1. It is easy to generalize things, but the truth is, not all of the “suburbs” are having it easy and reaping benefits from “everyone else”. I live in the suburbs, but my neighbourhood is very conscious of the environmental and financial costs. None of us have pools and only very tiny lawns, and we pool in hydro bills and pay for the utilities even if it is more than what we used. I think you should be careful about speaking of the “suburbs” as one coherent entity, because some neighbourhoods are more “enlightened” than you think.

   Also, costs in suburbs are obviously cheaper because of the problem of accessibility. We are paying less because it is harder for us to get to places. If you want costs to be the same everywhere in a city, then, please encourage a lot more offices and markets and restaurants and galleries to open up in the suburbs. Otherwise, yes, blaming everything on the suburbs sure is the way to go.

   Posted by Suburbia  on  08/05  at  11:18 AM
3. A decade or so ago I wrote a graduate thesis exploring how development control could be used to limit demand for urban servies (the thesis is available electronically through the National Library of Canada here (warning: clicking on link opens up a rather large .pdf document). My research was on sewage capacity, but the argument extends across the full range of urban services, including land supply. A few years later this form of demand management gained the name "smart growth" -- another good idea that became merely another sales pitch for unconfined development. There's lots to be said in favour of suburbs -- space, privacy, a view of the horizon, access to natural areas, room to have a larger garden, perceived safety, quality of education -- we can't pretend that these benefits don't exist (or aren't believed to exist), and that they aren't real and perhaps even legitimate reasons why people choose to live in suburbs. Moreover, inflated house prices in the greater Toronto area have made buying a home in the city an impossibility for many Torontonians. Even further, the city cannot accommodate its projected population increases within the current boundaries, at the current densities (and forcing people to live at very high densities is hardly a workable solution, either). Accordingly, it's important not to caricature suburban dwellers. If the ecological and economic costs of uncontrolled suburban growth are too great (and I agree that they are), then we need to harness a broader range of mechanisms and controls if we are to regulate growth intelligently. Approving new 'big pipe' sewage projects extending into the Oak Ridges moraine should be out of the question unless growth is concentrated in genuinely urban nodes along its length. Skipping over undeveloped areas in favour of more lucrative developable land further away is a direct cause of urban sprawl: in the 1980s the City of Calgary approved great swathes of development well outside the city centre: subsequently, it found itself paying higher and higher servicing infrastructure costs when areas closer to the city started to develop and exceeded the city's ability to service them. What works well for Toronto? Many of the city's brownfield redevelopment / infill low-density housing projects have worked very well. So do some of the medium and high-rise condominium projects, especially those located along former industrial and rail corridors and on streets that have lost their local character due to traffic increases and the loss of retail shops. In these areas new, higher-density infill projects provide needed housing without necessarily damaging the established low density neighbourhoods around them. In suburban areas, I'd like to see municipal governments force developers to establish and pay for local commercial areas and public infrastructure in order to support (and be supported by) higher density development. Such infrastructure should not be taken to mean big box stores or a theatre multi-plex. The object should be to establish workable communities, not only a quick return on the developer's investment. It's my view that intelligently planning infrastructure expansions while forcing developers to pay the full cost of servicing infrastructure (roads, sewers, schools, hospitals, etc.) can do much to encourage intelligent urban growth.
   
   Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  {comment_date format=’%m/%d’}  at  {comment_date format=’%h:%i %A’}
Posted by Amy Lavender Harris  on  08/05  at  11:21 AM

4. Suburbia called me out on my over-generalizations. Thanks. Not all suburbs are created equal. There are a few that attempt to be sustainable. My issue is with, for example, suburbs that obliterate the Oak Ridge Moraine or reduce Ontario’s lush farmlands to a network of paved roads anchoring big-box retail stores.

   Posted by Editor  on  08/06  at  09:58 AM

5. Thanks for the replies. The thing is, amongst mainstream and non-mainstream media, there are such negative perspectives on the suburbs and yet, there are hardly any comments on how to actually turn the problem around. Also, there is not a lot of report on how suburbans are trying to fix the problems (of urban sprawl, etc) either.

   So, I appreciate your comments very much, and I do apologize for the tone taken before.

   :)

   Posted by Suburbia  on  08/08  at  12:37 AM

6. Have you heard of GTA Pooling? You know…the program enforced by the Ontario government that has municipalities transfer a portion of their property tax to good ole Toronto. In York region .14 out of every dollar is transfered to Toronto. Last year this accounted for more than 85 million.

   Furthermore, nobody I know in Toronto seems to pay the same property tax that I do in Vaughan. Considering our roll rate is over 1% which results in most homeowners paying over 4500 a year in property tax . Considering the value of homes in Toronto most people should be paying at least that if not much more.

   So in the end who is subsidizing who??

   Posted by Sub-Urbanite  on  08/08  at  03:42 PM

7. Sub-urbanite makes a strong point about tax rates but, based on infrastructure costs alone which Toronto proper has long ago amortized, the city ends up paying for new infrastructure needed to support growth in the suburbs. Think about it. Density in Toronto is roughly three to four times that of the average suburb. Services were installed say fifty years ago on average – some much earlier and a few a bit later. Those costs have been paid off. Our taxes should have dropped considerably but they haven’t. Suburbs go in at a much lower density which means roads, water, sewage costs are proportionately higher. Distances to water and waste treatment facilities in Toronto are greater adding to the cost. There are more cars per capita so road costs are higher while public transit is more or less five or so times as expensive due to the greater distances involved. Toronto has to build subways to low density ‘burbs. Let’s be realistic: Huge expanses of suburban growth at low densities cost everybody, including Torontonians, a lot of money.

   Posted by  on  08/08  at  04:36 PM

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