The high costs of sprawl

This report shows that these policies create a mismatch between the wider social, economic and environmental value of the land being developed, the cost of providing the land with basic municipal services (such as water, hydro and sewage connections, telecommunications lines and paved roadways) and the price that consumers pay to live there. [...] If we keep going down this new and better path for urban development, when the GGH’s transformation is complete, many of the ecological and agricultural values of the region will be preserved: some of the world’s best farmland will still grow our food, our green spaces will still clean our water and purify our air for free, and provide a home to the unique plants and wildlife of southern Ontario. [...] Rather than evolve and adapt to the new market, they want to make money the old-fashioned way, by sprawling across the countryside and building car-dependent residential areas that cost more for taxpayers, and damage both our quality of life and the environment. [...] As these new outer suburbs saw their populations swell and their developed areas spread, the towns physically and politically merged into what is today’s 905 region, blending in to one urban community called the Greater Toronto Area.11 As the GTA ballooned out, it consumed more green space and needed more highways to connect people to the region’s core.12 The development of sprawl in the GGH start [...] Located between major thoroughfares and regional train corridors, ads for the development promoted the “realities of an urban lifestyle” in the city, attracting young families and other households from the suburbs to what was a more affordable, public transit-friendly part of the city.15 The City of Brampton is also leading the urban revolution from an unlikely location — the suburbs.