The latest brand in urban planning is Smart Growth, which takes some long standing eco-design concepts and re-spun the message to reach a new audience. The spin has worked at least to get local governments on side, but the jury is still out on Smart Growth because it still is driven by the need to “grow” something, which is contrary to the sustainability message in traditional eco-design.
Mark Holland is a former head of the City of Vancouver's sustainability group -- now a partner in Holland Barrs Planning Group, which will be leading a consortium to review Kelowna’s Official Community Plan which includes a public consultation process.
Holland suggests that "The first motivation to go green is some variant of 'I have to.' The city says 'I gotta see something there, guys.' That means they need to have someone around who knows what to do. The next motivation is market advantage: 'I can bring on a different product, such as healthy air quality; I can differentiate my product in the market from other products, I can differentiate my company as a leader.' A PR ploy, basically."
In an interview with the web-mag Tyee, Holland was asked about the three factors that advance the sustainability agenda, he replied, "One is money, the second is money and the third one is also money. It is all money – money and risk go together in any development. If you take guidelines for green development and attach them to your land, then it encumbers the land. That brings the land price down. If you want to do an energy-efficient building, it costs more, though the architects will tell you it costs less. It always comes down to how much of a premium is the developer willing to put on the table?"
The underpinnings of belief that support ongoing development are very predictable within the pro-development community. The valley is still sparsely populated when compared to most other urban centres.
For residents, there has never been an effort to compare growth with other places so that a common understanding can be embraced that would allow everyone in the valley to imagine the magnitudes of a metro area of 1.2 – 5 million people. For most of us, population growth is abstract, and tied to our image of the houses on the hillside or not, and probably tied to a wishful thinking that construction will happen later in our lifetimes if at all.
A good tangible comparison is helpful. In 1912 Vancouver had a population of 100,000 people. In less than 100 years, Metro Vancouver has a population of 2.5 million and it is quickly approaching 3 million.
The City of Vancouver is one of the most densified cities in the world with a population of 600,000 people. It sits on 44 square miles. Metro Vancouver includes the entire surrounding area that includes Burnaby, Surrey, Langley and North Vancouver which spans 1100 square miles.
In comparison, the largest city in the Okanagan is the City of Kelowna which has a population of 123,000 people and at 88 square miles spans twice the area of the City of Vancouver. At the same time the entire Metro Vancouver area could fit within the land area contained in the Central Okanagan Regional District.
The North Okanagan Regional District at 2900 square miles could easily contain a metro-city of 4 million people that could even consider a relatively low population density.
So one can imagine an extreme case where all three regional districts in the Okanagan design metro-growth strategies where each of our larger cities encouraged population growth to reach 2.5 million which would then result in the valley pushing towards an overall population of 7.5 million possibly within this century.
Yes it’s possible.
Mega-decisions that address the water issue, sewage and waste management remain at the core of unbridled growth, however further issues follow closely. The valley population would have to abandon most of the ideas it may have about regional food production, removing the presence of the ALR and replacing it with a final inventory of agricultural land that would be a smaller protected area strategically kept so as not to interfere with population growth.
Smart or not, such an unbridled rate of growth contributes to an uncomfortable social environment when one considers the possible growth of poverty and homelessness. Some municipalities are developing action plans in conjunction with the provincial government, but as yet targets are sketchy but few results have been delivered. For the most part there is no valley wide approach to deal with the homeless issue that really knows no boundaries.
The National Homeless Initiative, the federal secretariat most directly responsible for homelessness in Canada, estimated in 2005 that 150,000 Canadians were homeless, based on “street and shelter counts ... at a minimum, approximately 0.5 per cent of the population in any given Canadian community will be homeless.” This could mean that within a valley-wide population of 250,000 the Okanagan may have 1200 homeless residents which would equal the population of Keremeos and not only represents a social tragedy but also represents a net loss to our overall valley economy that equals that of an entire community.
But left ignored, a population of 2.5 million would spawn over 12,000 homeless people, which suggest that at some locations in the valley, skid row environments would become very apparent.
For housing to no longer be affordable for lower and middleclass families absolute homeless numbers will continue to grow which will lead to social decay, political unrest, crime and a shrinking workforce.
Not addressing homelessness on the long term creates a less positive and an unhealthy community. A lack of workers unable to find housing, impacts businesses and reduces self-employment opportunities and service delivery as well. Not addressing the problem will see ongoing tax increases, which could be elevated even more if the provincial and federal governments download further responsibilities to communities.
It’s estimated that the per person annual public cost of homelessness is between $30,000 and $40,000 per person per year based on “The Costs of Homelessness in British Columbia,” a 2001 study on the costs of homelessness for B.C.’s former Ministry of Social Development and Economic Security. This is probably the most often-cited estimate on the per person annual cost of homelessness which would reflect a cost of between $36 million and $48 million to Okanagan taxpayers every year.
In 2004, one in seven Canadian households – 1.7 million – spent 30 per cent or more of their income on housing and are considered to have housing affordability issues. And in January 2007, the Canadian Council on Social Development (CCSD) reported that “almost one-quarter of Canadian households – more than 2,700,000 households – are paying too much of their income to keep a roof over their heads.”
So as we consider our need to grow our population in the valley we should consider the costs of growing homeless numbers. It’s becoming very apparent that voluntarily trying to solve the issue has not been working.
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