Alan Ferguson
Province
How refreshing it is, in a world leaden with conformity, to hear the outspoken views of someone who dares to be different. Such a one is Randal O’Toole, a U.S. academic and author of a controversial paper published this week by the Fraser Institute.
If there’s an ounce of truth to what he says, the good people of the Lower Mainland have been the victims of a gigantic fraud over the past several decades.
According to O’Toole, they have been the subjects of a bizarre experiment in social engineering perpetrated by blinkered city planners careless of the outcome of their tinkering.
Here’s a sample from O’Toole’s paper that will give you an idea of where he’s coming from.
Metro Vancouver planners, he says, “want to control where people live, the kind of housing they live in, where they work and how they get to work.”
How could this happen?
Well, the planners decided years ago that they would control “sprawl” by putting strict limits on land developed for housing.
The result: A land shortage leading to the highest home prices in Canada.
The planners also wanted people living in multi-family, high-density cores convenient to public transit.
The result: Higher street crime and an intolerable strain on infrastructure.
(Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan’s trademarked “eco-density” initiative, which would dramatically increase the population in some city neighbourhoods, would no doubt be viewed by O’Toole as the ultimate folly.)
On the work front, he accuses the planners of insisting on a “balance” between people and jobs in designated cities, the aim being to make commuter travel by car unnecessary.
And, to further discourage travel by automobile, the planners deliberately refuse to build roads, hoping drivers will get so tired of congestion they will dump their vehicles.
All these policies have failed miserably, and at great cost, writes O’Toole, since people in the end decide what’s best for them.
And people prefer to drive their cars to work; they want a home with a yard for the kids instead of a box in the sky; and they don’t want to live on top of their workplace.
It should not surprise you to learn that O’Toole’s solution to our woes is not to change the way we plan, but to abandon planning altogether.
Open up the “green zone” for housing, he says, and throw in some of the Agricultural Land Reserve, to end an “artificial land shortage.” Home prices would again be affordable for middle- and lower-income families.
Build a slew of new roads — but put in electronic tolls so that drivers can get where they’re going in a hurry, while paying for the privilege.
And instead of making the car a public enemy, the emphasis should be on advanced technology to make vehicles more efficient and less polluting.
SkyTrain’s an expensive luxury, says O’Toole. Lots more buses are the answer.
Food for thought, isn’t it?
© The Vancouver Province 2007
