"Smart growth" in Salmon Arm

[Rick Shea]

From the Salmon Arm Observer:

"Smart Growth a failure in Kelowna"

Aug 08 2007

The logic in Greg Husband’s letter in the Observer, “Growth Needs Directions,” has completely escaped me.

Mr. Husband trots out the old myths that growth is inevitable, and that capping growth will make housing unaffordable.

It’s easy to make unfounded generalizations, but the studies and data simply do not support those statements.

Those studies show that, in areas where growth controls accompany affordable and inclusionary housing policies, prices have not gone up more than uncontrolled areas, but more affordable housing is available than in those other areas.

In contrast, Kelowna has had “smart-growth” policies in the Official Community Plan for over a decade now, and brags that it follows smart-growth practice.

Yet Kelowna’s rapid growth has led to the second highest housing prices in the country, an aged population, and jobs going vacant because lower paid workers can no longer afford to live there.

Now, there’s an example of how to drive up prices and make housing unaffordable. Smart, eh?

Mr. Husband then points to Peak Oil as an event which will end growth anyway. If the predictions regarding peak oil are true, then more growth, and especially “smart” growth, will only make the problems much, much worse. Stuffing more people into a smaller area will make relocalization even more difficult, alternative energy sources will be spread far too thinly, and resource wars will erupt, even on the local level, over water supplies and food.

The Sierra Club, the international Green Party, and even Rockefeller Foundation in the U.S. all point toward population control (voluntary, of course) as critical for our very survival.

Yet we continue blithely onward away from sustainability, with record rates of species extinction, of biodiversity loss, and of loss of social capital.

The Observer records almost daily the destructive path Salmon Arm is taking, along with many other communities and cities: Shuswap Lake threatened, agricultural land being paved over and covered with expensive housing, increasing crime, escalating housing prices, and on and on. Growth, and especially “smart” growth, makes our future even less sustainable, and less certain.

Yet it’s so easy to stop, to withdraw from this addiction, if we have the will.

Growth is the problem here, and not the solution.

Rick Shea

[Rick Shea]

Also from the Salmon Arm Observer. Apparently, I'm not alone.

"Growth doesn’t mean progress"

Jul 25 2007

The strident response of local “Smart Growth” spokesperson Bill Grainger to critics of continuous economic growth provides too much “heat” and not enough “light” to this crucial issue.

I surely hope that “Smart Growth” thinking is not analogous to the “enabling” behaviours of family and friends which make it possible for alcohol abusers to continue their destructive addiction?

In this context, continuous economic growth is the addiction, and ‘accommodating’ rather than ‘capping’ it, will likely be dangerous in the long term. Consequently, challenges to the mythology of continuous economic growth per se, are valid, and should be welcome to the “growth” debate, not attacked.

Besides, in the context of rational discourse, it’s tedious to keep hearing the mantra of how “inevitable” any societal process – such as continuous economic growth – is. To accept some mystical fatalism of inevitability is hardly a starting point for social change.

So, let’s have no illusions – economic growth, as currently practised, is truly the root-cause of resource depletion, pollution and waste; the alarming disappearance of the natural world’s plants and animals; degradation of ecological “life-support” processes; and a corporate-manipulated public based on rampant consumption.

Yet such a destructive “growth mythology” continues virtually unchallenged, despite the increasing evidence of its damage to us and the Earth.

To most economists, city-planners, politicians, industrialists and even most environmentalists, continuous economic growth is faithfully equated with “progress,” and according to continuous economic growth “scripture,” only a vigorously growing economy, coupled with maximum production and maximum consumption, and a continually growing population, is considered healthy and sound.

Continuous economic growth is assumed to increase well-being, provide more jobs, control inflation, help cure poverty, and provide enough funds to clean up the environment. All of these alleged ‘benefits,’ however, are debatable, if not outright contradicted by the rising tide of social and environmental damage. A society devoted to the principle of “the more things you own, the more you are owned by things” should take a deep breath and realize that the best things in life aren’t things at all.

But ‘growth’ can occur – and be encouraged to occur – in such worthy and minimally impacting areas as art, music, education, physical fitness, philosophy, esthetics, religion, cultural diversity, recreation, scientific research, and fostering positive human behaviour.

Areas of business encouraged to ‘grow’ would include recycling, appropriate, ‘green’ technology, production of long-lasting goods, medical research and health care, efficient energy use, resource recovery, and renewable energy resources. Polluting and wasteful industries that couldn’t conserve resources and would, and should, decline.

And as a recent letter to the Observer noted: infinite growth in a finite world is impossible; and a ‘man-in-the-street’ interviewee astutely commented in the same Observer issue that some resource and societal ‘limits’ may already have been exceeded.

Tom Crowley

[Rick Shea]

The local "smart growth" group in Salmon Arm (CASSSA) is hosting a series of "discussions" about smart growth. I am sure that, in typical fashion, they will shape the outcome to suit their agenda. In response, this was sent to the Salmon Arm Observer today.

Dear Sir:

“…the urban consolidation ideology does have a certain beguiling appeal on the surface. It just sounds right the first time we hear it - and so we never question it again.

But, as is so often the case, something that seems commonsense at first glance, is actually proven wrong once we have exposed the hidden facts.”

That quotation is from a comprehensive description of why smart growth is a failure in so many ways ( www.sos.org.au/new_sustain.html ). Such growth makes relocalization more difficult, increases traffic congestion and pollution, and generally leads to a less sustainable place to live.

Indeed, numerous examples from throughout the world clearly demonstrate this failure as well, yet smart growth advocates continue with their mantra of urban infill, densification, and the like.

When all other arguments fail, smart growth advocates will claim that growth is inevitable, and desirable, and that we have to accommodate it. Is it really?

Ask the people of China, where a “one child” policy was implemented to try to halt population growth. Ask the people of Japan, who willingly accept that restrictive immigration policies and a low birth rate will lead to a significant population decline over the next few decades. Ask the Rockefeller Foundation in the United States, who concluded in a report to the President years ago that further population growth in that country would have no benefits and would in fact lead to significant problems.

Ask the growing number of very well-educated people globally who point to biodiversity loss, pollution, the serious fallout which will result from peak oil and overshoot of carrying capacity, and who consequently fear that the very survival of our species is at risk.

It is crystal clear that, at best, “smart growth” is stupid thinking. At worst, it is pure and unadulterated hypocrisy.

Sincerely,

Rick Shea

[Rick Shea]

From today's Salmon Arm Observer.

Spirit lives in small centres

November 07, 2007



What is a community?

The residents of my new community of Silver Creek gave one answer to that question on Halloween night.

Community volunteers helped to arrange a celebration at the local park, complete with enormous bonfire, hot dogs and hot chocolate, a “spooky” walk for the younger members, and some quite amazing fireworks.

Community donations helped to pay for all of this, and the local volunteer firefighters put on the fireworks display.‑And families from all areas, and people of all ages, came to the celebration, and a large number of people at that.

Communities like Silver Creek, and Salmon Arm until now, value every single citizen, and try to include each and every one – try to make them feel valued, and try to help them enjoy life in the community.

I contrast that night with several of the Halloween nights I spent with Citizens Patrol in Kelowna.

For three years in a row, a gang of 200 or‑so intoxicated teens and young adults wandered around one of the more expensive areas of the city, smashing bottles in the road, breaking windows, and vandalizing schools. The police did their absolute best and eventually dispersed the crowds, but one year it took the police helicopter to finally make the difference.

This year, Kelowna claims that Halloween was relatively good.

“Good” means that vandalism was not as bad as the worst year, fewer bottles were smashed and windows broken, and perhaps fewer people felt left out and disenfranchised.

In larger cities, fewer people would have been injured or murdered on a “good” night, and fewer homeless people would have died.

Is that really what constitutes “good” nowadays?

What destroys a community is not the next box store, or subdivision, or townhouse complex, or polluted area left behind for the sake of “the economy.”‑ Those are simply individual drops in the inexorable Chinese water torture called progress.

And the anonymity brought by the resulting larger population allows vandalism and crime to flourish. The importance of civility and citizenship seems in the main to be inversely proportional to the size of the city.

No, it is the accumulated effects of all of these things that dismantles the community, leaving the existing residents feeling lost, bewildered and disenfranchised.

Hearing the phrase “How could it happen here?” is one of the signs that it is already too late.

I’ll take the festivities in the Silver Creeks and Salmon Arms of this world over the frenetic and faceless big city life any time.

Rick Shea

[Rick Shea]

Sent to the Salmon Arm Observer today, and posted at the Control Urban Growth website ( controlgrowth.ning.com ):

Dear Sir:

In his November 14th opinion piece in the Salmon Arm Observer, Ian Wickett makes many astounding and patently false claims about the supposed beneficial effects of "smart" growth. Every one of his claims about smart growth has already been refuted in theory and in practice by many, many examples around this planet, but I'd like to zero in on his claim that "Smart Growth principles foster the concept of neighbourhoods in which people are on the streets, making them vital places where it is difficult for crime to flourish."

The model and icon for many smart growth advocates is Portland, Oregon, and the 2005 FBI crime statistics have this to say about the crime rate there:

Forcible rape - Portland, 60.14 per hundred thousand people. U.S. national average, 32.2 per hundred thousand people.
Aggravated assault - Portland, 439.7 per hundred thousand people. U.S. national average, 340.1 per hundred thousand people.
Burglary: Portland - 1132.7 per hundred thousand people. U.S. national average, 814.5 per hundred thousand people.
Vehicle theft: Portland - 1060.3 per hundred thousand people. U.S. national average 526.5 per hundred thousand people.

In almost every category of violent and non-violent crime, Portland is above the national average rate, and often significantly above that average. Indeed, in most cases, Portland far exceeds cities such as Los Angeles in crime rates. If having "people...on the streets" makes crime difficult, then we should see a near-zero crime rate in the crowded city of New York, or even in Vancouver, but we all know that that is far from the reality.

Mr. Wickett's claim is typical of the lather and blather coming from the smart growth advocates. They may not consciously intend to destroy the quality of life in Salmon Arm, but that will be the result. And that will be the worst crime of all.

Regards,

Rick Shea,
Salmon Arm, B.C.

[Rick Shea]

From the January 9, 2008 Salmon Arm Observer:

How many can we cram in?


The development boosters in Salmon Arm insist that “growth will occur” and that we “must plan for growth.”

In that vein, I would like to examine the maximum possible population size in Salmon Arm, given the current calls for more densification.

The surface area of Salmon Arm is apparently approximately 75 square kilometres, or approximately 29 square miles.

Using a rough approximation that every person is six feet tall by two feet wide, this means that each person takes up approximately 12 square feet. Thus, the simple calculation 29 times 5280 times 5280 divided by 12 says that the area of Salmon Arm can accommodate approximately 67,373,000 people.

Clearly, we have room for many more people in Salmon Arm if we follow the logic of the smart growth groups and carry density to its natural conclusion.

But why stop there?

Given that the air is breathable up to approximately 16,000 feet, and that Salmon Arm is at a bit more than 1,000 feet, this gives a column of 15,000 feet in which to stack people.

Using the idea that each person is approximately one-foot thick (although smart growth advocates and some politicians seem to be thicker than most), we can multiply the earlier figure by 15,000 to reach the conclusion that Salmon Arm can accommodate approximately 10,105,920,000,000 people – more if you consider that some settling would occur at maximum capacity.

I have tried to be conservative in this estimate in order to keep it at least as credible as the daily claims from growth advocates that what we are doing is sustainable and desirable, and has no negative painful consequences.

The last thing I wish to do is to promulgate the idea that growth smarts.

Rick Shea

[Rick Shea]

From the Shuswap and Salmon Arm "Lakeshore News," January 18, 2008:

Dear Sir:

Peter Clarke claims, in your January 11th edition ("In support of big box stores") that "progress is inevitable."

Many past civilizations have fallen into what Ronald Wright calls the "progress trap." Their trail of successes has led inexorably and inevitably to catastrophic failure. Our own "progress" has led us to the point where we are rapidly consuming and destroying this planet, and all the living beings on it.

Clarke would drag us kicking and screaming back to the 19th and 20th centuries, with all the rampant self-centred consumerism. A 21st century reality is that this lifestyle is no longer sustainable.

So, if what Clarks calls "progress" is inevitable, then about the only thing left to say is "Heaven help us, and heaven help this planet."

Rick Shea

[Rick Shea]

From the Salmon Arm Observer

‘Progress’ has hidden cost

January 30, 2008

It’s sad that Louise Peters has to resort to the sad old redneck idea, “if you don’t like it here, then leave” in response to those who have a different vision for Salmon Arm. (“Development’s not a dirty word,” the Salmon Arm Observer, Jan. 23).

Ms. Peters seems to be under the mistaken impression that development will help to keep taxes down.

In fact, exactly the opposite is true. Development never pays for all of the costs, which include additional policing, bylaw enforcement, and a host of other hidden costs.

More development of the current kind automatically leads to demand for even more services, and drives up taxes.

Simply look at the tax rates in any larger city, and Ms. Peters’ premise is quickly demonstrated to be nonsense.

As well, she seems to entertain the notion that development leads to “vibrant, healthy, economically sound” communities.

What we have right now, despite the frenetic economic activity of the past few decades, is a society which has not learned how to deal with high levels of homelessness, functional illiteracy, crime, child poverty, domestic violence, and a host of other social ills.

We have a society which depends, unconscionably, upon the continued existence of high levels of poverty and pollution in other countries, and upon large amounts of pollution created by transportation, just so that we appear to save a few pennies on cheap goods. Underneath it all, that is a false economy, if the entire picture is considered.

What we have right now, according to a growing chorus of experts far more informed and respected than I, is an unsustainable level of economic activity – a house of cards that may come collapsing down around us from any number of the causes evident all around us.

To paraphrase Einstein, the type of thinking that has gotten us to this point will not get us out of the problems we have created.

Isn’t it about time that we try to develop our idea of “development” and to progress with our idea of “progress.”

After all, the idea is not to make sure that a few people have the most toys, or to have the biggest economy, or to be the biggest city. The idea is to be the best planet, for everyone. Isn’t it?

Rick Shea