By: Pino Di Mascio
May 26/00 - The Ontario Municipal Board (OMB), a quasi-judicial tribunal which resolves development disputes, began a hearing this week that will determine the future of the Oak Ridges Moraine. The Moraine is a glacially-formed ridge stretching 200 km from the Niagara Escarpment to the Trent River East of Peterborough. It is one of the most significant natural and geological features in the country.
At issue in the hearing is how much development to allow on the Moraine as the population of the Greater Toronto Area - Canada's largest urban region - continues to expand. Approximately 5 million people live in the region today, with another 2 million expected in the next 20 years. Within 30 years there could be up to 9 million people crammed into the area.
This growth pattern foreshadows potential disaster for the Moraine, which contains significant amounts of old growth forest and some of the best agricultural land in the country. Running 60 km north of Lake Ontario in the heart of urbanized Central Canada, Oak Ridges, with its magnificent scenery and abundant recreational opportunities, provides both a spiritual refuge from the burdens of city life and serves an essential bioregional function as a collector of groundwater. Water collected by the Moraine feeds 30 rivers, flowing both southward to the urbanized strip along Lake Ontario and northward to the more rural communities around Lake Simcoe and Lake Scugog.
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Greater Toronto is the second-faster growing region in North America, next to Dallas-Fort Worth. That means we need a broad public discussion on how to accommodate runaway urban growth. |
With adjacent urban growth occurring at a breakneck pace (the only faster-growing region in North America is Dallas-Forth Worth) there is an urgent need for a broad-based public discourse on how best to accommodate urban expansion. Oak Ridges raises a question of crucial importance to people in all urbanized regions in Canada: what kind of relationship to the countryside landscape should a population of 7 to 9 million people have?
It's unlikely, however, that the hearing will focus on this larger question. The issue is being framed merely as a local development matter pitting conservationists against developers. The OMB will call upon lawyers to orchestrate legal arguments and other professionals to give expert evidence. By the time the hearing is over, a myriad of planners, scientists, government officials, politicians and citizens will have put forward their perspectives and the Board Chairs will be asked to sort through the evidence and decide what constitutes "good planning" for the Moraine.
But the Oak Ridges issue deserves a much more expansive treatment than this.
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The cities of Vancouver, Calgary, Winnipeg, Montreal - even the Toronto mega-city - represent such small chunks of their urban regions that they have no power to control the problem of sprawl |
The problem is that there is no overall urban - or rural or environmental, for that matter - vision to guide the OMB in it s decision making. What should be the shape of the country's largest urban region? How far from city centres should urban growth be allowed to extend? How much farmland should be protected and where? What are the significant environmental features we want preserve within our urban regions?
These are questions that require public forums and public debate. Municipal governments struggle to resolve these issues but are not equipped to provide answers. Urban regions in the 21st century have become too large to be managed effectively by our existing municipal governments. The City of Vancouver, and even the Greater Vancouver Regional District, is incapable of controlling sprawl within the Lower Mainland of BC. The cities of Calgary, Winnipeg and Montreal are small entities within their respective urban regions. Even the megacity of Toronto represents a small portion of its regional urban land mass.
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The federal government, unlike its counterparts in the US and Europe, is not a major player in urban issues. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a government less interested in the fate of its cities. |
With the lack of effective regional coordinating bodies, it is up to senior levels of government to set urban policy. But they have shown little interest. The federal government, unlike its counterparts in the US and Europe, is not a major player in urban issues. In fact, it is difficult to imagine a government less interested in the fate of its cities. Provincial governments have traditionally been the keepers of our cities; but as they continue to narrow their role in public service to that of deliverers of health care and education, cities are continuously shortchanged.
And so, instead of an informed public debate about the Oak Ridges Moraine and its relationship to a growing urban region, its future will be shaped by a quasi-judicial board which is a technocratic arbiter - not a forum for public discourse.
Our courts have for many years shaped public policy in areas such as criminal justice and human rights because politicians are wary of such debates. Similarly, bodies such as the OMB have become land-use policy makers, shaping our cities. It's time to break out of this pattern of decision-making by default and have a more vigorous, democratic discussion about what kind of urban areas - and eco-systems - we want to live in.
Pino Di Mascio is an urban planner with Toronto-based international planning and design firm Urban Strategies Inc. He can be reached at pdimascio@urbanstrategies.com.
Get More/Do More
Peruse trail information for the Oak Ridges Moraine while it's still there, at www.interlog.com/~orta.
Find out about the geography and history of the Moraine at www.ryerson.ca/vtoronto/wwwsite/themes/physical/html/oakrid~1.htm.
Stop Sprawl with the Sierra Club at www.sierraclub.org/sprawl.
Connect with other community groups working to contain urban sprawl at www.preservenet.com/politics/StopSprawl.html.
Find out more at the Sprawl Watch Clearing House at www.sprawlwatch.org.
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