Stopping the Sprawl: How Winnipeg Could Benefit from Metropolitan Growth Management Strategies for a Slow-Growth Region (original) (raw)

Metropolitan growth and municipal boundaries: Problems and proposed solutions

2001

The adoption of measures designed to counter urban sprawl, ie to achieve more compact growth across urban regions, is becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in North American cities, and is referred to as "smart growth" or "metropolitan growth management" (MGM). For the most part, however, such measures have been adopted in areas affected by rapid population growth and there is a widespread conception that they are most appropriate to rapid growth. This paper argues that sprawl development is potentially far more damaging to slowly- growing cities than rapidly-growing ones, and that metropolitan growth management is therefore highly appropriate to a slow-growth situation. Examining the case of Winnipeg, the paper considers the problems and possibilities that are likely to be encountered in any attempt to manage this slowly-growing urban region's growth, and produces a set of recommendations designed to take advantage of the opportunities and overcome the difficulties. The paper concludes that, although metropolitan growth management would not be easy to achieve in Winnipeg, it is both urgently needed and possible.

How to regulate urban growth: The state of the art in Canada

Like the weather, urban sprawl is one of those subjects everyone talks about without necessarily doing anything about it. Indeed, as a discipline, we are unsure whether concrete, practical measures to control sprawl are even possible. My paper is the first in a series of North American-European comparisons designed to move beyond anti-sprawl rhetoric to the development of a catalogue of actual regulatory measures and political moves aimed at the encouragement of economical land use and compactness and urbanity of built form – development that minimizes impact on the environment and agriculture. The paper is a case study of Markham, Ontario, a Toronto suburb that arguably leads Canada in the attempt to implement practical growth management measures. Based on government and other documents as well as interviews, it defines the terminology of growth management and explains the rules, showing how the implementation of those rules involves complex interactions among three levels of government. It concludes that, though much has been accomplished, Markham's system of growth management falls considerably short of putting paid to worries about sprawl.

Urban Sprawl - An Evidence-Based Approach - 2

Suburban sprawl threatens the viability of our cities, the health of our environment and even the viability of commercial agriculture. There are a lot of commentators making that case, but many of them do it from the viewpoint of an urbanite, attacking the fundamentally anti-urban culture of the suburbs. This is a self-defeating approach to the problem."

Guest editor's preface metropolitan governance reform: an introduction

Public Administration and Development, 2005

If the political and economic future of our globe is shrouded in obscurity and controversy, there is one striking trend of which we may be certain: our collective future will be even more urbanised than it is now. Current projections estimate that the whole world will be predominantly urban by the year 2007; and the 'developing' world, which has historically been much more rural than the 'developed' world, will itself, on the aggregate, pass the urban threshold by the year 2019 (United Nations, 2002, p. 163). As the world urbanises, it sorts itself into spatially distinct patterns with respect to both density and size. The trajectory of the number and average size of large cities is especially interesting. At the beginning of the 19th century, Peking (now Beijing) was the only city with a recorded population of more than a million. A century later, 16 cities had achieved this size. By 1950, the number had risen to 83, by 1975 to 195 (National Research Council, 2003, p. 85), and by the year 2000 it was estimated that there were 387 cities with one million or more population (United Nations, 2002, p. 309). While there are more and larger cities on the planet, an increasing number of them are located in developing, or 'less developed' and 'least developed' regions of the world, to use the current United Nations nomenclature. Thus of the 195 large cities in the world in 1975, 122 (or 63%) were in the developing regions; by 2000, 297 out of 387 (or 77%) were in developing regions, and by 2015, when it is estimated that the whole world will be well into its urban phase, 449 out of a total of 554 (or fully 81%) will be in the developing world. (National Research Council, 2003, p. 85). Finally, it is worth observing that the average size of the world's largest cities is also growing. Whereas in 1800 the world's 100 largest cities averaged 165,000, the average in the early years of the current millennium is greater than 6 million (National Research Council, 2003, p. 84). In their tabulation of the world's 'megacities'-or cities with more than 10 million persons-the UN observes that in 1950 there were only two, New York with more than 12 million inhabitants and Tokyo with over 11 million. By 1975 there were four, of which two-Shanghai and Mexico City-were in 'less developed regions'. And by 2015 there will be twentytwo, of which all but five will be in the developing world (United Nations, 2004, p. 7). This powerful surge of urbanisation, which has already consolidated itself in Europe, North America and most parts of southern Latin America, is increasingly being fuelled by intra-urban rather than migratory sources of growth. Much of this intra-urban growth will reflect the process of expansion, as large cities embrace rural settlements on their outskirts. In any case, as we are again reminded by the UN, '[a]lmost all the growth of the world's total population between 2000 and 2030 is expected to be absorbed by the urban areas of the less developed regions' (United Nations, 2004, p. 1). These trends of urban growth and consolidation have produced, all over the world, agglomerations that we have termed 'metropolitan areas'. Definitions of what is 'metropolitan' as opposed to merely urban abound, but the Canadian definition of a 'census metropolitan area' can stand as a useful starting point. These areas are defined as 'cities with a very large urbanized core, together with adjacent urban and rural areas which have a high degree of economic and social integration with that core' (United Nations, 2002, p. 134). To these elements we can add the notion of a threshold size for the core city-100,000 in Canada and at least 50,000 (at least until more complex definitions took over) in the United States (Stephens and Wikstrom, 2000, p. 15); and the idea of political and cultural importance (Johnston et al., 2000, p. 501). 'Metropolitan areas' around the world are generally comprised of a number of clustered, multi-centred cities, a large total population (normally over 1 million) and a complex

The Challenges in Implementing a Smart Growth Agenda: The BC Sprawl Report 2004

2005

The following article originally appeared as: Alexander, D., Tomalty, R., & Anielski, M. (2005). The challenges in implementing a smart growth agenda: The BC Sprawl Report 2004. Plan Canada, 45(4), 23-26. Plan Canada is published by the Canadian Institute of Planners. The CIP website can be found at: http://www.cip-icu.ca.

BEING REALISTIC ABOUT URBAN GROWTH

Journal of Urban Affairs, 2006

This paper distinguishes between cities experiencing high rates of growth and those growing more slowly and argues that it is critically important to take rates of growth into consideration in policy making. Using the examples of Vancouver and Winnipeg, we explore the economic, physical, and political differences associated with their different rates of growth and consider the policy implications of these differences. We critically compare policies pursued by the two cities in five areas: economic development, infrastructure and services, land use, planning for growth, and housing. We argue that both slow and rapid growth have advantages and disadvantages but that policy, especially in slow-growth centers, is often dictated not by a sober assessment of opportunities and constraints but by an unreasoning pursuit of growth at all costs. This pursuit has engendered a way of thinking about urban policy that has affected both city governance and academic urban studies literature.

Assessing urban growth management

Land Use Policy, 1993

Many states in the USA attempt to manage urban growth so that development is directed to urban areas equipped to accommodate development, and rural lands are preserved for resource and other non-urban uses. The state of Oregon is entering its third decade of what many commentators describe as the nation's most aggressive urban growth management programme administered statewide. This article reports a recent evaluation of the effectiveness of the state urban growth management policies as they are implemented by the metropolitan Portland area. The metropolitan Portland area contains the largest population, employment and land base within a single urban growth boundary in the USA. Using primary data collection and analysis, the effectiveness of the urban growth management and resource land preservation effort is assessed. Nearly all regional development has been directed to the urban growth boundary and away from resource lands. Many problems with administration are found, however. Policy implications are suggested.