What Suburban Sprawl Is
Why It Is A Problem
And What We Can Do To Fix It
Suburban sprawl is one of Oshawa's deepest problems. The three things it hurts the most is our ability to build affordable housing, our natural environment, and the cost/quality of our municipal services. Suburban sprawl occurs when we overbuild single unit detached housing and semi-detached units at the expense of more realistic and effective urban development like duplexes, triplexes, cottage courts, townhouse complexes, and small apartment buildings. My solutions to suburban sprawl are informed by the research that activists and city designers have done to debunk the idea that low density suburbanization is in any way good city design.
Sprawl raises our property taxes and reduces the quality of services we can provide. This is because each single unit detached structure costs the municipality twice as much to provide services(firefighters, garbage pickup, snow clearing, paramedics, etc.) and infrastructure(roads, water, sidewalks, bike infrastructure) than most other forms of housing. These high costs combined with less people to spread the property tax load to(due to low population density) makes it impossible to let Oshawa have smaller tax rates like surrounding major cities such as Clarington, Whitby, Ajax, and Pickering. What these other cities have over us is much, much smaller urban boundaries, most of which service twice as many people, with half the land that Oshawa uses.
In addition, sprawl also reduces the amount of affordable housing available and forces us to constantly expand our urban boundary. In Oshawa's case, the only direction we can spread destroys thousands of acres of farmland every time we need more housing. In the current housing market, most people cannot afford single unit homes, the days are long gone where young working people can afford down payments for these properties and so we need to consider what the future generation needs from our city when thinking about what types of development we want to support in our communities. This development should not come in the form of high rises, or in the form of single unit properties, it should come in the form of everything in-between.
There are many solutions to suburban sprawl we can pick from, but there are a few basic rules we need to change to let the process begin. Firstly, we need to raise building height and occupancy limits in all residentially zoned areas to 4-5 stories high. This will allow us to collectively increase our size as a city at a pace that is comfortable to everyone. We also need to switch to a paradigm of form-based zoning which will allow us to make the most use of our already developed land without destroying our green-spaces or our northern farmland. Once density in a community starts to increase, we can also encourage mixed-use development to reduce our reliance on strip malls and create walkable communities with stronger transit corridors. Eventually we would have a few places throughout Oshawa that could build a little higher, but we should never build higher than 12 stories in Oshawa, and buildings that high should always be built in places like our urban core, and other areas with access to excellent transit.
If all of this sounds scary to you, I would strongly suggest taking a look at the Youtube creator notjustbikes. He is a former Canadian who could not stand our endless suburbs which are dangerous, car dependent, wasteful, and unaffordable. Just because we have a lot of land in Canada, it doesn't mean our cities should be poorly designed.
If you are still with me after this long article, I think it is important to note that Bob Chapman, and many of our other Regional councilors voted to continue with our bad city design and expand our urban boundary in may, 2019. This vote was made despite 15 groups providing research and arguments to the contrary, including our own regional staff. There were only two groups advocating for further urban expansion, one of which was the BILD lobbying group. I value our construction workers of all stripes and believe we should support them, however BILD represents a massive corporate interest in Ontario that is having a very negative effect on our politics. If they refuse to work with us because we want our city and region to thrive, then we need to support other construction groups throughout Durham Region.
Sprawl raises our property taxes and reduces the quality of services we can provide. This is because each single unit detached structure costs the municipality twice as much to provide services(firefighters, garbage pickup, snow clearing, paramedics, etc.) and infrastructure(roads, water, sidewalks, bike infrastructure) than most other forms of housing. These high costs combined with less people to spread the property tax load to(due to low population density) makes it impossible to let Oshawa have smaller tax rates like surrounding major cities such as Clarington, Whitby, Ajax, and Pickering. What these other cities have over us is much, much smaller urban boundaries, most of which service twice as many people, with half the land that Oshawa uses.
In addition, sprawl also reduces the amount of affordable housing available and forces us to constantly expand our urban boundary. In Oshawa's case, the only direction we can spread destroys thousands of acres of farmland every time we need more housing. In the current housing market, most people cannot afford single unit homes, the days are long gone where young working people can afford down payments for these properties and so we need to consider what the future generation needs from our city when thinking about what types of development we want to support in our communities. This development should not come in the form of high rises, or in the form of single unit properties, it should come in the form of everything in-between.
There are many solutions to suburban sprawl we can pick from, but there are a few basic rules we need to change to let the process begin. Firstly, we need to raise building height and occupancy limits in all residentially zoned areas to 4-5 stories high. This will allow us to collectively increase our size as a city at a pace that is comfortable to everyone. We also need to switch to a paradigm of form-based zoning which will allow us to make the most use of our already developed land without destroying our green-spaces or our northern farmland. Once density in a community starts to increase, we can also encourage mixed-use development to reduce our reliance on strip malls and create walkable communities with stronger transit corridors. Eventually we would have a few places throughout Oshawa that could build a little higher, but we should never build higher than 12 stories in Oshawa, and buildings that high should always be built in places like our urban core, and other areas with access to excellent transit.
If all of this sounds scary to you, I would strongly suggest taking a look at the Youtube creator notjustbikes. He is a former Canadian who could not stand our endless suburbs which are dangerous, car dependent, wasteful, and unaffordable. Just because we have a lot of land in Canada, it doesn't mean our cities should be poorly designed.
If you are still with me after this long article, I think it is important to note that Bob Chapman, and many of our other Regional councilors voted to continue with our bad city design and expand our urban boundary in may, 2019. This vote was made despite 15 groups providing research and arguments to the contrary, including our own regional staff. There were only two groups advocating for further urban expansion, one of which was the BILD lobbying group. I value our construction workers of all stripes and believe we should support them, however BILD represents a massive corporate interest in Ontario that is having a very negative effect on our politics. If they refuse to work with us because we want our city and region to thrive, then we need to support other construction groups throughout Durham Region.
Educational content regarding better urban design, transit systems, walkable cities, and why they are all so important to a healthy, sustainable, and affordable city:
-Local Activists: Stop Sprawl Durham
-Easy to digest YouTube videos: Not Just Bikes, Adam Something
-Local Activists: Stop Sprawl Durham
-Easy to digest YouTube videos: Not Just Bikes, Adam Something
