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Cities don’t like sprawl but people do
Letter to the Editor
Some of us are gregarious and love city life, and some of us prefer space and a natural environment in which to raise our children.
In 1973, B.C. boasted 4.6% agricultural land in the province, but that has eroded significantly. No one knows how much No. 1, 2 and 3 farmland has been taken out (mostly to make our cities happy) and how much No. 5, 6, & 7 non-farmland has been added to the Agricultural Land Reserve (to make it look good), because those figures stay in the Land Commission’s personal file cabinet.
None-the-less, that leaves 95% of the province that is not agriculture land, that we could enjoy without eroding our food land. Calgary and Los Angeles are two clear examples of cities that can attribute their size and fame to the fact that many people prefer sprawl to being packed like sardines in a can.
If we have 95% of our province that is not food land, is there someone in our present government who can explain why our cities are not encouraged to grow to this non-ag land? Instead of taking all the farmland surrounding the cites that were all founded by farmers on the choicest farmland, out of the Reserve for concentric city growth? To use common sense, this would at the same time, allow the people to have the space they want.
City halls like to keep the tax dollars and businesses close for reasons of their own.
They use the rational that sprawl is not the most economical way to supply services – so, who cares? Those that want economy can live in the established cities and those people who want more space can live in the sprawl areas and pay more – after all, the people will be paying the bills anyways – not the city, nor the government, nor the Land Commission (LC).
Both Los Angeles and Calgary are very popular cities – it’s time to give the sprawl thing a rest and let the people live where they want without the LC trying to force them into this new, squared city boundary policy – the way Richmond usurped our No. 1 farmland.
Dear Christy Clark: You need to direct our Land Commission to either save food land, or to help the city politicians stop sprawl and drop the food land policy, because both are obviously not possible.
For the last 30 of their 42 year reign, they seem to be confused about this. On the contrary, there’s an old adage my father used to quote, “when something doesn’t make sense, you can be sure there is money involved.”
Jo Middleton,
Fort St. John
