Places to Starve

Letter from Steven Kaasgaard 23 Skidoo January 15 2011
Re: Smart growth – or outsmarted? (Toronto Star)
Who are we kidding?
Brampton, Bolton, Caledon, Halton, Alliston, Mississauga, Orangeville, Milton, Vaughn, Whitby, Markham, Aurora, Newmarket, Barrie etc…were all once former bastions of prime foodland. Places locals could count on for food.

And what did we trade all of that potential for?
Well if we look real close we are left with an endless concrete jungle fortified by such silly notions like those that come out municipalities like Mayor Susan Fennell’s Brampton. On the one hand she actually considers herself a ‘Green’ mayor while in contrast her municipality actively pre-empts plans to save foodlands by the province’s Places to Grow initiative. Her worship might recognize the goals set by the province’s Places to Grow initiative as absolutely essential for the food security of future generations. It is only with such obvious lack of foresight and naivete that leaders of those aforementioned municipalities could logically ever consider such uncontrolled growth in their communities as a legitamate economic engine – paving over their greatest assets, their own foodlands.
As these municipalities gradually encase themselves and their constituents in the urban sprawl that results they move their municipalities inexorably closer and closer to becoming mere places to starve.