Think Toronto's real estate is expensive? You're right—and it might be the Greenbelt's fault
Think Toronto's real estate is expensive? You're right—and it might be the Greenbelt's fault
Put this in the "world-class city" files, although in a way Torontonians may not be wild about. Toronto is the 16th most unaffordable city in the world, according to a survey by consultant Wendell Cox (last seen by OpenFile debating Adam Giambrone on the merits of transit and smart growth) and Hugh Pavlevitch. The report says that Ontario's Green Belt, enacted by the McGuinty government in 2004, is responsible. It's an example of an artificial "urban growth boundary" that Cox is opposed to. From its report:
One of the most favored more restrictive land use policies is the "urban growth boundary," which prohibits development on considerable amounts of land that would otherwise be developable, resulting in artificial and unnecessary scarcity values. The escalation of house prices relative to incomes, from Sydney and Vancouver to London and across California testify to the failure of planning to maintain a competitive land supply. The record shows that smart growth (urban consolidation and compact cities policies) is incompatible with housing affordability.
More restrictive regulation has led to situations where "across the road" values per hectare of raw, developable land vary by more than 10 times in Auckland and Portland, based upon whether they are inside or outside the urban growth boundary.
This is slightly drier language than Cox used when I spoke to him last, where he said or urban growth boundaries, "It's sort of like Gorbachev, who to this day continues to think the Soviet system was okay, it just wasn't properly managed."
And that's two days in a row that we've brought up comparisons to Soviet Communism. Hopefully this isn't part of a trend.
Cox's argument needs some more elaboration. There is plenty of undeveloped land (120,000 acres, according to one study) still inside the Greenbelt, and it's still relatively young. The impacts on landowners inside the Greenbelt have been more direct, and far less ambiguous (as detailed in This Magazine.) For the most recent run-up in Toronto's real estate prices, I think we might need to look elsewhere.
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