In Urban Planning You Would Think a Healthy Population Would be High on the Agenda

I’m one of four brothers. Two are doctors, one is a musician, and then there’s me, a retired management consultant and business development guy who has dabbled in a number of fields from software publishing, to systems documentation, and telecommunications infrastructure design. By now if you are a regular visitor to this blog site which gets about 30,000 of you each month dropping in for a read, you know that my interests range across a wide variety of subject matter. This is a habit I acquired as a young boy when I would sit and read the World Book Encyclopedia. Hence my Grade 6 nickname, the walking talking encyclopedia.

Peel is the home of two of Canada’s growing cities in the Greater Toronto Area, Mississauga and Brampton (the latter, the fastest-growing urban centre in the country). Once largely an area of farms, forests, fields, and light industry, today it is a prime example of urban sprawl. The small towns that dotted the landscape have grown and merged to become these two cities. The spaces between them have been filled with single-family homes, multi-residential buildings, attached housing complexes, and a mix of commercial and industrial properties. Toronto’s airport hugs the eastern edge of the region.

David spoke to the Committee which at the outset allotted him 10 minutes for his presentation. But with thirty presenters and he, being the 29th on the list, was told to cut his talk to 5 minutes. The real estate developers who had priority in placement among presenters got their full ten minutes and allocated time for questions and answers. The committee members showed considerable interest in what new and exciting projects were about to add to the region’s growth and tax revenues. But when it came to the second to last presenter, my brother, with a talk about land use planning and public health, including studies that CAPE was reporting about the correlation between urban sprawl, car dependency and negative health impacts, not one committee member ventured a question or expressed an opinion.

CAPE is an advocacy group focused on public health in the face of environmental degradation. CAPE is guided by an understanding that a healthy environment is critical to healthy humanity. The presentation begins with Dr. Roy’s words:

“All too often we do not recognize the connection between the way we plan our cities and urban development and the health of the citizens who live in those communities. We must connect the dots.”

David described the critical link between public health and land-use planning. His presentation talked about looking at more self-contained, walkable and bikeable communities. Why? Because the presentation noted that car-dependent lifestyles, based on Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) data, showed a correlation with increased obesity, incidents of diabetes, heart and lung disease, mental health issues, injuries, and premature death. The presentation went further noting that car-dependent communities created more air pollution which prematurely has killed 6,600 people in Ontario annually. In 2016, the consequences of car dependency on health and mortality cost the Ontario economy $49.2 billion.

Today, Peel Region is home to more than 1.5 million. By 2041, the region expects to approach 2 million. The housing mix is expected to grow from approximately 452,000 today to 610,000. Where will most of these new residents live?

The remaining green spaces of the region are continuing to shrink. That means more asphalt, concrete, and less carbon sinks in the form of parkland, fields and farms, and other natural environments. It also means the urban heat island effect within the region will continue to grow exacerbated further by rising atmospheric temperatures caused by global climate change.

The CAPE presentation pointed out that the plan for the Peel region as currently encompassed was out of step with what urban and environmental planners advocate to mitigate climate change and provide more livable communities in the future.

In 2019, the City of Mississauga declared a climate emergency. It began a performance and environmental review that led to its first ten-year climate action plan. In that plan, it called for five action pathways looking at ways to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and the preservation and enhancement of green infrastructure including forests, parks, fields and farms. The plan included an urban agriculture strategy to support local farms.

One would think that present and future decisions being made by Peel Region planners and decision-makers would have led to an interest in the evidence being described in my brother’s talk to the committee. But it appears that healthy living and sustainable neighbourhoods take a back seat to the tax revenue that urban sprawl delivers. And, as for the climate plan, shouldn’t it have been front and centre of any planning discussion?

The last sentence in the presentation states, “We need dense complete communities where people live, walk, bike, shop, work, play, have access to public transportation and raise children who are safe and healthy.” Do you think any of the committee members thought about their children and their future since not one asked a question or noted the importance of what was being said?  What a picture this paints about those responsible for governing our future in the face of the existential threat that is climate change.