Can Hamilton let go of the suburban dream?
Does Hamilton have enough land for future residents? Some say that depends on the kind of housing we want
This is the first in a week-long CBC Hamilton series, How should cities grow? Hamilton's boundary dilemma, examining urban sprawl and boundary expansion in the city. Other articles in this series include:
- In Pictures: When it comes to good growth, Hamilton's Barton Village is still finding its way
- As Hamilton considers expansion, First Nations experts watch how consultation unfolds
- Who's who in the urban boundary debate? A look at the players involved in the Hamilton decision
Lynda Lukasik stands at the corner of Queenston Road and Centennial Parkway, where Hamilton becomes Stoney Creek, and looks out over empty parking lots.
She hands a folded piece of paper to someone on her right. That person looks at it, steps sideways and hands it to the next person. Within five minutes, it's made its way around a semi-circle of people who've come on a walkabout with her to look at what urban planners call greyfields. Those are underutilized lots Lukasik, executive director of Environment Hamilton, says are a partial solution to urban sprawl.
Lukasik's paper shows the Centennial Neighbourhoods Secondary Plan, a 2019 plan to add density to the area. The page shows where developers can build three or more storeys on what are otherwise stout, partially occupied buildings and parking lots deserted for hours a day.
"And just down the road…" Lukasik starts, and gestures toward Elfrida.
No one following city hall these days would need her to finish that sentence. Elfrida, on the outskirts of town where backhoes dig up dirt to make way for new developments, is the area on the front lines of the current debate over whether the city should expand its urban boundary.
Next week, after months of public input, city councillors will once again discuss expanding the boundary.
That move would see houses built on so-called whitebelt land between the edge of urban Hamilton and the lush, provincially protected greenbelt.
Planning staff say an expansion of 1,340 hectares is essential to accommodate an expected population growth of 110,300 households by 2051. Lukasik says the unrealized plan for the Centennial Parkway area is an example of another option.
There's enough underdeveloped land in Hamilton's existing boundaries, she says. We don't need to eat into farmland.
"We support a firm urban boundary, for sure," she said.
The issue is complex, and council has talked about it for years. The city's planning department calls the current version the Growth Related Integrated Development Strategy 2, or GRIDS2.
In March, the city started a land-needs assessment and survey to determine how much land it needs to handle expected population growth, and the housing and jobs needed to go with it.
It mailed out surveys (costing $61,145), which many say they didn't get. It asked people about two options: an "ambitious density" scenario that includes a 1,340-hectare expansion, and not expanding the boundary. Of the 18,387 responses, 16,636 said no to expansion.
"All the places I picked fruit at are now houses," one response said.
"Fix the property we have," said another. "We can't eat buildings."
Many said they wanted intensification in the existing boundary, otherwise known as infill — taller buildings and housing on brownfields and greyfields.
Steve Robichaud, the city's director of planning, says Hamilton needs both infill and expansion. It needs to meet the province's density and growth targets, he says. And when people don't have a range of housing options they can afford — condos, rental units, townhouses, single-family homes — they move somewhere else. The city also risks not growing its tax base, he says, which costs existing taxpayers.
"There's a characterization that Hamilton is sprawling," he said. "I would suggest that the definition of sprawl talks about uncontrolled, unplanned, haphazard growth. That's not what's been happening."
Robichaud says if the expansion happens, 70 per cent of Hamilton's land mass will still be protected by the greenbelt. But instead of the current rural/urban ratio of 75/35, it'll be 70/30.
For some, any loss of farmland is a problem. Barry Bogle of Millgrove, about 12 kilometres northwest of downtown Hamilton, has a roadside "No Urban Sprawl" sign at his 147-year-old seed farm.
Bogle says agriculture has enough challenges without losing more land to housing. Already, he says, he sees small farms being covered with housing and foreign-owned agriculture corporations. But "if you have enough money, you can do about anything, I guess."
Expansion costs more
"We want to eat local," he said. "But farmland is all taken up by housing and development and industry."
That's what the volunteer organization Stop Sprawl HamOnt wants to avoid. Zoë Green says eight volunteers are doing an inventory of underutilized land to show growth is possible without expansion.
"Maps are great for telling a story," Green said, and "we now have a visual tool, if you will."
The group hopes to publish the maps online.
"They show us where we're going, but also where we've been. Let's make sure the city's decision on Nov. 9 is the one that takes us where we need to go," she said, referring to the upcoming council discussion. City councillors are scheduled to vote that day on whether to accept the "ambitious density" scenario, which would see an urban boundary expansion. A final decision on what that entails is expected in the spring.
Michael Mercier, an assistant professor in McMaster University's School of Earth, Environment and Society, agrees there's enough land, but only if the city and its residents are ready to change their outlook.
After the Second World War, he says, society was trained to chase the dream of the suburban single-family home. With that came mass-produced housing tracts and an emphasis on cars.
"We do have enough land, for sure," he said. "But we don't have enough land if we are entirely wedded to the idea of living in single-family homes. If we take the land that exists within the city – former industrial sites, parcels of land here and there – and build single-family homes on them, we will run out of space pretty quickly."
Expanding is expensive, Mercier says. A new City of Ottawa study shows low-density homes on undeveloped land costs $465 per resident per year, over and above property taxes and water bills. That's up $56 from eight years ago.
People moving away
Meanwhile, high-density infill pays for itself, and leaves the city with an extra $606 per capita.
Mike Collins-Williams, CEO of the West End Home Builders' Association, is in favour of the expansion. He says buyer tastes are changing. People still want suburban homes though, and if they can't get them here, they'll move.
Already, he says, a June paper from the Smart Prosperity Institute shows as many as 15,000 people left Hamilton between 2015 and 2020 to find the housing they wanted in St. Catharines, Brantford and rural Ontario. It also says in that time, there were 2,598 fewer single, semi-detached and row homes built in Hamilton compared to the previous five years.
"Some people still want a little bit of elbow room," Collins-Williams said. "People still want a patch of grass and a barbecue."
Collins-Williams also points out that resident outcry tends to come not from new suburbs, but from existing neighbourhoods who are against new builds next door to them.
'Does he really want to go there?'
Robichaud says it's possible that the city could reject expansion, and the province will force it anyway.
This year, the province has issued a number of ministerial zoning orders (MZOs) allowing developments despite local rules. It also told the city in a September letter that it has "concerns regarding the potential regional implications" of not expanding the boundary.
The province can unilaterally change Hamilton's official plan, Robichaud says.
"After all this consultation," he said, "we could end up with a solution that wasn't supported by staff and wasn't supported by council."
Meanwhile, Environment Hamilton's Lukasik says the spectre of intervention from Municipal Affairs Minister Steve Clark is "a good question."
"It'll be interesting to see," she said. "Does he really want to go there?"
This series, How should cities grow? Hamilton's boundary dilemma, runs Nov. 5-13.
