Who's Pushing it?

For a long time I've wondered where all the people are coming from who are eating up our greenbelt around Hamilton with new subdivisions. Where is the demand for new housing coming from? Our city's, let alone our country's, population isn't growing rapidly enough to justify 4,000 acres of new housing here and 3,000 acres there.

Granted this is partly caused by developers and their connections in city hall. To put it bluntly, if you pay you get your way. Why else won't our municipal candidates admit where their campaign money is coming from?

The urban boundary expansion is also a product of the dream of owning an untouched new home. The developers have done a great job convincing people that new houses with their cheap construction materials are the way to go. Personally I'd take a solid 100 year old home in downtown Hamilton over a 2006 vintage any day.

And that's the problem. I shouldn't own a home if I'm the only person that's going to live in it. Homes were designed for families or at least more than one person. How much square feet do you occupy? I have a few friends that personally own a home in Hamilton just for themselves. These people have three bedrooms and three floors just for themselves.

Therefore I think that we're all implicated in expanding the urban boundary, even those of us that actively decry its expansion and call for intensification. If we have the right to live in a house by ourselves so do others and they have to live somewhere, even on top of precious farmland.

We speak out against single occupancy vehicle trips but aren't at the stage when we'll speak out against what could be called excessive single occupancy living. Like single occupancy vehicle trips this is the least efficient form of living.

If we don't practice intensification ourselves how can we expect others to do so. As Gandhi said, "We must be the change we wish to see in the world". In the absence of this philosophy the urban boundary grows every year. I don't know what the solution to this problem is but perhaps living in a small community isn't as bad as it seems. Share your house. You'll be doing the world, the greenbelt and Hamilton a great favour.