An Open Letter to the City of Ottawa

I recently wrote a letter to the author of a City of Ottawa white paper that I deemed encouraged development of the city's greenbelt - a ring of green space that dinstinguishes the "old city" from the terribly planned former suburban municipalities of the now amalgamated metropolis. Needless to say, it was not received well, and despite a carefully worded apology I provided following the initial letter, I got no feedback on the content of either letters. What follows is only the first letter I wrote, since it was quite long, but let me reiterate the general message of the second letter:

I don't presume to make an authoritative claim as to the cause (though I have my suspicions), but the city of Ottawa has been, and is, poorly planned from the standpoint of sustainable development. The city has encouraged low-density suburban sprawl, a continuation of the capital-attraction strategies of the old suburban muncipalities. This has led to a whole host of problems, such as budgetary deficits on the account of snow removal, inability to maintain the downtown core landscape, and considerable shortcomings in the maintenance and reproduction of the city's rental housing stock, to name only a meagre few.

Anyway, let me get right to the meat:

I am thoroughly unimpressed with your one-sided white paper that - though it presents the semblance of some balance - favours development of the greenbelt. Many of the arguments you presented in favour of developing the greenbelt are either factually inaccurate, or have another side to them which are not considered in the arguments against developing the greenbelt.

1. Destroying the greenbelt in whole or part will actually have a negative impact on air quality, since the current greenspace acts as giant sink for exhaust fumes, convertering carbon dioxide into breathable oxygen. Hence, reducing a major absorption source of air pollution will undoubtedly result in its increase. This could easily transform Ottawa from a large city with excellent air quality to a much smaller (and less attractive) Toronto. Instead of biting the hand that feeds us, we should be working to improve this feature of our city's landscape. One suggestion to amplify the positive effect of the greenbelt on our city's environment would be to look into certain climate-sensitive trees or shrubs that absorb carbon dioxide with high efficiency and begin planting them in the 'unused' scrubland.

2. It is also highly dubious whether or not destroying the greenbelt will reduce vehicle trips and subsequently emissions. New residential development would mean that public transit to the downtown core would be more effective than from former municipalities such as Kanata or Nepean - providing that these future residents do not simply find employment outside of "acceptable" public transit commute zones (e.g.: that new residents in proposed zone "1" do not find employment in Orleans or Riverside South). Thus, while new residential development in the greenbelt areas would be more efficient than simply promoting urban sprawl in Stittsvile or South Nepean (as is currently happening) it is by no means "sustainable". Non-residential development (excepting some mixed zoning) again would do very little, unless the city were to propose some kind of highly complicated property tax credit rewarding residents who work near their homes.

So the whole 'environmental' argument for developing the greenbelt is a fabrication. Economically it might make sense, in the sense that with the city's current planning model, it will have to provide services increasingly further out in the hinterlands, thereby significantly raising budgetary costs, but there is nothing environmentally sustainable about destroying green space well within city bounds. This is something, as I'm sure you have discovered continually at planning conferences, that other cities are dying to have.

Your principle framing of the purpose of the greenbelt is also highly misleading. Its purpose was never primarily to preserve a rural identity - this was always the secondary function of the Gréber plan. Rather, its primary aim was to limit urban sprawl, to make the city beautiful, something we have failed in miserably in the subsequent decades. The rural identity was a corollary that never made its way into the minds of the people (and I grew up on the inside edge of the greenbelt in the 1980s and 90s) largely in part to the opposing message that the city and the local media have been striving towards: Ottawa as a 'big, serious, city'.

I am not an urban planner, a geographer, or an environmentalist, nor am I necessarily against limited, strategic and thoughtful development of certain parts of the greenbelt. But any plan that proposes this must be balanced with competent urban planning and a political will that encourages high density development in interior regions of the city and places much higher demands and restrictions on developers eager to make the biggest profit possible via suburban housing. Because of the past ineptitude of politicians and city officials, we have failed the spirit of the greenbelt. It is absolutely unfair to deal the death blow to the plan simply because we are unable and unwilling to take our city's future more seriously, because we feel it is expedient to pass the buck as past generations have done.

You can read the white paper in question at the following link where you can, as a resident of the Ottawa area, or simply as an interested advocate of responsible, environmentally sustainable urban planning, contact the author and the city's representative on the issue.
http://www.ottawa.ca/residents/public_consult/beyond_2020/papers/greenbelt_white_paper/index_en.html