Urban sprawl—the uncontrolled growth of automobile-driven suburbs—has increasingly been recognized as a form of blight. It destroys vital farmland to create tract house developments miles from work, shopping, and even good walking areas. Suburban shopping districts cling to the edges of the highway, each store with its own parking lot, or close themselves from the outside world in shopping malls surrounded by the inevitable acres of asphalt for parking. Sprawl is an offense to the eye, the aesthetic sense, and the planet.
One proposed solution to the sprawl problem is the creation of greenbelts, areas of land closed to development and protected for agriculture, parks, and wildlife. The largest and most creative of these, according to a study reported in the April 9, 2008, Globe and Mail, is the greenbelt surrounding Toronto.
"Ontario's greenbelt is positioned to be the most successful and most useful greenbelt in the world," concluded the study, compiled by the Canadian Institute for Environmental Law and Policy, a Toronto-based think tank.
Commissioned by the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation, the study compared Toronto's greenbelt with similar efforts in Canada, England, and Europe.
According to the report, greenbelts face at least two major problems: pressure for development, and "leapfrogging" of sprawl over the greenbelt.
So far, the province of Ontario has resisted pressure from developers to open the Toronto greenbelt to sprawl.
"My goal and my mantra that drives me is that we're going to be doing nothing but expanding the greenbelt," Municipal Affairs Minister Jim Watson said in an interview [with the Globe and Mail.]
To avoid "leapfrogging," Ontario authorities hope to expand the greenbelt, in effect doing the opposite of opening the protected land to development.
3 comments:
There's no contact information, so the only way to reach you is by leaving a comment on your blog. Sorry.
Cyburbia (http://www.cyburbia.org), founded in 1994, is the Internet's oldest continuously operating planning-related Web site. Cyburbia has served the planning community for nearly 14 years with very little funding or financial remuneration. The Cyburbia Forums (http://www.cyburbia.org/forums) went online in 1996, and today remains a vibrant virtual third place for planners, students and others interested in the built environment ; 5,800 members, 400,000 posts, and still growing.
You've got a large blogroll to many planning-related sites, but Cyburbia seems to be missing. Just wanted to make you aware of the site's existence. Thanks!
Dan Tasman
Cyburbia | urban planning community
http://www.cyburbia.org
I don't know how I missed it. I refer to it all the time. Please accept my apologies.
Everyone has their favorite way of using the internet. Many of us search to find what we want, click in to a specific website, read what’s available and click out. That’s not necessarily a bad thing because it’s efficient. We learn to tune out things we don’t need and go straight for what’s essential.
This goal-oriented way of surfing the web is largely based on short-term results. For example, finding facts to write a blog post, doing a comparison before making a purchase and reading a news site to find out what’s happening right now.
www.onlineuniversalwork.com
Post a Comment