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Originally Posted by umbria27
I don't see what you seeing to object to in the Green space expansion. It seems to be based on sound concepts, identifying significant natural areas
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That's just it.
If the Greenbelt was about protecting significant natural areas, that would be one thing. But very little of the Greenbelt has any special natural significance. The vast majority of it is ecologically indistuinguishable from the places on the fringes of Orleans and Barrhaven and Kanata and Stittsville that are being ploughed under for residential and commercial sprawl (I'd add industrial to the list, but there ain't any).
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It's creating a barrier to development where there are natural areas worth protecting.
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Bingo. Where there are natural areas worth protecting. What is so special about the cornfields that separate Barrhaven from Nepean?
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We don't have to choose between green space and cities. They reinforce each other.
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No, they don't. The Greenbelt as constituted, and as made sacred by generations of unthinking greenspace fetishism, has accellerated and enhanced sprawl, made the sprawlurbs into unplaces, helped ensure they can't be retrofitted into anything urban, and added significantly to private and public costs in Ottawa.
The Greenbelt is an environmental and economic monstrosity.
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As other posters have noted, limiting the areas into which a city can sprawl puts pressure on developers to intensify where they are allowed to develop.
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If that's the goal of the Brownbelt, it needs to be about 30 miles wide. It isn't. Intensification, to the pathetic extent it's happening at all, is economic pressure, not Brownbelt-induced. And if the city or province are serious about intensification, which they aren't, they would adopt (or allow) some more strenuous policies about land use, street layouts, use-segregation, and urban design. The Brownbelt only encourages more of the same suburban crap that Ottawa's been infested with since the baby boomers started popping out.
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The NCC seems to be slowly moving beyond the "belt" in greenbelt and if they can find the flexibility to sell some farmland near Bayshore
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NOT SELL SACRED GREEN SPACE???!?!!?!!??