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Old Posted Jul 17, 2012, 2:47 AM
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someone123 someone123 is offline
hähnchenbrüstfiletstüc
 
Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 33,677
Let's play "spot the greenbelt": http://goo.gl/maps/Jtdf

The net effect of the greenbelt shown above is that everybody living in those outer subdivisions has to drive more if they want to get into the city. It is worse than if there had been no greenbelt, because the type of development did not improve (it can go down when it's pushed out to far-flung towns with weak development rules), and simply shuffling development around does not create any net savings of wilderness land or farmland.

Greenbelts like I said seem good for preserving some particular area but they are not a good tool for improving suburban development or limiting overall urban land use because they do not solve any root problems. One root problem is that suburban development's price tag (development fees and taxes) does not reflect its true cost. Another problem is that we are not building enough good development or transit to satisfy demand, so lots of demand is being met by suburban areas.
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