We need better development patterns. Many suburban and strip mall style developments end up costing more to maintain, service and repair than they bring in with taxes. Being able to survive without owning a car by walking, biking or transit would also help a lot. People really shrug away the costs of car ownership (and the costs of maintaining all that infrastructure and parking lots).
Yeah, the total direct monetary cost of maintaining low-density car-dependant cities is extremely high: road construction & maintenance, plumbing and electrical, parking lots taking valuable space that could be used for housing or workplaces, insurance for personal and commercial vehicles, maintenance and upkeep, gas, and probably many more I’ve missed.
And on top of all of that, the externalized monetary costs are also high: medical costs from all the deaths or injuries due to collisions (the stats are honestly depressing), medical costs due to less physical activity across the population, environmental damage, time wasted due to traffic, slower delivery times for long-haul trucks, and probably many more I’ve missed.
And on top of all of THAT the intangible costs are also high: isolation from the people and communities directly around you, less customers for small businesses that rely on foot traffic and have no parking space, increasing polarization between urban/suburban/rural populations, and probably many more I’ve missed.
Side note for the people that still really need cars in their lives (workers in rural areas, people living in suburbs, etc.), pushing for better transit and city planning will directly benefit you. If less people have cars: gas prices will be lower (supply and demand), road construction and upkeep will be cheaper, traffic will be better for you directly, and more. I always fear that pro-transit, pro-urban planning folks (me included) come off as dismissive. There are definitely people who will still need cars in their lives. The goal is to catch the many millions of people who could probably replace their car usage if transit systems and cities were built better.
People will always do what is easiest/best for them, we need to keep pushing towards systems that make sense.
pushing for better transit
Eh, I’m still not sold on transit (for people). If you live in a well designed city, everything should be right there in front of you, no more than steps away. The need to move further than your feet (or wheelchair, if that’s your thing) can reasonably allow is a straight up urban planning failure.
I can buy into the idea that, given our existing urban planning failures, it is better than nothing. As a bandaid, sure. But in the context of looking to build the world in which we want to live, why settle for bandaids? Why not go straight to building cities properly, thereby having no need to move people around with external propulsion at all?
Those in the rural parts are a harder problem, but it seems you think the car is still their best option. So, when does transit become useful?
Is it the freight transit infrastructure you see as needing improvement? It is true that, even with the best laid plans, we are not in a place to give that up yet. As interesting as vertical farms are, the technology just isn’t there yet to supplant food grown in rural areas, never mind things like lumber and other commodities that aren’t usually found in cities.
But when it comes to people, concentrating them close together is kind of a city’s whole deal. Why then pretend it is a rural area that requires travel over long distances?
What if I have a friend on the other side of town and we are meeting up at a restaurant on their side of town? Or maybe there is a high speed rail connecting a few cities and now I can visit my parents the next city over by taking the train. Or maybe I didnt manage to find a job in the more walkable part of town (we cant fix cities over night) but the transit hub can connect me to my job. Or maybe I usually walk the 20 minutes but I injured my leg and its only 5 minutes of walking if I take the bus.
I think transit belongs within a well designed city and for intercity connections. Even with the best urban planning, some cities will just be too big to get everywhere in the city just by walking. Some people might be fine staying in their neighborhood but others will want to see other people, try different restaurants, shop different places.
I would add people who change jobs and households with more than one worker.
Nobody is going to move every time they change jobs.
Approximately nobody is going to live close enough to the workplace of everyone in the household who works.
Not to mention connections for high schools, colleges and medical institutions. Transit can be so good if done right.
Approximately nobody is going to live close enough to the workplace of everyone in the household who works.
Then who is going to be left to support the walkable economy? You need approximately every working person who lives within that community to be active in the walkable economy, else you will quickly find that services are no longer within walking distance.
Are you imagining that you’ll hop on the train to go work on the other side of town, while someone living on that side of town hops on the train to work in your neighbourhood? That is not a good reason for transit at all. That’s just silly.
There are many problems with the idea that every community should be so maximally walkable that you don’t need any other modes of transit. Some urban uses like parks require local low density in an urban setting and they can easily get large enough where 20min walking barely gets you across. Also the social network of people even just including the closest friends and family usually even in dense cities spreads out at least a few km. Also super tall buildings aren’t actually particularly efficient. Also some services greatly benefit from a certain centrality that can never be in walkable reach for all people of large cities e.g. universities or other more specialised institutions. Transit and bikes are huge enablers for people to freely live their life as they see fit, and some level of global interconnectedness is probably needed forever. Build one efficient medical supplier, steel mill, semiconductor FAB or generally any larger factory and walkability is immediately gone just because these facilities need lots of space, and their entire supply chain would be much less (thermally/CO2/resource) efficient if we were to split theses factories to enable local production.
Also the social network of people even just including the closest friends and family usually even in dense cities spreads out at least a few km.
Who do you think is going to maintain friendships across a few kilometres? Maybe the hardcore walkers, but the average person is just going to find new friends, just like they do now when distances become too great.
their entire supply chain would be much less (thermally/CO2/resource) efficient if we were to split theses factories to enable local production.
That’s a feature. Have you seen how much Canadians bitch and moan about wealth inequality? Splitting up central operations into small, local operations is how you beat wealth inequality.
But I get it. Change is scary.
I work in construction. Do you expect me to move next to a new project every 3 years? What about people who work on multiple projects a day?
You can’t expect people to change their housing to be right next to their work or change their work to be right next to their housing. You’re silly.
You can’t expect people to change their housing to be right next to their work or change their work to be right next to their housing. You’re silly.
You can’t expect people to change at all.
Let’s be real, they aren’t going to magically start supporting transit either. Maybe you’ve forgotten, but we tried that already, building out a huge transit network in the 1800s, with streetcar systems lining the streets of the cities (not just Toronto) and the train connecting even the smallest of towns. We eventually ripped up almost all of it because nobody wanted to use it.
But as we’re discussing an invented dream world, why do you cling to the transit bandaid when we can simply design cities property?
What if I have a friend on the other side of town and we are meeting up at a restaurant on their side of town?
Accept that it is a pointless luxury and make new friends who are within a more reasonable distance? If the same friend was on the other side of the world, are you are hopping on jets to meet up at a restaurant? We do have the technology. But having the technology doesn’t mean its use is warranted.
Or maybe I usually walk the 20 minutes but I injured my leg and its only 5 minutes of walking if I take the bus.
20 minutes by foot is a huge distance. Why would you need to walk that far? If you want to walk that far for enjoyment, when you are able, sure, but in terms of everyday life? That’s not a well designed city.
Even with the best urban planning, some cities will just be too big to get everywhere in the city just by walking. Some people might be fine staying in their neighborhood but others will want to see other people, try different restaurants, shop different places.
That’s fine, but now you’re living the rural lifestyle. Why bother living in a city at all if you want to become a rural dweller?
More importantly, why hold back progress for people who actually want to live in cities just because you have some fascination with rural life? That ever-present dream of living on farm like our ancestors is exactly why our cities are so poorly designed. Unless you are an actual farmer providing a valuable service providing food to the cities, perhaps it is time to let that dream go?
I’m not sure if you’re trolling or really immature.
“Sorry X, visiting you is a pointless luxury, I’m going to find a new X that lives in a more reasonable distance”
Where X: a friend you’ve known for 20 years, a parent, a cousin, a person you share a niche interest with.
I think that’s the goal. All of your essentials are available within walking distance, while your workplace is accessible by transit. Obviously, you can’t move every time you switch jobs, so transit is still necessary. It also provides mobility for when you want to, y’know, shop at another grocery store or eat at another restaurant.
Yeah there is no possible way that everywhere a person needs to go can be within reasonable walking distance.
Fortunately, the serious advocates for more walkable cities aren’t calling for absolutely everything to be within walking distance, only the most commonly accessed things.
Trouble is, if there is somewhere you need to go that is so unique that a dense city population cannot support it locally, within walking distance, you also won’t have the ridership necessary to support transit to that destination. Just you sitting on the train doesn’t work – even the original comment said that cars are necessary in such cases. Mass transit requires mass ridership.
Our “solution” to that problem is to make cities wannabe rural areas, where the services are many kilometres away from where the people live, requiring a trip by car/train/bus/whatever just to do anything. Then you have some guarantee of mass ridership. But having to get into a vehicle to do anything is a horrible way to live. It’s the worst part of living rurally with none of the upside of living rurally. If you are going to live in a city, why not embrace it? I get having a large rural acreage is everyone’s ultimate dream, but maybe it is time to accept it is not in the cards and start to love the one you’re with?
Where do you go in a typical day or week or month? Groceries, restaurants, gyms, entertainment, maybe the doctor/dentist?
Who provides to the local (walkable) economy if the people are hopping on transit to get to work? People who live in other communities also jumping on transit? Isn’t that rather silly?
That is exactly the kind of thing you would expect from a poorly designed city, sure, but the discussion taking place here is looking for better.
What city do you live in?
I don’t anymore. There is no well designed city in Canada. It would be strange to continue subject myself to that. I live in a well designed small town. Everything I need to carry out life is available within a five minute walk. This is why I can’t figure out why the cities want to pretend to be rural areas. If you want to pretend that you are living on a farm, why not just live on a farm?
Good for you. I’m just surprised that as a former urbanite you are against public transit? I live in Montréal and can’t imagine the city without the metro.
I’m just surprised that as a former urbanite you are against public transit?
I’m against poorly designed cities. Once you have a well designed city, what would you need transit for?
About all we’ve been able to come up with is that one guy who wants to have lunch with his far away friend. Is that a good reason to build transit? If so, where do you draw the line? People are going to have friends all over the world. Do we need a train straight to Japan so I can connect with my friends who live there? I’d enjoy having lunch with them, sure.
I live in Montréal and can’t imagine the city without the metro.
Live amongst wannabe farmers and you’re going to need wannabe tractors, for sure. That’s outside of the discussion taking place here, though. We’re talking about working towards building cities for people who actually want to live in cities.
You are making no sense. What wannabe farmers are you talking about? We are talking about cities, not villages. Do you expect 40000 UQAM students to all live in the Quartier Latin? Do you expect 70000 UdeM students to all live in Cote de Neiges? What about their professors, the admin staff? Do you expect that the spouse of a professor would not need to have a job in a different part of town? What if you have a couple where one works at the Botanical Garden and the other at the National Library that are in different parts of the city?
Do you imagine that in an ideal city there are no big centralized institutions with thousands of people working there? Universities, hospitals, public services, cultural amenities (theaters, stadiums, museums, …), shopping districts, etc? Dense, livable cities cannot exist without public transit.
Are you talking about “cities” and imagining suburban sprawl?? Because you’re not making any sense.
Housing authorities just need to lower housing prices. The model already exists there’s just a lot of money fighting it:
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Build large 5-6 story buildings with dozens or hundreds of units in areas where prices are too high. These buildings should be mixed use on the first floor with no car parking.
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Sell or rent them at well below market rates to people that currently do not own homes anywhere under the condition they only sell under those conditions as well
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Watch the market prices fall.
There’s currently enough housing in most places there just needs to be a needle applying downward pressure.
Step 0 is to reinvent Canada in such that steps 1,2,3 are not destined to fail and cause career suicide to the politician that proposes them
How do you figure there is enough housing?
CMHC thinks we need 3.5 million more units by 2030 (bringing us from from a projected 19M to 22.5M) https://www.cmhc-schl.gc.ca/professionals/housing-markets-data-and-research/housing-research/research-reports/accelerate-supply/housing-shortages-canada-solving-affordability-crisis
I should add: 1b. Don’t include parking, include commercial rental space on the bottom floor - parking creates sprawl.
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I think we have too many people here in Canada who think any kind of regulation infringes on freedom as well as magically makes it so the free market doesn’t make everything cheap for everyone so we probably won’t get this any time soon.
Thank god I don’t rent anymore.
The housing market is not exactly a free market at the moment anyway
The bad actors of the housing market would have to give up a LOT of their capital at this point to fix the issues we have with it.
I have little faith that that’s likely to ever happen.
The capital would flow out pretty quickly if something more compelling came along.
We saw exactly that watching our friends to the south in 2006 when “Web 2.0” started attracting investor interest towards tech, prompting the now-famous housing crash (not to be confused with the securities crash of 2008).
Trouble in Canada is that we’re so busy going to university in a quest to attain degrees to maintain our “most educated nation in the world” status that we forget to actually do anything.
Yeah but that doesn’t solve the corporate oligarchy problem in my opinion.
Yes and no. Early Canada saw, by and large, equal contribution across the entire population. The establishment of such oligarchs was most efficient and inconsequential as everyone was already operating in their own lane. I give you food, you give me shelter – we are in balance – you need me as much as I need you.
Oligarchies become a problem when some segment of the population starts to become useless. You give me food, Bob gives me shelter, and in return I give… a pat on the back? That doesn’t fly. It is true that without the encumberments that lead to oligarchies, I too can start to provide food and/or shelter, which is something. But we would all be better off if I started offering something entirely new; something that will change the world.
Going back to university for a moment, it was once believed that university research labs would promote R&D into those entirely new things, giving the useless segment of the population a chance to restore balance. This is where the idea that university will lead to higher incomes comes from. It wasn’t a bad theory, but of course it never panned out. Incomes have held as stagnant as can be and balance was never restored as people clung to the classroom instead of the research lab.
So, in theory, if people started doing things it could solve the oligarchy problem by offering the aforementioned balance. But I agree that Canadian’s don’t have it in them. It goes against the social fabric of Canada to try new things. We are very much “Go to school, get a low paying job, and pretend that you are happy.” and any deviation will feel the full scorn of the society’s disdain.
Housing is money’s place of last resort, but if that’s all that you have remaining to offer, that is for sure where it will go.
Man that was just wrong in so many directions I don’t even know where to begin.
Any place is fine. Rome wasn’t built in a day.
That said, when your mind grinds on such inconsequential matters, it is its way of telling you that you don’t have sufficient understanding to get started. You might want to take some time for introspection there.
Hey, NDP.
I’m not sure how you’re doing, hope all is well with you. I heard you were working on pharmacare or somesuch. That’s cool, that’s cool
You know, I was thinking, we need a bit more than that, you know? We have healthcare issues, environment issues, housing issues, cost-of-living issues. And it sounds like we would really benefit from some bold transformational political vision, here, you know? Someone to say we are going to do A,B,C,D to fix these things, you know, like in the old days, when Tommy Douglas was putting up concrete visions for government creating crown corporations to tackle specific problems?
And I think you might be the right party to bring stuff up? Maybe get the provincial NDPs to all to talk to each other, and coordinate with the national party a coherent strategy or something?
Something to inspire us?
I dunno, you’re the pro, maybe I’m overstepping. Maybe pharmacare is as much as we can really do at this point.
Anyway, just checking in.
All the best,
Some guy.
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After all, political parties are labour unions. Like all labour unions, they exist to serve the workers, not the employers (you and I).
If the best potential hire in the talent pool belongs to a union, so be it. That’s the cost of doing business.
But to those who choose the employee to hire based on their union membership, why?
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but it seems to me that employers are free to choose whomever they like.
Absolutely. Hence the election process, literally allowing the employer to elect which employee they wish to hire.
Choosing someone on the basis of their refusal to join the union seems like a great way to start a walkout among your other unionized staff though.
The question wasn’t about refusal to join a union, the question was directed to those who hire based on union membership. e.g. the people who always vote for the candidate who belongs to the Liberal union, or the Conservative union, no matter who the actual person trying to get the job is – as opposed to evaluating the potential hires based on their merits as a potential employee.
If you are building a deck, and one guy belongs to the United Steelworkers, and the other belongs to OSPE (engineering union), do you automatically believe that one union always produces better employees every single time? Or do you look at the actual people and try and evaluate which one will do a better job? Now, the question was directed at the first group. Is there something about one of those unions that means it will always present the best employees for deck building?
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what’s needed for a national housing movement
Houses. All across the nation. Freely available to those who need them.
What’s needed for a national housing movement? The provinces giving up control of housing. Otherwise it will always be a provincial matter, requiring provincial movements.
A government with balls…end of article.
The people with “balls” are probably sitting at home playing with them since most of them didnt get elected.
I’m not sure if I’m an outlier, but I think most politicians run for the power, influence, top 1% income and the opportunity it opens up for them. The Canadian Housing Minister probably spends more time thinking about what socks to wear for the day more than housing affordability.
Apparently, all that’s need is a strong First Nations group that can blow past NIMBYism.
https://dailyhive.com/vancouver/senakw-squamish-first-nation-vancouver-rental-housing-development
Data from the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation (CMHC) shows Canada has ramped up construction in recent years,
That looks like a good start on the surface, but how many of those are 2000+ sq foot McMansions, versus more affordable <1000sq foot homes?
