, but he’s opposed to establishing specific limits to growth.
"What happens when you do that is the land values go up and nobody’s kids stay," he says.
Meanwhile he says that "rural sprawl," in the form of country residential lots, is a worse problem than urban sprawl.
"The rural sprawl chews up way more arable farmland. It’s much harder on the environment," he says. "I think some of our neighbours outside of Calgary have allowed development that’s very irresponsible."
McIver adds that septic systems used in country residential areas have the potential to contaminate groundwater.
McIver agrees with the Canada West Foundation that more inter-regional co-operation is needed on land-use planning. McIver says Calgary has a good relationship with the M.D. of Foothills but he says the city has often ended up in conflict with the M.D. of Rocky View over land-use planning decisions.
A spokesperson from the M.D. of Rocky View could not be reached for comment. |
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