Urban Renaissance Institute

Six ways to beautify our cities

Posted on March 10, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
March 10, 2006

Charlottetown Mayor Clifford Lee wants to beautify his city. So does Toronto Mayor David Miller, Vancouver Mayor Sam Sullivan and literally hundreds of other mayors across Canada who tout beautification campaigns for their towns and cities, often with the sponsorship of the Canada Lands Company, a federal Crown corporation that’s big on beautification.

I have no quarrel with the approach taken by many of these beautifiers. Who could argue with the exhortations to “tidiness” and “floral displays” that most cities endorse through national and provincial Communities in Bloom programs? But I do offer some recommendations of my own to help the gardens grow and make us all proud.

1. Abolish property taxes. In European countries that taxed property on the basis of window size, property owners minimized glass to minimize tax. In Canada, where we tax all improvements to property and reward dilapidation with tax decreases, we likewise foster a shuttered facade: One of my neighbours has a delightful home interior, to the amazement of those who enter it for the first time. From the outside it resembles a hovel.

Property taxes also pit neighbour against neighbour, as seen in decades of battles over the gentrification of inner city communities. Rather than rejoicing that their neighbourhoods were being upgraded by newcomers with style and energy, the poor and those on fixed incomes grew fearful as rising property values – and thus rising taxes – increased their cost of living in their own homes, although they cost the city not one extra dime in services. These long-standing residents, suddenly asset rich but cash poor, and faced with the prospect of leaving their homes, took to opposing their neighbours’ improvements and often succeeded.

2. Abolish minimum parking requirements. To minimize disputes over parking – the single biggest neighbourhood complaint in any big city – politicians force property owners to provide more parking than they otherwise would and also prevent property owners from replacing their parking facilities with, say, a garden. No city beautification program would mandate more asphalt. No city should, either.

3. Abolish apartheid neighbourhoods. In most cities, the liveliest, most engaging neighbourhoods intertwine commercial and residential uses. Montreal’s vibrancy comes largely of such mixed uses. By all means, enforce bylaws to control noise and other nuisances but don’t rule out benign neighbourhood businesses through class-based zoning.

4. Decrease city planning. With rare exceptions, the handsomest districts of any city were created before the era of planners. Without rigid rules dictating setbacks from sidewalks, distances from lot lines and sizes of buildings, individual property owners continually adapted their properties to meet the changing needs of their families – an addition on the back when more children came along, a partition to form a duplex when the children left and income was needed to carry the property. The flexibility that came of minimal rules also allowed owners to manage their properties efficiently, keeping them in good repair, to the credit of the neighbourhood.

5. Privatize garbage collection. Before governments municipalized garbage collection service, homeowners had access to a range of services. In many municipalities, garbage cans would be picked up from the side or the back of the house, neatly emptied and then returned to their proper place. With the advent of government control, and an emphasis on union rules and cutbacks in service, unsightly and foul-smelling garbage is usually left overnight by the street and emptied garbage cans are generally strewn on sidewalks and front yards the following day, until residents return from work.

6. Entrench property rights. City bylaws are written to disallow almost any development of any size, forcing the developer to require city permission for virtually any proposal. This, in turn, leads to community consultations and to the politicization of all design decisions. Through this process, the designs drawn up by the greatest architects in the world are routinely trumped by neighbourhood committees that, in effect, force their own views of desirable design upon the architect and the developer. Design by committee is necessarily pedestrian. Cities become mundane.

The bottom line on beautification: Less government means more beauty. The government that steps out of areas that should properly be left to the citizenry will be doing a beautiful thing.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org.

A reader responds

Building communities

While Mr. Solomon makes some good points regarding, in particular the perverse impacts of municipal property tax systems and neighbourhood apartheid, I take issue with his notion of reducing city planning.

Unlike days of old, when contractors built a few homes in a neighbourhood, today it is common for developers to build entire subdivisions or communities with thousands of dwellings.

Unfortunately, my own experience is that the developer in our area continually, and in a willy-nilly fashion, changes the plans to increase density. Now, a planned community of 1,700 low-rise homes will grow to 2,000 units. Such increases in density can easily overtax water and sewers, which were built according to lower-density numbers. Would anyone want their basement to fill with sewage because several neighbours decided to increase the number of families living on the property? The notion of city planning is to ensure that items like the sewers and water are available and that roads can manage the traffic.

Rather than cut out city planning, how about we promote more community pride and involvement?

David Smith, National Post, March 18, 2006

Posted in Cities, Culture, Regulation, Taxation | Leave a comment

Stockholm tries tolls to curb use of cars

Posted on March 3, 2006 by urbanrenaissanceinst

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
March 3, 2006

Stockholm tries tolls to curb use of cars by Lawrence Solomon

London began tolling its downtown roads in 2003. The novel plan proved to be brilliant, the naysayers proved to be wrong: Traffic congestion ended as some 70,000 travellers per day switched to public transit, motorcycles, bicycles, taxis and other alternatives.

CREDIT: Scott Barbour, Getty Images
London motorists – 70,000 a day – have
switched to alternative transportation
since a road toll was introduced.

In 2006, Stockholm began tolling on an even larger scale and it, too, is proving brilliant. The media and policy pundits who predicted failure are revising their views, as are members of the general public, who began 80% in opposition. All Europe, in fact, seems headed for the express lanes: Under EU-wide directives, universal road tolling systems are soon set to break out, starting with trials in the U.K. in 2010 and a four-city system in the Netherlands in 2012.

Stockholm’s local government had expected that the peak-hour tolls – as much as $3 to cross into or out of a tolling zone – would reduce traffic by 10% to 15%, increasing traffic speeds and cleaning the air. The fee system exceeded its expectation: Car traffic in these so-called Stockholm Trials plummeted 25%, public transit use is up 40% and Stockholm street traffic now resembles that of stress-free summer days.

“People love their cars,” said Ylva Yngveson of the Institute for Private Economics before the six-month trials began on Jan. 3, in predicting that Stockholm residents weren’t about to abandon their vehicles, regardless of the cost increases.

“Another study we did several years ago showed that people would more likely change jobs, work more or move in order to maintain a budget for their car.”

That prediction proved wrong. People may love their cars, but only when they’re cheap dates. When the loves became too demanding, many Stockholm residents dumped them. A study by Yngveson’s institute, a division of the Swedish bank Foreningsparbanken, may explain why.

In 2006, mostly because of the new toll system, car commuters travelling between Stockholm and its suburbs will be spending around $1,000 more, the Institute found. As a result, people have been questioning their need for a car.

The Institute study compared alternatives to owning a private vehicle. A Volkswagen Golf owner, for example, could swap his car for a transit pass and 24 10-kilometre taxi rides per month. Or, if he wanted to rent a car for a weekend each month, his former car budget would pay for 16 taxi trips plus the transit pass. A Volvo owner would have more transportation options still. His car budget would finance a transit pass and 32 taxi trips per month.

“Taxis are stereotyped as being somewhat of a luxury, but with the increase in fees, I think that this label will eventually fade,” predicts Goran Jaxeus, managing director at Taxi Stockholm. “Many people have a second car, and when they compare the cost to own and maintain it, a taxi is a clear alternative.”

Stockholm’s taxi industry expects to become a big winner in the move to tolling roads, just as London’s cabbies struck it rich when the streets of London were tolled. Those who expected to be the big losers – Stockholm retailers who feared suburban customers would stop patronizing their establishments – have just joined the ranks of the converted. According to preliminary figures released this week by the Swedish Institute of Trade, merchants are now better off, quite apart from any reluctance of suburban shoppers to make shopping trips to the city. “Trade in the city has increased. In many areas it is up 4% to 5%,” said Ulf Ramme, who led the study of sales in large shopping centres, several large shopping districts, and some 900 individual shops. Ramme speculates that a “lock-in effect” may explain the surge in business. City shoppers seem less inclined to go to out-of-town centres on weekdays, when it is likely to cost money, choosing instead to make their purchases closer to home. With all this good news, the public’s skepticism is fading. Four hundred thousand Stockholm area drivers now have transponders, allowing automatic debits from their bank accounts of the tolling charges. One person in three now favours the road toll, according to a survey conducted between Jan. 18 and Feb. 21.The trials end on July 31. A report will then be issued, followed by a referendum in September.

Lawrence Solomon, author of the forthcoming book Toronto Sprawls, is executive director of Urban Renaissance Institute and Consumer Policy Institute, divisions of Energy Probe Research Foundation.; www.urban.probeinternational.org.

Posted in Toll roads, Transportation | Leave a comment

Getting it Right

Posted on March 1, 2006 by urbanrenaissanceinst

Andre Marin

Ombudsman of Ontario

March 1 2006

Investigation into the transparency of the property assessment process and the integrity and efficiency of decision-making at the Municipal Property Assessment Corporation.

Click here to view .pdf document

Posted in Other, Taxation | Leave a comment

Cultures collide

Posted on February 17, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
February 17, 2006

The Muslims refused to assimilate. They were expelled. This was the story in Europe 400 years ago. We are watching the sequel today.

Europeans are rarely welcoming to outsiders, even when the outsiders are blond and blue-eyed and come from the country next door. When the outsiders are un-European, swarthy and Muslim, they are tolerated at best. When some Muslims also insist that Europeans stop acting like Europeans, on pain of death, European tolerance comes to an end.

In the clash of cultures between secular Europeans and extremist Muslims, there can ultimately be no compatibility or compromise, only loss by one side or the other of the absolute values it holds dear. European capitulation on European soil, where they remain the dominant majority, is unlikely: Europeans revel in their liberty to mock religion, to poke fun at sacred cows, to be outrageous, even to offend.

CREDIT: Abid Katib, Getty Images
Young Muslims protest French
government policy. French
tolerance is waning.

European leaders have reacted to the Muslim upset over the cartoons two ways. Publically and to buy time, they seek to calm the protesters by deploring the abuse of freedom of speech. More significantly, they seek to preserve their societies by legislating Western norms, by tightening or ending immigration from Muslim countries, by enabling the expulsion of radical imans and other Muslim activists, and by raising the spectre of mass deportations.

In France, hard-line Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy, who in October characterized France’s urban rioters as “rabble,” will require non-European immigrants to sign a new “Contract of Welcome and Integration” that spells out their obligations. Among other reforms, the French government will be free to expel immigrants after 10 years. Insular Muslim communities – commonplace today – are outlawed. For immigrants to stay, they will have to demonstrate respect for French norms, such as equality between men and women. “If a wife is kept hostage at home without learning French, the whole family will be asked to leave [the country],” said Mr. Sarkozy, who proposes to rank countries to determine the desirability of their immigrants.

The Danes have brought in immigration laws that are stricter still, all but ending their liberal refugee program and discouraging even temporary workers. In the wake of the cartoon riots, many in Denmark, including those in government, want to see an outright ban on Muslim immigration and to have radical leaders stripped of citizenship and deported. To preserve home-grown values, Danish Minister for Cultural Affairs Brian Mikkelsen recently called for the creation of a “canon of Danish art, music, literature and film.” Last summer, he stated that, “In Denmark we have seen the appearance of a parallel society in which minorities practice their own medieval values and undemocratic views,” adding that, “This is the new front in our cultural war.”

In Germany, which pioneered the guest-worker program in Europe, a sea change has occurred. “Multicultural societies have only . . . functioned peacefully in authoritarian states. To that extent it was a mistake for us to bring guest workers from foreign cultures into the country at the beginning of the 1960s,” said former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt. Germany’s new Chancellor, Angela Merkel, shares his view: “The notion of multiculturalism has fallen apart,” she said prior to her election. “Anyone coming here must respect our constitution and tolerate our Western and Christian roots.”

The Netherlands, which has cut immigration in half since 2001, is deporting 26,000 rejected asylum seekers and keeping new arrivals in detention camps. Under proposed legislation, women will be banned from wearing the burka anywhere in public, not just in schools and public buildings as French legislation has it. “I believe we have been far too tolerant for too long, especially being too tolerant of intolerance, and we only got intolerance back,” said Member of Dutch Parliament Geert Wilders, who has been forced to live in safe houses because of Islamist death threats. According to a recent Pew Global Attitudes poll, 51% of the Dutch view Muslims unfavourably.

Belgium may be less tolerant still. “Islam is now the number one enemy not only of Europe, but of the entire free world,” states Filip Dewinter, leader of Vlaams Belang (The Flemish Interest), now Belgium’s most popular political party. Mr. Dewinter has gained popularity by arguing that, “it is an illusion to think that a moderate Islam exists in Europe.” He states: “There are already 25 million to 30 million Muslims on Europe’s soil, and this becomes a threat. It’s a real Trojan horse.”

Many Europeans fear their Muslim populations. In Switzerland, 25% consider Muslims a threat to their country. In Italy, half the population believes a “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West is underway and that Islam is “a religion more fanatical than any other.”

The fear debilitates but it also stiffens resolve. The President of the European Commission, Jose Manuel Barroso, backs the Danish government’s refusal to apologize for the cartoons, saying, “It’s better to publish too much than not to have freedom.” France’s Sarkozy prefers “an excess of cartooning to an excess of censorship.” Italy’s Northern League Party, a member of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s coalition government, printed T-shirts sporting the cartoons in advance of elections in April. The U.K. this week passed legislation broadening the right of free speech, no matter how offensive, barring a specific intent to provoke hatred.

Europe’s Muslims now know that they are expected to integrate or to depart. Four centuries ago, after decades of threats of expulsion, forced conversions and other failed attempts to assimilate Muslims, complaints about them – their use of Arabic, their clothes, their rejection of Western culture – were similar. “They marry among themselves and do not mix with Old Christians,” complained one report of Spain’s Moriscos (Muslims who had undergone forced conversions to Christianity). Riots by Muslims at offences perpetrated upon them added to tensions. In the end, still not assimilated, most were expelled.

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Join the parade

Posted on January 27, 2006 by Other News Sources

Lawrence Solomon
National Post
January 27, 2006

Pundits are blaming Stephen Harper’s failure to win seats in Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver on fears that Harper has a broad social conservative agenda. Or on a distaste that urban residents have for free enterprise. Or on his reluctance to fix the city’s fiscal imbalance.

That’s far too broad and complex an assessment.

It’s really all about sex.

People vote their sexual preferences, and their ability to pursue them without undue risk, much more than they vote any left-right ideology or pocketbook issue. A vote for the Conservatives, to very large numbers of urbanites, would be a vote against their self-interest.

CREDIT: Peter Redman, National Post
Gay pride parade, Toronto

No one knows how many gays Canada has – they haven’t all come out of the closet – but estimates vary from about 1% to 10%. At the high end (10% is the figure used by some marketers to the gay community), Canada has more than three million gays; at the low end (from a suspect Statistics Canada study that reports an unusually high rate of people who didn’t want to respond), there are 1%, a mere 300,000-plus.

Let’s assume the actual figure is about one million, and that the great majority of them live in cities, especially Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, since gays gravitate to big cities to find mates and a community to belong to. Let’s look at Toronto, which has Canada’s largest gay population and, along with San Francisco and Amsterdam, the world’s highest proportion of gays. Many credit Toronto with 300,000 to 400,000 gays but, even assuming that number is inflated, Toronto could well have 10,000 gays per Toronto riding on average. But that doesn’t begin to describe the gay-friendly vote.

At Toronto’s gay concentration, virtually every Torontonian knows gays. They have gay friends and gay co-workers. They have gay relatives. They see gay tendencies in the young children of their friends and, as they become older, speculation turns to confirmation. They have bonds with all these people and often a strong loyalty toward them, too. They don’t want to see them disparaged, even implicitly. They don’t want their vote to be read as an insult to gays. For many, a vote for Conservatives, knowing it would deeply offend a friend, a relative, a co-worker, would show disloyalty.

The abortion issue produces more visceral sex-based opposition to the Conservatives. Canadian women have more than 100,000 abortions a year. Put another way, for every 100 babies born, 32 are aborted. Among women in their twenties, about 2.5% will have an abortion this year. Among those who don’t, many fear that, but for fortune, they might face the same choice.

Most women do not slough off their past abortions easily, and they certainly do not want societal reprimands for their past misfortunes. Neither do they want others to suffer any such stigma, or limit on their freedoms. These women’s mates do not want any of the stigma to rub off on them, or to be limited themselves by unwanted obligations.

The numbers of voters here are massive, and not just in cities. And because the votes are often tied to visceral existential experiences, they can trump a distaste for other parties, even as scandal-tainted a party as the Liberal party. Urban voters do not oppose the Conservatives’ free enterprise policies; they tend to favour free markets more than rural voters. Urban voters also are not hostile to social conservative policies that don’t interfere with their choices in life. They don’t hyperventilate over church-going, even if it’s not their preference, or family friendly policies such as child-care allowances. They positively favour social conservatives’ tough policies on crime.

Only the strict sex-related votes – thousands of them per urban riding – keep Harper from breakthroughs in Canada’s big cities. If he can neutralize his image as a sexual throwback, and if only a few thousand urban voters per riding switch to the Conservatives, urban ridings – and majority government – are his.

In truth, Harper has shown no antipathy to gays – his pro-civil union, anti-gay marriage position is comparable to that of Labour’s Tony Blair, the British Prime Minister, and left-leaning U.S. Democrats such as Howard Dean and John Kerry. And Harper has pledged not to reopen the abortion debate. But he needs to dispel the public’s perception that he is a closet bigot by laying down the law on intolerance and then slapping down anyone, including anyone in his caucus, who steps out of line, akin to the Sister Souljah moment in 1992, when Bill Clinton publicly repudiated the extremist rap singer, demonstrated his credentials to centrist voters and won the presidency.

To convince urban voters – gay or otherwise – that he can be trusted to keep his word on sexually charged issues, and not unveil a hidden agenda once in power, Harper could not do better than to march in a gay pride parade. There will be no shortage of opportunities in the next year or two before an election – Canada has more than 20 gay-pride events from May to September – but the best photo-op would come this August in Toronto. Toronto Pride is Canada’s most-attended single-day event, with more than a million participants, bigger than any sporting event this country has to offer. The organizers would welcome him with open arms, as would the country.

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