The way we develop urban peripheries is central to tackling both the housing crisis and the climate emergency.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford plows a field with a tractor at the recent 2023 International Plowing Match and Rural Expo, in Bowling Green, Ont.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
The Greenbelt fiasco has been an enormous distraction from the challenges facing the Greater Toronto Area — and it’s doubtful the Ford government will significantly change its approach.
Doug Ford’s Greenbelt reversal may be politically painful but is vital to protecting Ontario’s biodiversity from development, seen here just outside the Duffins Rouge Agricultural Preserve.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
In reversing his decision on the Greenbelt, Doug Ford made no mention of ecology or biodiversity, the very things the Greenbelt was created to protect.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks to journalists at the Ontario legislature in Toronto in August 2023, amid the growing Greenbelt scandal.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
The Greenbelt scandal is among the most serious of Ontario Premier Doug Ford’s years in office. So why is he pressuring developers to accelerate construction on Greenbelt lands?
Ontario’s Greenbelt is a bastion of ecosystem diversity and the loss of parts of it would cause considerable harm.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
While Canada pledges $200 million to promote biodiversity, Doug Ford removes lands from the Greenbelt. Here is why we all should care.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford speaks during a news conference in Mississauga, Ont., on Aug. 11, 2023, two days after a scathing auditor general report into the Greenbelt.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Cole Burston
Ontario’s Doug Ford government engages in a casual approach to decision-making that regards normal governance processes as nothing but delay-inducing red tape.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford attends a conference in May 2023 in Etobicoke, Ont.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/ Tijana Martin
Doug Ford’s Ontario government is running up major long-term economic and environmental costs and liabilities, eroding the province’s capacity to deal with future challenges.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford talks to the media on a construction site in Brampton, Ont., in May 2022. Later in the year, the Ford government justified its adoption of sweeping housing legislation and the opening of parts of the Greater Toronto Area Greenbelt for development, stating that it was needed to address “the housing supply crisis.”
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chris Young
Evidence suggests that Ontario neither had a shortage of pre-authorized housing starts to accommodate its growing population, nor did it have a shortage of designated land to build such homes.
Housing affordability remains a challenge in Toronto and surrounding areas, despite an increasing number of developments.
(Shutterstock)
The Ontario government has, under Doug Ford, revised policies and approaches in favour of developers. Policy reform is essential to address the growing problem of unaffordable housing.
There are lots of losers in Doug Ford’s Ontario. Who are the winners?
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
The very short list of winners, and a growing list of losers, in Doug Ford’s Ontario does not bode well for the government’s political future – or the province.
Providing green space can deliver health, social and environmental benefits for all urban residents – few other public health interventions can achieve all of this.
Anne Cleary
Urban green spaces are most effective at delivering their full range of health, social and environmental benefits when physical improvement of the space is coupled with social engagement.
Apartments near the greenbelt in Vienna are more expensive than otherwise similar apartments in that city.
Max Pixel
Paul Cheshire, London School of Economics and Political Science
We all know we have a crisis of housing supply and affordability. Over the past four years we have built on average 110,000 homes a year in England, less than the 150,000 homes built 110 years ago in 1904…
Beautiful – but most greenbelt is on private land.
Barry Batchelor/PA
Paul Cheshire, London School of Economics and Political Science
What a strange place the UK is - when the most important thing Britons spend money on becomes even less affordable, it’s received as good news. Because that is what “confidence returns to the housing market…