Douglas Todd: In light of the prevailing mythology that Canada is “empty,” it’s counter-intuitive to realize Canada’s cities are unusually crowded. And still unaffordable.
Wyndham Lewis once described Canada as a “monstrous, empty habitat”.
And the British writer is by no means the only one to say this country is vast, imposing and under-populated.
Given that Canada is geographically the second-largest country in the world, it’s understandable that many feel it is largely empty.
The belief makes it possible for social-media commentators, such as Slazac, to attract 2.9 million viewers by posting a crude map and commenting: “Canadians are so dumb. They complain about the housing crisis, but they have all this empty land to build cities.”
In light of such a ubiquitous mythology, it is counter-intuitive to realize Canada’s big cities are unusually crowded.
The Toronto region, for instance, is the second-most densely populated urban region in North America. The Vancouver region is fourth.
Residents of Canada, as well as newcomers, are drawn in an oddly powerful way to its cities, which are notably constrained by their boundaries.
It helps explain why housing prices are stratospheric.
Don Wright, who was head of B.C.’s civil service under NDP Premier John Horgan, has put together a chart showing that the only urban region in North America with a higher density than Toronto is New York.
By measuring population density within 30 kilometres of each city centre, Wright found gigantic New York’s concentration to be the greatest — at 15,014 people per square kilometre.
But the Toronto region came in second, at 6,006 residents per square kilometre. It’s followed by the San Francisco region at 5,843, and Vancouver at 5,568. Montreal is seventh at 5,219.
By comparison, Vancouver’s nearby neighbour to the south, Seattle, was far more spacious — with only 2,483 residents per square kilometre.
There are several reasons for the density of Canada’s three largest cities. One is that Canada has one of the highest rates of international migration in the world. The other is a lack of space to expand into.
Despite its sweeping openness, only 4.3 per cent of the land in Canada can grow agricultural products, compared to 17 per cent of the U.S, 33 per cent of Germany, and 52 per cent of India.
hat has led to politicians feeling pressure to protect farmland and other green spaces, particularly around Vancouver and Toronto.
As a result, both cities are far more restrained geographically than other North American cities.
“We’ve got a lot of land in Canada, but nobody lives on most of it,” said Wright.
In the 1970s, he said Canada’s municipal politicians often responded to rapid population growth by extending their boundaries into adjacent farmland. But Wright has found that the U.S. has 50 per cent more urban land per person than Canada, based on municipal boundaries.
The era in which Canada’s politicians would rezone farmland for housing is mostly over. “We know what an article of faith the Agricultural Land Reserve is in B.C.,” Wright said. And Ontario Premier Rob Ford endured tremendous pushback last year when he tried to rezone a relatively small portion of the greenbelt around Toronto for new housing.
Instead of Canadian cities sprawling into the suburbs and farmland, they are becoming known for what University of Melbourne sustainability professor Brendan Gleeson calls “vertical sprawl.”
Canada has the world’s third-highest number of buildings of more than 100 metres, according to the Skyscraper Center. That’s for a total of 472, which places us only behind populous China and the U.S.
While Gleeson doesn’t oppose density, he is worried about highrises that are of poor quality, ugly and too close together. What’s more, residential towers tend to produce more carbon emissions.
Such realities put into context the claims of Canada’s influential business lobby, the Century Initiative, which has been pressing the Liberal government to boost the population of Metro Toronto to 33.5 million by 2100 (from the current eight million) and Metro Vancouver to 12 million (from the current three million).
But the City of Vancouver has already tripled its density since the Second World War. And in addition to zoning for hundreds of residential towers, it has for a long time allowed each “single-family” lot to contain two to four separate dwellings.
In recent years, Vancouver, like Burnaby and other suburbs, has also drastically upzoned more neighbourhoods for more towers. And the B.C. NDP last year brought in Bill 44 to eliminate single-family zoning in favour of four-to-six homes per lot. As well, Bill 47 requires buildings of eight to 20 storeys within a 10-minute walk of SkyTrain stations and bus exchanges.
Such upzoning can appear well meaning, but the tragedy is it hasn’t lowered housing prices. That’s according to a range of voices, from the mayors of Burnaby and Richmond to UBC architectural department professor Patrick Condon.
“Densification has been carried out more boldly in the Vancouver region than perhaps anywhere else in North America, but it did not yield the affordable housing we had hoped for,” says Condon.
Although the UBC prof says it is theoretically possible that densifying could some day lower prices, his research shows unaffordability would likely continue to reign even if, against the wishes of most residents of Toronto and Vancouver, developers were allowed to bulldoze farmland for housing.
What can be done? Many housing analysts and bank economists are now saying Canada’s permanent and temporary migration levels have to be reduced from the current 1.3 million a year until housing supply can catch up.
“I think the only chance we have of getting back to some level of livability is the federal government has to dial down the immigration numbers,” said Wright. He suggests annual population growth should be cut to 300,000 people. National Bank economists Stéfane Marion and Alexandra Ducharme propose a target of 300,000 to 500,000.
Such a reduction wouldn’t be popular with the Century Initiative and some businesses, but it would definitely ease housing demands.
Source: Vancouver SUN
