The Rural Voice, 1981-06, Page 25KEITH ROULSTON
When will they ever /earn
When will people in the cities ever
learn you can't eat condominiums.
I was listening to a discussion on rent
controls on the radio one day last month
with two experts talking about why
housing prices have gone crazy in
Vancouver. The solution, the one expert
said, was to lift rent controls and bring
the cost of housing down by taking off the
silly regulations which prevent farmland
around Vancouver from being turned into
housing developments.
Nowhere in Canada is the absorbtion of
farmland for urban uses so serious as in
British Columbia. Squeezed by the Rocky
Mountains on one side and the ocean on
the other. British Columbians are hard
pressed to find any land at all to farm. As
usual. of course, the pioneers picked the
best farmland, nice and level and rich, on
which to build their towns which became
cities and swallowed up the very farm-
land which had been their reason for
existence in the first place.
This professor's reasoning was very
familiar. Farmland. in his view, is just
land waiting for somebody to come along
and do something better with. Farmland
is worth more in houses; therefore it
should be in houses. The farmers then
must become more efficient in using
whatever land the developers leave them.
This argument in Ontario is hard to
fight. Big as our cities are, they still take
up a small proportion of the southern
Ontario food belt. Only in places like the
Niagara Peninsula where particular grow-
ing conditions exist that can't be dupli-
cated elsewhere can people be convinced
of the urgency of the situation. and even
there councils dominated by urbanites
are likely to listen to the dollars they can
get from housing taxes ahead of the
dollars from farmland (and with the
provincial government turning over more
planning authority to local bodies, the
prospects get bleaker by the minute). But
if anyone should be concerned about loss
of foodland, you would think it would be
the people of British Columbia.
The solution to many problems, it
seems. to this simpleton at least, is to
turn the argument around. Someday it
will have to be done; someone will have to
draw a line and say this is how far the city
will be aliowed to grow. Beyond this
point, no matter what else happens, the
land will remain in farmland. Instead of
farmers having to be more efficient on
what land is left, it would be up to the city
planners to make better use of what land
they have in the cities.
it would, of course, mean utter hell in
cities for a few years. Housing costs,
already ridiculous, would become absurd.
There would be hardship. But ultimately,
things might be better. Farmland, of
course. would be saved. Cities, one of the
most inefficient organizations around,
would be forced to become efficient.
Parking lots, which eat up huge hunks of
downtown real estate, would be too
valuable for cars and with no parking lots
people would have to take public transit,
saving us all precious fuel, lowering air
pollution, cutting down traffic noise.
making cities more liveable. Costs would
be higher. but that might be the thing
that would make people stop moving to
the cities and begin to develop our
smaller towns again. Of course it all
makes too much sense for anyone in a city
to like the idea.
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THE RURAL VOICE/JUNE 1981 PG. 23