No Light Rail in Vancouver!

Home Grand Jury Findings Rail Supporters Europe Rail Neighborhood The Plan Cars The Bridge Publications No Tolls!
Light rail costs too much, does too little

Land-Use Alternatives from Down Under

Nov 21

2007

Smart growth isn’t the solution to sprawl, says Owen McShane of the Centre for Resource Management Studies; it is merely just one more form of “carpet sprawl,” i.e., “urban expansion across the countryside in an endlessly and seamless repeated pattern.” McShane thinks that ordinary sprawl can be better because it creates a more diverse landscape.

Which has more biodiversity: this . . .

At the Preserving the American Dream conference, Owen extolled the virtues of low-density exurban development, which in the U.S. is often called “rural residential.” The area in which Owen lives, north of Auckland, is made up of 5 to 10 acre lots. Since the climate is similar to that of southern California, many of the residents grow olives and other Mediterranean crops.

. . . this . . .

He calls his neighborhood a “park” and, because the densities are so low, it does look park-like. Owen argues convincingly that the biodiversity of such exurban development is much higher than industrial farms or dense cities.

. . . or this?.

So Owen argues that urban-rowth boundaries are not really necessary (1.1MB Word document). I don’t believe he mentioned it at the conference, but it is interesting that many towns in Europe look much like his rural residential area: houses mingled among the farms. While Americans tend to believe that farms need hundreds or thousands of acres to be economically viable, the average size of farms in the European Union is less than 50 acres, and many are only a handful of acres — rural residential.

Owen’s PowerPoint show, which has some photos not found in his papers, can be downloaded from here (29MB file).

Trackback  •  Posted in Regional planning  

15

Reprinted from The Antiplanner