So let’s not subsidize sprawl. Let’s make it so all Canadian cities look like Montreal: dense, walkable, pretty, and transit and cycling oriented. But the idea that existing owners should be given a pass is antisocial.
My point is that the principle of existing homeowners funding infrastructure for new homes is only tenable when
developers are not creating huge externalities by creating ever larger suburbs with infrastructure funded by the core (take Ottawa as an example for that dynamic)
when the base of established homeowners is large enough to support the rate of growth.
In the first case, development fees based on lot size for new sprawling burbs are a reasonable way to push the market towards density.
In the second case, with a high rate of growth in a specific market, other means of redistribution such as government subsidies may be a better way to redistribute.
So let’s not subsidize sprawl. Let’s make it so all Canadian cities look like Montreal: dense, walkable, pretty, and transit and cycling oriented. But the idea that existing owners should be given a pass is antisocial.
My point is that the principle of existing homeowners funding infrastructure for new homes is only tenable when
In the first case, development fees based on lot size for new sprawling burbs are a reasonable way to push the market towards density.
In the second case, with a high rate of growth in a specific market, other means of redistribution such as government subsidies may be a better way to redistribute.
Yes that makes sense.
I’d be fine with a free market approach. Let developers build density where it is in demand, and sprawl where it is not.
But you’re not in agreement with charging the full economic cost of the sprawl to the homeowners who choose to live there?