Larry's Corner

Sprawl: Myth and Reality

By Larry Di Ianni
(posted December 18, 2007)  

The current provincial and most local governments are attempting to curb the deleterious effects of a phenomenon called ‘urban sprawl’, or as it should more accurately be described, ‘suburban sprawl’. Like other North American cities, Hamilton has felt the effects of this housing trend for a long time.

I recall, when growing up in the inner city, that it would be a Sunday treat to be piled into my uncle’s old Pontiac and driven to the Stoney Creek Dairy. We would quickly reach the limits of Hamilton proper and pass what seemed endless miles of orchards and open space before reaching our favourite ice cream destination. This was in the late 50’s and early 60’s. Of course now you can ride to the Dairy without having to leave the city. Not only did municipal amalgamation swallow up the Creek, but the orchards have disappeared into a series of urban neighbourhoods. That is sprawl. It is the spreading out of a city and its suburbs over rural land.

Residents of sprawling neighborhoods tend to live in single-family homes and commute by automobile to work. This lower population density is an indicator of sprawl, a term which has come to have negative connotations with urban planners who criticize its lack of public transportation and its pedestrian unfriendly neighbourhoods. As well, environmentalists detest this sprawl because of increased automobile emissions into the atmosphere; and because farmlands have been given up forever to urban development. For a city like Hamilton, the evacuation of the core into the suburbs has also meant that a hole has been left in the middle of our city creating a donut effect on the municipality. Compounding matters, a lot of the wealth with its concomitant tax base migrated to the suburbs away from the urban center. Even in a two-tier regional system, these suburban residents contributed only $.50 of every dollar, at max, to city issues. The balance went to education and the local communities. Malls followed residents to their new neighbourhoods, further complicating the evacuation effect on the inner city by citizens who no longer had a need to visit the downtown area for their shopping convenience. Over time, Hamilton lost people, money and most unfortunately, loyalty. In fact some of these same Hamiltonians who migrated to Ancaster, Stoney Creek, Flamborough, Dundas and Glanbrook, became the city’s harshest critics during the amalgamation debates.

I remember the seeds of these unfortunate events dating back to much earlier days. As an example, even though it is now an inner city mall, back in the 60’s the Center Mall was on the periphery of Hamilton’s borders. As a student I sold shoes at the Simpsons-Sears store as it was called then. The manager would begin each Saturday with an inspirational speech to the salesclerks assembled at the foot of the escalator. We would all cheer as the manager reported the previous Saturday’s activity as compared to the downtown department stores. “We won the retail wars”, he would intone. “You can shoot a cannon at King and James and not hit anybody,” he’d boast. “The shoppers were all here; and this Saturday is going to be better. Go get them!” Is it any wonder that the Eaton’s, Zellers, Right House, Kresge’s, Robinson’s Woolworth’s and Eames and Sons, which were all downtown, disappeared only to find new incarnations in the suburban shopping plazas.

The question of who is at fault for this having happened is one that is hotly debated by the ‘anti-sprawl’ people, elected officials, activists and environmentalists. Is it the developers and their greed? Is it short sighted public officials? Is it an unfocussed population which did not realize what it was doing by allowing this to happen? Is it local and senior governments and their lacklustre policies? Is it all the above? Let me make a couple of observations then move to the more important question of what to do about this issue now, since the history of what happened here and elsewhere cannot be changed.

Firstly, everyone loves to pick on the developers because they have done undeniably well in the development industry over the last decade or so. Developers do well when the economy is good and they do poorly when it is bad. Many bankruptcies are part of that territory during the down times. However, economic times have been very good lately that we all forget that. These businessmen want to make a dollar, but they do so knowing that a market share exists. They don’t lead trends, they follow them; and have become expert at exploiting the desire for migration to the suburbs. Should they be putting some increased resources in inner city developments? Yes, absolutely. And some are but only after receiving incentives from the municipality. I had many discussions with developers trying to get them to come downtown. Promises were always louder than action, regrettably.

What about senior levels of government? The province has always had programs to curb sprawl, but they have also been schizophrenic about their desire to do so since the Province, in this area, has owned the largest tracts of land in the suburbs, lands that it has systematically sold to the development industry for development purposes. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t control sprawl while feeding it with readily available, often serviced, land.

As for the local municipality, it couldn’t control sprawl primarily because of its governance structure. This structure was called Regional Government. When the Region was first set up it had a notion that the lower tier muncipalities of Stoney Creek, Hamilton, Dundas, Glanbrook, Ancaster and Flamborough would look after local needs in roads, parks and other services., while Regional government would look after the big ticket items: water and sewers, policing, public health, transit, regional planning, Official Plans, and how and if the city would grow. There were successes, but on the planning front, this was by and large a failure. And it wasn’t because the Regional Chairs didn’t try. They did. We had some of the most talented politicians leading the region: Bill Sears, Terry Cook, even Reg Whynott, who learned on the job, tried. Ann Jones couldn’t quite get beyond her ceremonial role being overshadowed by stronger members, but the others were very effective and frustrated. However, local municipalities called all the shots since many of the elected players were the same at the regional and local levels. Regional Councillors did not attend the regional table to plan wisely. They saw this table as a battleground to fight for a share of the economic and development pie. Their intentions were good perhaps, each seeing local growth as their mandate; but the results were disastrous in containing the poor effects of sprawl. In fact, the growth areas in all parts of the region often competed with each other; and all contributed to the unplanned sprawl we see today at development areas in Glanbrook, Ancaster, Hamilton, Stoney Creek and to a lesser extent because of geographical limits, but even in Dundas. I say ‘unplanned’ because a unified Official Plan should not have allowed ALL of the areas to proceed simultaneously, thereby scattering scarce resources across the whole region. A truly unified plan would have co-ordinated growth to accommodate the best planning principles that enviornmentalists and urban planners would have preferred.

One of the great advantages of an amalgamated city is that for the first time, this pan-regional planning can finally take place. All the players sit around the same table. None of them has to go back to a lower-tier municipal council and be tugged into approving development that varies from the ‘official plan’ of the entire city. This, along with the aggressive policies of the province in terms of Greenbelt legislation and Places to Grow targets means that Hamilton can plan for the future, and plan for healthy development which stop, preferably, but at least control the sprawl tendencies of the past. That is why I was such a huge supporter of our GRIDS process. GRIDS is an attempt to control growth and plan for the long term, 25 years or more, letting everyone know what the rules would be. I also made it a priority not to politicize the process but to let it be driven by staff’s professional advice,and the best principles espoused by the province’s goals: higher density, transit-friendly development and intensification within the existing urban boundaries. . There was great consternation on the part of some landowners who wanted their piece included in the GRIDS plan. I resisted and so did Council. Last I heard the OMB challenge was where these disgruntled owners wanted to test the City’s resolve.

As we can see, sprawl does have its negative sides especially when you compound this North American phenomenon with the lack of focussed decision-making at the local and provincial levels. The reality is that better planning will encourage healthier growth in cities and allow for the rehabilitation of core areas in the community. The myth is that sprawl can be stopped forever. Growth will happen. The choice we have is whether to allow it to go unchecked as in the past, or to control it with very tight urban boundries and intensification plans. The latter is desirable.

Another myth that the anti-sprawl advocates like to spread as if it were a mantra, is that ‘sprawl, or new development doesn’t pay for itself’; rather, they state that whenever a new subdivision is constructed in Ancaster, Stoney Creek, or Flamborough, it is the existing residents who foot the bill for those subdivisions. This is true for some development but not for most in these areas of our community.

I recall, as Mayor, this issue coming up and Council asking our finance staff about the veracity of the claim that ‘development doesn’t pay for itself.’ The principal questioner was an anti-development Councillor, no longer on Council. He was also a developer, by the way, so presumably he just didn’t agree with other people’s developments! Staff took the question seriously, and alluded to a Halton study on this very issue. It was a complicated study, but the outcome seemed to suggest that the larger, single family homes more than paid for themselves through assessment. It also showed that the smaller, more compact homes advocated for by some, did not pay for themselves. This analysis was apparently based on an empirical study done in the Halton region. Did it ever stop the anti-development people from making the same claim about new development not paying for itself? No, it did not. Facts did not seem to matter.

Now, I’m told that the same issue came up recently at a Committee of the Whole session of Council, and that a brave staff member apparently referred to the Halton study in answer to the question. The answer was not well-received. Staff was asked to table a full report on the issue. I hope it will be an honest report. We need good information in order for Council to make informed decisions, or for others to formulate our own opinions. The point is that ‘sprawl’ should be controlled and drastically reduced, if it can’t be stopped entirely. There are enough good reasons to do so without inventing myths in the process.

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