The Surprising Way Greenbelts Can Increase Urban Sprawl

Canada has spent decades trying to curb urban sprawl through policies like greenbelts, urban growth boundaries, and higher development charges, but what if those policies are having the opposite effect?

In this episode, Mike Moffatt and Sabrina Maddeaux examine the rise of "leapfrog development," where families priced out of cities move beyond growth boundaries into neighbouring communities, leading to longer commutes, higher infrastructure costs, and even more sprawl. They explore real-world examples from Ottawa, London, and the Greater Toronto Area, discuss the research behind these trends, and ask whether it's time to rethink how Canadian cities grow.

Topics covered:

Why urban growth boundaries were created
What leapfrog development is and why it matters
How greenbelts and development charges affect housing affordability
Why more families are moving outside city limits
The Ottawa and Carleton Place case study
Statistics Canada's commuting data and metro boundaries
The relationship between housing costs, commuting, and emissions
Why regional planning may work better than local planning
Can cities reduce sprawl without pricing families out?
Subscribe for more conversations on housing, affordability, economics, and public policy in Canada.
#Housing #Canada #UrbanPlanning #HousingCrisis #RealEstate #Affordability #Greenbelt #UrbanSprawl #PublicPolicy #MissingMiddle

Chapters:
00:00 Is the Greenbelt Actually Causing More Sprawl?
01:33 The "Strange Pattern" of Ontario's Development 
03:11 How StatsCan Defines Metro Boundaries 
05:07 The Rise of the "Commuter Village" 
07:59 What is "Leapfrog Development" & Why Boundaries Fail 
11:02 Why the Environmental Movement Refuses to Change Its Mind 
12:51 Anti-Sprawl Politics: Virtue Signaling vs. Real Outcomes 

Research:
Did Development Charges Cause Metro Ottawa to Grow by Over 1000km in Size?
https://www.missingmiddleinitiative.ca/p/did-development-charges-cause-metro 

Hosted by Mike Moffatt & Cara Stern & Sabrina Maddeaux

Produced by Meredith Martin

Funded by the Neptis Foundation https://neptis.org/

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

So many environmentalists and academics, as well as urban planners, absolutely refuse to even consider the idea that urban growth boundaries and green belts might actually be causing more sprawl than they're preventing.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

These actions simply aren't working and are often not just not working, but counterproductive. Classonomics, hosted by Sabrina Maddow and Mike Moffat. When it comes to urban development, people tend to fall into one of two camps which don't fall neatly down ideological lines. In the first camp, you have urban planners, fiscal conservatives, and environmentalists championing the fight against urban sprawl, albeit for different reasons. And on the other side, you have groups worried about a lack of family-friendly housing, suburban developers, and some existing residents who want to keep their neighborhoods as is, so would rather see cities grow outward rather than upward. Now, the group fighting urban sprawl has been successful in implementing anti-sprawl policies, particularly in Ontario. Their policy toolkit includes building hard boundaries like urban growth boundaries, imposing steep development charges on suburban development, and establishing massive green belts. Their logic is simple and compelling to some: draw a line in the sand, make outward expansion painful or illegal, and the market will naturally pivot inward. The city will densify, infrastructure dollars will be saved, and the environment will be protected. That's all good in theory, but is it working in practice? A growing number of environmentalists, including the Missing Middles owned Mike Moffat, are of the view that many anti-sprawl initiatives, such as urban growth boundaries, are causing more sprawl than they're preventing. Mike?

SPEAKER_01 1:33

Yeah, so here's my argument that if you've spent any time driving in southern or eastern Ontario, you've probably experienced a very strange pattern of development. Like let's say you want to drive from downtown Ottawa to a community along Highway 7, like a Perth or a Caladar. So you start out and you're driving through a built-up area in the city of Ottawa, then you hit the Ottawa Greenbelt, and there's not much in there. You get to the other side of the Ottawa Greenbelt and you go through another built-up area in Kannada, and then boom, it just kind of ends. And then after another 25 or 30 kilometers, you're in Carlton Place. You get to Carlton Place, and then like bang, you've got all of these new family-sized homes that have been built in the last 10 to 15 years or so. So it's very strange where you've got, you know, built-up development, then nothing, the built-up development, the like 25 kilometers of nothing, and then boom, you know, a whole lot of single family homes.

SPEAKER_00 2:29

Yeah, I've absolutely seen that driving out of the GTA to Ottawa as well. The uneven development. And when we have a housing crisis, it really strikes you that there's not a lack of space or a lack of land. There are huge pockets of land that are very close to where people want to live and work that just aren't being used at all.

SPEAKER_01 2:49

Yeah, absolutely. And this type of development is all too common. It's one of those things that, like, once you see it, you really can't unsee it. And a lot of those developments that I mentioned earlier cater to families that work in Ottawa. And I can actually prove that those residents are really, you know, working and playing in Ottawa, but it's going to get a bit wonky. So I hope that's okay. Go ahead, nerd out. It's what we're here for. So it's going to rely on some data. Like a lot of place-based data that Statistics Canada releases is defined at the metropolitan or metro level. So the metro that everybody's familiar with is the GTA, the Greater Toronto area. But overall, Statistics Canada defines 41 different metro areas across Canada. Well, if you're going to track metro level data, you need to define the boundaries of the metro. So, you know, take the GTA, for example. Like clearly, the city of Toronto itself is in the GTA. It's right in the name. And, you know, I don't think anybody would be surprised at neighboring communities like Mississauga, they're in the GTA as well. But then you kind of go outwards and you have to kind of make some judgment calls. Like, is Milton in the GTA or Pickering or Oshawa or Burlington or so on? So you've got to sort of figure out what's in and what's out.

SPEAKER_00 4:04

Yeah. And I've been seeing like people use GTHA, the greater Toronto-Hamilton area. So it does get confusing very quickly. So how exactly does Stats Canada make that call?

SPEAKER_01 4:14

Yeah. So they define the boundaries of a metro area based on how economically integrated a town or city is with nearby communities. And the easiest way to do that is to determine that by looking at commuter traffic. So looking at the number of people who live in one place but then drive to work in another place. And Statistics Canada updates these boundaries every five years to go along with the census. So they collect a bunch of census data, ask people about their commutes, and then they update the uh the boundaries. So back in 2021, Statistics Canada added Carlton Place and Arn Prior and a bunch of other communities near Ottawa to the Metro Ottawa region. And the reason they did this is because those communities had become so-called commuter villages, as over a third of their labor force actually works within Metro Ottawa. Now, people move to communities for all types of reasons, but a fair bit of it was a predictable response to policies put in place by the city of Ottawa to limit sprawl. So these are families who, you know, theoretically could live in Ottawa. Many of them used to live in Ottawa, but they decided to move to Carleton Place and then commute to Ottawa every day for work.

SPEAKER_00 5:29

Yeah, that's really interesting, as people are taking longer and longer commutes to achieve affordability if they can at all. So you wonder where some of these boundaries will end. Now, you were showing me a great Ottawa citizen piece from 2014, which we'll link to in the show notes, where the industry did predict that changes in the City of Ottawa policies would push families to move outside the city. The specific issue the article focused on was development charge increases. The president of the Greater Ottawa Home Builders Association warned that development was increasingly being pushed to outside the city, which would cause an increase in commuting. And he warned that this would hurt the city's finances, as in his words, that means the city is not getting taxes and yet still needs the infrastructure from all the people coming in from the villages to work here.

SPEAKER_01 6:12

Yeah, and that is a huge problem, right? That those families, you know, pay their municipal taxes to Carleton Place, but they use the infrastructure in Ottawa to commute there or, you know, go to the mall or whatever. And I absolutely love the response from the City of Ottawa's planning committee chair in response to the uh home builders' concerns.

SPEAKER_00 6:33

Right. The chair's response was, and I quote, growth outside the city is in line with expectations of how those smaller centers would expand. We haven't seen them come forward and say we have to amend our official plan to accommodate more growth. Now, I'm guessing those communities did end up growing faster than the city of Ottawa expected.

SPEAKER_01 6:50

Yeah, absolutely. And as somebody who makes a lot of predictions, I have sympathy for anyone who makes a prediction that kind of goes horribly wrong. But yeah, if you look at the data, it's almost like a hockey stick where, you know, those comments were made, and then boom, you know, population growth and home building kind of skyrockets up. So home building exploded in Lanark County, and that's where Carlton Place is. You know, it's a region just outside of Ottawa. And around 2016 or so, so you know, about 18 months after those comments, you start to see an influx of families into that region. Population growth rates like triple almost overnight, and entire subdivisions go up. And these communities became commuter suburbs for the city of Ottawa rather than what they used to be, which was kind of self-contained, economically contained small towns. And to be clear, like I'm just not picking on the city of Ottawa here because none of this is unique to the city of Ottawa. You see the same thing in places like my hometown of London, Ontario, where you've got these kind of empty areas. And then once you leave the city limits, you get whole new subdivisions springing up and surrounding communities like Comoka and Lucan. So none of this is kind of Ottawa specific.

SPEAKER_00 7:58

Yeah, this type of development is known as leapfrog development, where policies such as urban growth boundaries, green belts, and high suburban development charges that are designed to cause development to move inward, instead do the opposite and cause subdivisions to leap over the boundaries or high taxes and into neighboring communities, which then makes sprawl even worse because instead of building a new subdivision at the edge of town, you're building it 10 or 20 miles away and requiring workers to drive in each day for work. How much of a problem is this?

SPEAKER_01 8:27

Well, unfortunately, I would say it's an understudied topic, but some academic literature does exist. And, you know, what it says is that like leapfrogging happens under certain conditions. So it's not universal, but there are times where it is a real, real problem. And where we tend to see it happen more often is first of all, when planning is local rather than regional, right? So you've got a single municipality like a London, like an Ottawa, who are making these boundaries and it's kind of easy, you know, to move into the next community. It also tends to happen where there are significant differences in taxes and land costs and red tape between the core community and the smaller communities around it. So if it's a lot easier to build a new home in Lanark County than in Ottawa, well, that's where the developers are going to build it. The next is where commuters can drive into the city each day free of charge. So you don't see this as much in places like London, UK, where they have those uh taxes that you have to pay if you kind of drive into the city. And then we tend not to have those in in Canada. And finally, you see this a lot where cities don't allow for family-friendly upzoning. Now, the kind of theory behind all of this is you put in the urban growth boundary and you allow for densification of existing neighborhoods. Well, a lot of these uh municipalities didn't do the second part, you know, they didn't allow for that kind of densification. And you'll often hear supporters of urban growth boundaries say, well, the it's not the boundary that's a problem, as there's still development land left in it. And you know, that that might be true, but it in my view, it misses the point that when communities limit land use, they make land artificially scarce, which drives up the price and makes it relatively more expensive to build in the city relative to the surrounding area. So it's not just you know that you physically run out of land, but that you make that land artificially scarce, you drive up the price, and only you know, kind of the richest families can afford to continue living in the city.

SPEAKER_00 10:28

So then I take it that urban growth boundaries could potentially work, but by doing the opposite, by densifying, by doing regional or provincial rather than local planning, and by having similar rules and tax rates across the region.

SPEAKER_01 10:40

Yeah, all of those matter. And as well, you know, having more transit options within the city helps as it reduces the commuting cost for those families who decide to stay in the city. And finally, urban growth boundaries and green belts tend to be more successful in Europe, particularly continental Europe, largely because population growth is lower. So there's just not as much growth pressures to build new homes. But I have to say though, that like this is nearly an impossible issue to study or even discuss. And that's not for scientific reasons. Like we can go out and get the data and run studies and do models and things like that. But rather, it's that so many environmentalists and academics, and I wear both of those hats, as well as urban planners, absolutely refuse to even consider the idea that urban growth boundaries and green belts might actually be causing more sprawl than they're preventing. So why do you think it is? Like, why are so many of us kind of hesitant to even consider the notion that these rules might be problematic?

SPEAKER_00 11:39

No, it's a very human psychological barrier to not want to change your mind or admit that you were wrong, especially when you've publicly and often committed or advocated to an idea. And I do think that's happened with the environmental movement, where they committed to these ideas, advocated for them, and now they're such a part of the movement's identity and ideology that it's very difficult for them to reconsider these, despite the fact that there's mounting evidence that these actions simply aren't working and are often not just not working, but counterproductive, as we've been talking about. So it's really refreshing to see experts like yourself who are environmentalists and do care about this, come out and say, hey, like we need to reconsider the evidence here and make different choices. But I'm curious, as someone that's very much more inside that movement, what you're seeing and what you think the barriers are.

SPEAKER_01 12:31

Well, I do think it's that people are kind of hesitant to change their mind. And to be clear, like my own views have evolved over this in the last 10 to 15 years. So 10 to 15 years ago, I've said, like, yeah, no, of course, you know, we need to put in these rules to prevent sprawl. But, you know, I think we also have to look at the results of the last 10, 10 to 15 years and go, you know, is this working? And, you know, I think we've gone to the point where this is no longer a policy issue, like it's become the ultimate kind of virtue signal, particularly among politicians in the GTA and southwestern Ontario. And you see this a lot, and we're gonna see it a lot this year because we've got a municipal election where you get these men and women saying, you know, I voted to freeze the urban boundary, therefore, you know, I'm saving the planet, I'm saving farmland, uh, and so on. You know, and the actual real world outcome of that vote is completely beside the point to them. You know, did it actually work? You know, it allows a lot of these uh politicians to feel morally superior while the actual families they claim to champion are like quietly forced to pack up their U-Hauls and they move to Woodstock or wherever so they can afford a home with a backyard. Then those newcomers to Woodstock, well, they drive every day to their jobs at Grand River Hospital and Kitchener or wherever it is they work in a larger community. And I gotta say, like, like, how on earth is that saving farmland or reducing carbon emissions when you know you're not stopping people from, you know, having a family-sized home, you're just pushing it 20 miles down the road and having to build wider highways so they can get from their homes to their jobs.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Yeah, people are going to want to have enough space to raise their families and in a way that they can afford to do it, and they will find a way to. And that often means moving further away and commuting more, driving more. So this is often counterproductive and having the opposite impacts of what was initially the goals. Thank you so much for watching and listening. And to our producer, Meredith Martin, and our editor, Sean Foreman.

SPEAKER_01 14:30

And if you have any thoughts or questions about where to find Starbucks in Lanark County, please send us an email to missingmiddle podcast at gmail.com.

SPEAKER_00 14:38

And we'll see you next time.