Discussion on urban sprawl - we had a great discussion on Saturday.

So - we started off trying to get to the root of the question - why is there urban sprawl? What are the forces at work that propel this activity?

• There is a tax demand from local government, so when populations on the outskirts reach a critical threshold, a large block of land is sold off to Walmart (and friends), which represents a large source of tax money.
• There is much money to be made in this process - developers are profiting on urban sprawl.  They're essentially doing this because they can.
• There is much demand among the populace for this particular style of living. The large house, large backyard, garage, suburban cull-de-sac lifestyle is a common aspiration in North America.
• There are risk averse decision makers, and approving these projects won't upset the apple cart.
• There was much criticism for the local municipality in their decision making process, and lack of foresight.
•  Small and large cities and towns are seeing this same effect on different scales.

 Misc Notes:

• Urban sprawl externalizes the costs of infrastructure from the developers onto the local municipality.  The municipality ultimately passes these costs on to the urban dwellers, who are not receiving any additional value for this payout.  Direct and indirect costs  include widening of lanes to support increased commuter traffic, expanded sewage transport capacity, etc. It was mentioned that if we put the majority of this money into the urban core, we could have a truly amazing city.  
• The urban core of halifax has lost about 1/3 of it's residents from it's peak - roughly 60,000 down from 90,000 - Bernard.
• Portland, and Vancouver are great examples.  Portland has explicit limits on the boundaries of expansion that is allowed. There are examples in Vancouver (Pam?) of office buildings being turned into residential space.
• 
  The container pier in the south end of Halifax is too valuable to be used simply for shipping.  The other two shipping piers in the area are not running at full capacity, and are able to take up the slack (according to Bernard).  This could be converted into high density housing - it could house 15,000 people,   could be closely linked with quality public transit, and could even be heated by the harbour.
• 
  This really comes down to living as part of a community - not being so individualized. When we choose to make links to our neighbours, we find the value of living a quality interconnected lifestyle.