Quote:
Originally Posted by Wharn
If there was any snow left. Anyways, duly noted Snark. But I still think we are overreacting to urbanization considering that
a) London's urbanized land area, and Ontario's urbanized area in general, is minimal compared to non-urbanized land.
b) Farming already wrecked many of the key ecosystems by draining swamps and clearing forests to make way for fields, and once it was implemented it poisoned the remaining watercourses with fertilizer runoff. So when you build out into the surrounding farmland you're really only replacing one destructive activity with another.
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I've said it before on this forum and I'll say it again - London takes up way too much space for its population. This is a problem that stretches back to the 1800s - residential properties in London were allowed to be big, and Londoners became accustomed to it and expected massive properties. And no, it's not like this everywhere in Canada - I was in Toronto and Kingston last weekend and I noticed the older parts of both cities have far higher residential densities than London. I've also noticed this in Montreal on Google Streetview. The houses are right at the sidewalk - no massive front yard, and minimal backyards.
I once determined that if London was built at the same density as the one mid-size city I've been to in Mexico, London would fit into an area bounded by Wharncliffe Road to the west, Highbury Ave to the east, Windermere Road to the north, and Commissioners Road to the south. The city I was in had a population similar to Windsor but took up as much space as St. Thomas. If London were built that way, Byron would still be far outside the city. The Sifton Bog would be in a rural area and we wouldn't have deer in backyards. Maybe we wouldn't want density that high here, but if we compromised between the two extremes, we could have at least kept Sifton Bog untouched. We could have had no development west of Wonderland Road. We could have had a lot more public natural space and land being used to grow food for public consumption instead of all sorts of empty land being hogged by private landowners. We as a collective society gain no quality of life by this, only individuals benefit.
Even in North Bay, one of the largest commercial developments in town (with a Wal-Mart) didn't pave over a massive expanse of land for parking. They built a 5-level parking garage. Imagine seeing that in suburban London! But no, instead of directing a certain developer to build a parking garage to save space in the Hyde Park area, we let them pave over a massive expanse of farmland. And for what? The once charming community of Hyde Park has been changed forever.