Brampton councillor wants sprawl debate

By San Grewal Toronto Star January 20 2011
A Brampton councillor held up a Toronto Star article at a planning meeting this week and demanded that staff explain why the city had been singled out for its failure to get in tune with the province’s anti-sprawl agenda.

“I wanted staff’s reaction to the article,” said Councillor Grant Gibson. “And I wanted to get it on a public document to report back on the article at a council meeting. I was told by staff I would get a memo, but I said I don’t want a behind-the-scenes memo — I want a public document.”
Gibson said he doesn’t agree with everything in the Sunday Star piece, but after reading it felt the city needs to get on track.
The article by Phinjo Gombu analyzed the long-range growth plans municipalities have created in response to the province’s Places To Grow act, a comprehensive strategy for taming sprawl in the face of explosive population growth expected in the Golden Horseshoe.
With 100,000 people moving in annually, it’s the fastest growing mega-region in North America. Brampton is expected to grow to 738,000 over the next 20 years — 63 per cent bigger than in 2006.
The plan requires that within each region — Peel, in this case — at least 40 percent of that growth must be accommodated by “intensification”: higher, denser infill development in areas already built over.
The Star’s analysis of Brampton’s plan suggests the city, more than most, will continue to sprawl, paving over expansive tracts of rural land that developers have been buying for years with the intent of building traditional suburbia.
It’s a model that provides short-term development revenues to the city and is at the heart of political issues related to the industry’s influence, said Gibson.
“We need a comprehensive plan on how to meet the (province’s) growth plan,” Gibson said. “We don’t have a real plan. Developers would rather build on a greenfield any day. They buy up the land and then say to us: ‘Here’s what we want to do.’ We end up dealing with them after these guys have already bought up the land.”
“I think the Star article raises a bunch of questions,” says Mark Winfield, a York University professor of environmental studies, who also sits on a provincial advisory committee on implementing Places To Grow.
“The growth plan calls for a minimum of 40 per cent growth in existing urban space. If Markham is proceeding with about 65 per cent, but Brampton is at about 30 per cent, it’s clear some communities are responding to the plan — others aren’t.”
Gibson says he doesn’t want Brampton to be forced to do things its citizens don’t want. “But I want to see an open debate that leads to our own real plan.”