Am I the only one who experiences culture cringe? (property, seafood)
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I never said any of this would happen and said so before. I just think it would be nice to welcome more people in this country. The amount of farmland that exists in the lower mainland is very tiny compared to other areas in the province and I think it can be used for housing.
Try market gardening around Vanderhoof or even Kamloops. Are you a city person because you do not seem to have much understanding of the land. Sure add over 4 million people to Winnipeg. Have you thought of what they are going to do once they get there? Is you goal simply to have as many people as possible living here? That sounds like a goal with no purpose. Drastically increasing the population in any country, but especially one like ours would be a great strain on our environment, our greenhouse gas emissions, our exploitation of resources and any ability to feed ourselves. You can't grow tomatoes or berrys on Elsemere Island. Have you thought of the affect on the population in a place like Manitoba if you brought in immigrants that outnumbered the local popluation by 4 to 1? You think putting 4 million Syrians or Chinese or Afhgans into Winnnipeg you won't end up with the local population leaving as all cultural, educational and political aspects of the city would change to reflect the majority.
Canada has lots of people for its space. Let it grow organically and not simply for the sake of those who think having tens or hundreds of millions more citizens would be cool.
I live in a city that is slated to recieve Syrian refugees. I think it is great and personally it may help be out to as a landlord. But add too many at once, especially with the locals feeling the effects of low oil prices and you will build up tensions which will make life worse not better for all sides. Not everyone wants to live in huge cities and your idea of making new ones and building existing ones to 4 or 5 times their current sizes means whether you like it or not that you want to change those people's cultures to one that you are more familar with, the big city.
Green spaces including farms are very important for people's mental health and their physical heath as well. It takes space and greenery to absorb polutants in the air but also to manage runoff from rains. Pushing away the source of foods means greater transportation costs and as any farm land will be less productive away from the lower mainland due to climate and soils, the production costs will also rise. Some of it will be much cheaper to import which in itself may mean those foods are worth more shipping to Vancouver than selling locally so food prices in places in the third world increase or become scarce.
Go talk to farmers in the Prince George/Vanderhoof area and ask them how their crops compare to the Lower Mainland and find out they cannot grow the same things. Talk to the market gardeners in your area as well. It would be nice to welcome new people, guess what we do that everyday of the year in this country. We will not become a more cultural country by drastically increasing our population.
By your logic we should have never developed Ft. McMurray or Sept-Iles, eh?
You got me there, I forgot the only options are unlimited development or perhaps development for the sake of development or else zero development. Sorry I sort of thought we could have development where we needed it for our own sake and where it is practical.
As far as Fort McMurray goes we developed it wrong, too much rush and not enough consideration of the socio economic impacts on the region. The taxpayers paid for the boom and we will pay for the bust. Why not look at Faro Yukon for another example of a boom? The country is full of former boom towns or cities, some of them were quite large. If you look at Fort McMurray, if it was 500 kilometers further north it would have been much harder to develop and would not have been as large of a place as it is now. But it was resource based, not it would be nice to have large northern cities based. Drive the Dempster Highway to see how difficult it is to build a road in the north and that went through the easist area to build roads.
My logic is that we do not need to build cities or make our cities much larger for the sake of increasing our population. We need to take into account our environment and our natives and construct what we need, where we need not based on a person looking at a map and thinking a city would be nice there. Russia and China both screwed up doing that. The land claims are also different than in the provinces and would make some of what you think we should do much more expensive or perhaps not possilble at all.
It takes more than a look on a map, a guess at what the land will look like after the climate warms up even more, or a drive by on the highway to determine what is feasible in any one area. I also do not think we need more people in out country. A little immigrantion is good for us all. As far as the Syrians go, I would love for their country to become safe for the refugees to return even if it means we have to rebuild their cities for them. I am sure they would perfer that too. I am not opposed , in fact I am fully supported of our plan to take in 25 000. I would strongly oppose bringing in millions.
What is your objective Deneb? To bring millions of immigrants and refugees into the country per year. If that is it why not just invest in cities that are in more sustainable locations.. Its not like we don't have enough room to densify Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, Calgary, Ottawa, Halifax etc etc etc etc.. We could fit 100-200 million more people in already established cities before having to settle a mass number of people in Rankin Inlet. Why are you so horny to develop remote places over existing places where half the job is already done. I don't get your rational/logic at all..
AJ also made a great point before - you create these new super cities in the middle of nowhere and settle people in these places and they decide it is too remote/boring/not established enough and decide to move better located/established cities - well what happens then to all the money you invested in places people don't choose to live and move to places they'd rather live and where investment would have made more sense in the first place?
Concentrating our population in areas that are already settled and denaturalized is also good for the environment.
Both my parents are from small towns in the Maritimes, and one of them in particular has been going through depopulation for decades which means that areas that were once cleared (for farming and other uses) are slowly returning to their natural state.
Behind my grandparents' house where there once were cleared agricultural fields in my childhood, today there is a forest.
I think it would make more sense if population was in areas unsuitable for agriculture. Edmonton is in some of the most valuable cropland for instance.
Hey I totally get what you are suggesting (and I wish it were possible), but in reality it is just not realistic. Countries and cities usually grow organically, and it is just wishful thinking to build large cities from scratch.
This about sums it up. I think if any new large cities emerge, it will be from the growth of existing cities. I think we're already seen where cities like Calgary, Ottawa and even Edmonton are reaching the 1 million mark and attracting a diverse enough economy and population to become more attractive to Canadians and immigrants. Without this attraction, immigration alone wouldn't grow remote cities as most immigrants would head for established economies.
The fact that we don't have millions of people living far up north has nothing to do with lack of initiative. It simply is not worth it - without a compelling economic reason, few move there, and frankly I wouldn't wish it on people unless they really want to be there.
I think there are things government could do to nudge cities towards growth. Where we locate major investments - such as universities, research institutes for example, can help provide momentum and make a place more attractive. Here in BC our education system has been very Vancouver centric. It's no magic bullet though as there are tons of sleepy college towns. At the same time, I know lot of places with surging economies have benefited from government investment. The Front Range of Colorado for example, had excellent universiities, investment in defense in government institutions as desicated to renewable energy, agriculture, and technology.
I could see some of our second and third tier cities - Halifax, Prince George, Nanaimo, Kitchener Waterloo -growing as good places to live, and perhaps more government investment should be directed at these places. If for example the decline in the Maritimes economy could be reversed, I could imagine Halifax as a large city. But trying to build big cities in the middle of nowhere for the sake of it is unlikely to succeed and is not usually undertaken by democracies.
This about sums it up. I think if any new large cities emerge, it will be from the growth of existing cities. I think we're already seen where cities like Calgary, Ottawa and even Edmonton are reaching the 1 million mark and attracting a diverse enough economy and population to become more attractive to Canadians and immigrants. Without this attraction, immigration alone wouldn't grow remote cities as most immigrants would head for established economies.
The fact that we don't have millions of people living far up north has nothing to do with lack of initiative. It simply is not worth it - without a compelling economic reason, few move there, and frankly I wouldn't wish it on people unless they really want to be there.
I think there are things government could do to nudge cities towards growth. Where we locate major investments - such as universities, research institutes for example, can help provide momentum and make a place more attractive. Here in BC our education system has been very Vancouver centric. It's no magic bullet though as there are tons of sleepy college towns. At the same time, I know lot of places with surging economies have benefited from government investment. The Front Range of Colorado for example, had excellent universiities, investment in defense in government institutions as desicated to renewable energy, agriculture, and technology.
I could see some of our second and third tier cities - Halifax, Prince George, Nanaimo, Kitchener Waterloo -growing as good places to live, and perhaps more government investment should be directed at these places. If for example the decline in the Maritimes economy could be reversed, I could imagine Halifax as a large city. But trying to build big cities in the middle of nowhere for the sake of it is unlikely to succeed and is not usually undertaken by democracies.
On the lighter side I think it would be great if Halifax grew in population. It would end the cross over in playoffs in the CFL with 5 in each division.
Prince George is will suited for growth if we were growing just for the sake of growing: a good and steady water supply with two rivers flowing through it, not extremely valuable land around it, a hub of transportation with highways going in each direction and served by the railway, a university however the pulp mill smell (if theya re still going) would be an offset. It has a history of boom and bust and non resource based industries locating there would smooth that out. Does any of the proponents for the sake of bringing in new people just to have Canada have a large population have any suggestions for growing PG with new Canadians? Are they willing to live there? I have lived there.
Concentrating our population in areas that are already settled and denaturalized is also good for the environment.
Both my parents are from small towns in the Maritimes, and one of them in particular has been going through depopulation for decades which means that areas that were once cleared (for farming and other uses) are slowly returning to their natural state.
Behind my grandparents' house where there once were cleared agricultural fields in my childhood, today there is a forest.
Your post reminds me after that show after humans or something like that. It basically chronicles what happens to cities after years/decades/centuries of human abandonment and ultimately how nature gradual reclaims even the largest urban areas to the point there is very little evidence they were there.
However i would have thought official food of Halifax might have been something along the lines of seafood.
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