Timelapse is an amazing new project from Google, Time magazine, NASA et al, that’s basically Google Earth animated with satellite photos from 1984 to 2012. In case you don’t get how watchable that is, the Timelapse lords suggest you check out cities that have experience development on steroids over the last 30 years, like Dubai and Las Vegas. But just as with Google Earth, you can focus on anyplace you like, so I made this GIF of Halifax.
The peninsula doesn’t change much, but it’s easy to see the creep of development in the ‘burbs. Seeing the scope of the sprawl makes it easier to understand how that recent Stantec report can justify its conclusion that the city could save $3 billion in coming years by pushing development in a higher-density direction.
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Let’s save $3 billion by cutting suburban sprawl
This article appears in May 9-15, 2013.
My trouble is, I’m on the fence about whether urban sprawl is bad or good. On the one hand, it increases cost to the City in the way of having to build infrastructure, pipelines, water, road maintenance, etc. Plus, it decreases the amount of people who come into the city to shop and do other things, because they stick with what’s available nearest to them.
But, on the other hand, densification means building apartments and condos because the space for housing is almost depleted. Not everyone wants to be stuck in a multi-person building. We want our yards and gardens. If housing in the city is not available, then going outside is the only way to satisfy that desire for a house.
Maybe sprawl would be curtailed if houses in the city weren’t more expensive. On the flip side, is this densification proposal going to be affordable to those who have no choice but to live in apartments? That’s a lot of the problem, too. An apartment on the outskirts of the city is way cheaper than one downtown. Can’t just cater to the well-to-do. If the city wants people to live in the core, they’ll need to make it affordable for all levels of income.
I grew up in a small rural town and love the low-density perks of privacy and a yard big enough to play catch or fetch. I get why people resist densification and I have my own hang ups about it (mainly regarding whether it will be done right – ah hem, government).
But there are so many bad things involved with urban sprawl. Look at how much nature (forests, marshlands, wildlife, etc.) we are destroying or at best displacing. We sprawl radially from a city centre so we can keep a decent commute to work and get our fix of mowing a lawn for a few months each year but then bitch about all the snow we have to shovel from our driveway. We sprawl and tear up wildlife habitats and then bitch about raccoons in our garbage, the skunks digging up our lawn and spraying our pets, the beautiful deer that might have ticks from which we might contract lime disease. Some of the cookie-cutter developments out there right now might as well be condos and apartments with the four feet between each detached dwelling and driveways big enough for one Toyota Yaris. Let’s not forget the we have limited space… if we continue to sprawl Nova Scotia could be renamed HRM. Oh wait, who cares about that? That won’t be our problem because we’ll all be dead by then. Let’s leave it for our children and grandchildren to deal with.
what im noticing here, is not so much the sprawl, but the parks and green spaces with in the city are getting gobbled up. look at the end of the peninsula, where i believe, point pleasant park is. around the end it goes from dark green to greenish grey to grey. i see so much wasted space in hrm, such as the old military housing sitting empty under the bridge in Dartmouth and the ugly, menacing duplex’s getting put on the hills. also their talking about putting another large scale subdivision in Sackville, but there isn’t the commuting capacity to handle the influx of workers. halifax is growing up and out but it does not have the veins to handle the traffic, or the jobs to feed the young and inexperienced.
the grey in Point Pleasant Park is probably a result of hurricane devastation.
@ Kein Richard Tucker- I noticed that part of the peninsula turning from nice green to brown and quickly realized that the sudden change was the result of Hurricane Juan in 2003. you can see that the green is coming back up, this isn’t a developed area.
I’d say that compared to many cities our urban sprawl is limited-thankfully. I’d say that’s, in part, due to our limited geographical space to sprawl in to. Halifax just isn’t built that way- too many lakes, peninsulas and harbours to really lay waste to a huge area.
However, I do hope Halifax learns from other cities mistakes and instead go the route of thought-out infrastructure, population dense living, with more pedestrian friendly ways of life.
HRM does not install pipes and sidewalks in new developments. The developer has to put in roads, sewer, water, sidewalks. The developer pays property taxes on vacant land, the builder then pays 1.5% deed transfer tax when he purchases the lots and at that point the assessment increases and taxes go up. The builder then pays HRM a permit fee of 1% of construction cost. When the new home is sold the buyer pays another deed transfer tax of 1.5% of the purchase price and the increased taxes on the new assessment.
The owners of a $300,000 home in urban area will be paying over $3,600 a year in property taxes as well as another $4,500 in deed transfer tax in the first year.
Policing in urban areas is much more expensive than in the ‘sprawl’ – check out the details in the recent budget : http://www.halifax.ca/budget/documents/Ope…
Happy house hunting to all the young people.
@JoeBlow. No question developers cover most of the up front hard infrastructure costs. However, the municipality then takes over that infrastructure, and, in general, the taxes paid are not sufficient to cover the ongoing cost of servicing those roads, sewers, sidewalks, etc. Not to mention other infrastructure and service costs like schools, policing, etc. Stantec did a very thorough report on the costs of Sprawl in HRM and put the price tag at $3 Billion over the next 18 years. The report is available here: http://www.halifax.ca/boardscom/documents/…
I’m not clear on your point about deed transfer tax, because that is paid whenever a property is sold, whether old or new, in the urban core or in the suburbs.
I’m also not clear on where you get the basis for your statement that policing is more expensive in the urban core from that budget. HRP primarily polices the urban core. RCMP police the suburbs. We’d have to compare those costs.
It’s pretty clear that sprawl is hitting us all in the pocket book, as taxpayers and residents of the HRM. If we want to ensure that life here remains affordable for all, we need to address it.
Hey JoeBlow (first commentator): you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Read the Stantec report. None of those initial developer fees or even the property taxes over a long period of time, covers the cost of building the infrastructure AND THEN SERVICING that property and infrastructure for years and years. ie: how much does it cost, in gas, to send a garbage truck to the outlying sprawl in a year? Transit buses? Electrical line maintenance?
And often, urban sprawl involves shitty development, leading to major costs later. Take the Lower Sackville storm water flooding problem. That is simply the result of a shitty developer throwing up crappy properties for quick gain, without proper storm water and flooding drainage.
Now, HRM has to pay $4 million a year to fix the problem.
Tell me how your little permit fee will cover that cost. It can’t and won’t.
Finally, your point about policing downtown as being more expensive than policing suburbs is baloney. In fact, there are recent studies coming out that are supporting Jane Jacobs old theory than higher density downtown cores would be a deterrent to crime, rather than promoting it. The old assumption that cities lead to anti-social behavior and crime is wrong. Suggesting policing suburbs with police cars, in this age of sky high gas costs, is cheaper than police offers walking a beat in a crowded urban downtown core, with people out walking dogs and chatting, is absurd.
Joe Howe & Dissent :
Policing costs from budget are : Totals cost $73.4 million; RCMP cost $23 million.
RCMP police outside Halifax, Dartmouth and Bedford.
RCMP police 200,000 people and HRP cover 190,000 people.
Too lazy to read the link ?
And I never mentioned foot police.
Electrical is not the business of HRM
Taxes on vacant property is paid for zero services.
I read the Stantec report and it does not deal with the issue of where sprawl begins., back in the 50s sprawl began at the Armdale rotary. Is Portland estates sprawl ?
The population of the peninsula is 60,000.
Garbage trucks servicing the Hammonds Plains ‘sprawl’ use less gas than those in the inner core, the landfill is close by.
if you like living in high rises, fill your boots. Many others don’t and families don’t want to live in condos and apartments if they can afford a home.
Hey JoeBlow,
I can read alright. But it’s clear that you can’t.
On policing costs, you’re a joke. Your own post contradicts itself. We’re talking about sprawl vs density in the downtown core, which is the peninsula in Halifax. You cite the police report indicating HRP is spending 73 million to police 190,000, and then later in your post say that the peninsula includes only “60,000”. So, clearly, the Halifax Police are sharing the costs of policing the suburbs beyond the downtown core with the RCMP. So it’s not 73 million to police the Peninsula and 23 million to police sprawling suburbs. That 73million includes suburban areas. GTFO.
On the rest of the costs of sprawl, I offer concrete examples, and you reply with vague complaints about definitions. You clearly did not understand the Stantec report, which provides an explanation in detail.
That’s fine if you want to live our in the sticks in your family home. But I shouldn’t have to pay to service you, with my high property taxes downtown or high rent, to service your lazy ass living out in the burbs. YOU SHOULD.
the dissent – you appear to be unable to understand plain language.
Policing budget for all HRM – $73.4 million, including $23 million for the RCMP who cover what was Halifax County. The remaining $50.4 million is HRP for Halifax Dartmouth and Bedford.
Population of what was Halifax County is almost the same as Bedford, Dartmouth and Halifax.
Obviously the cost of policing in the old county is less than half what it costs in Bedford, Dartmouth and Halifax.
The budget for all policing increased by 5% but the RCMP budget increased by just 1.5%.
Where does sprawl begin ?
Policing costs per person doesn’t seem like a particularly useful or informative metric. Policing in urban areas isn’t just about policing people’s homes, but also about policing related to the higher concentration of commercial uses (which many of the people in the suburban areas work in), policing related to special cultural events, policing related to bars and other late night activities, and policing related to the concentration of traffic coming from those suburban areas for employment and to experience the cultural amenities of the urban areas.
I’d be more interested in comparing policing costs per dollar of assessed value in suburban vs. urban areas. That would certainly give a metric of an area’s ability to pay for the costs it incurs, and may better illustrate whether suburbs or urban areas are “better” (at least in relation to policing costs).
hipp5 – compare policing costs with the police blotter and see where police are the busiest.
It seems reasonable to conclude that the low density of the former county requires much less policing than the high density urban areas.
I don’t see why assessment could be a useful metric other than possibly showing higher incidences of crime in high density, low value areas. High value homes in ‘sprawl’ don’t appear to require much policing resources.
I would like to see the metro murder rate before and after amalgamation because the murder rate for Halifax is now given for all of HRM, whereas previous rates would be city of Halifax and city of Dartmouth. Determining the place of a murder may be a problem in a number of cases.
Well of course police are less busy in low density areas because they have less to police. Read my comment again:
“Policing in urban areas isn’t just about policing people’s homes, but also about policing related to the higher concentration of commercial uses (which many of the people in the suburban areas work in), policing related to special cultural events, policing related to bars and other late night activities, and policing related to the concentration of traffic coming from those suburban areas for employment and to experience the cultural amenities of the urban areas.”
You just don’t have those things (to any large degree) in suburban areas, so the police don’t need to police them. That doesn’t make suburban areas better though. Yeah I guess we could imagine a hypothetical situation where we deleted all the bars, special events, and commercial businesses from the urban areas; police costs would plummet, but our city (the city that even the suburbanites use and benefit from!) would suck.
Wording it another way: evaluating policing costs on a population basis means you are looking at the costs of residential policing. This probably is a pretty fair evaluation in suburban areas because residential uses are by and large the majority. However, it’s entirely unfair in urban areas because there is a HUGE range of uses that don’t have a population figure attached to them (i.e. not residential) but do have policing costs associated with them (commercial offices, bars, Moosehead games, etc. etc.).
Evaluating costs based on assessed value seems a slightly more fair and accurate way of doing it, because assessed value roughly takes into account all those other things (areas with events, commercial business, etc., are more valuable) and because assessed value also gives a better idea of whether an area is “pulling its weight” in terms of paying for that police service. For example:
House A: Policing cost of $10, assessed value of $200k
House B: Policing cost of $10, assessed value of $400k
House B is the “better” development (from a municipal financial sustainability POV) because it’s paying more taxes for similar policing costs. I don’t have the data to tell you if house A and B are in the suburbs and urban area, or vice versa, but I think that’s the more fair analysis that does need to be done (and to my understanding that’s the gist of what the Stantec report does, though I haven’t had the time to read through it yet).
Typical, Halifax wants to grow but doesn’t want to grow. Really do you want to live in a place like New York City or Tokyo where there’s no room to breathe?
@joeblow: of course the Stantec repot doesn’t define “sprawl”. I’m not sure it even uses the term. But the terms regional centre, suburban area and rural area are all clearly defined based on the regional plan. And the report makes it pretty clear that if we continue to focus most of our growth in the suburban and rural areas, it is going to cost us all billions. But you know that, cause you read the report, right?
And since you read the report, you also know it addresses policing costs. @hipp5 has done a good job of explaining why your simple HRP vs. RCMP analysis doesn’t cut it. Since more people work and shop in areas covered by HRP than live there, you can’t just compare costs on a per capita basis.
No one is saying that everyone has to live in urban areas, or apartment buildings (my family lives in a house, in the middle of the urban core). All the report says is that we can’t have the majority of our growth continue to be in areas where we can’t afford to support it.
I think that HRM needs to deal with two things at the same time. Urban sprawl and wasted space. As for the former I am not against Halifax growing but I am against the way it is growing and what it is growing into. The planning for “suburban” development is lacking, to say the least. It’s almost like the designers, contractors and owners just don’t care. They just puke out a building and move on, cause it’s all just money to them. The way this city is “sprawling” is discouraging. Parts of HRM are going to have transportation and water service problems at the rate it’s going. There seems to be very little to no thought of professional design and the required infrastructure needed before the building of apartments and condos. I think that HRM has created and continues to create a situation where transportation to and from the “core” peninsula is falling by the wayside. HRM is sacrificing development contracts to the cheapest most uninspired bidders for the almighty dollar. This city disparately needs to focus on transportation and green spaces! The building of a Convention Centre was a poor choice… period! It was forced onto the people by an ignorant, nepotistic, elitist, bureaucracy that ignores their constituents and lines their own pockets. I don’t have much hope that things will change for the better, however, that cynicism aside, I would suggest that people start participating and communicating in how this city develops just the same because the consequences in a few decades from now will not be good if we don’t.