denfromoakvillemilton
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http://www.thestar.com/news/article...owth-plans-aim-to-rein-in-sprawl?bn=1#article
Smart growth — or outsmarted?
Ontario won international kudos four years ago for Places to Grow, a revolutionary scheme to curb urban sprawl. But it’s the nitty-gritty decisions made in places like Brampton and Markham, often reluctantly, that will show over the next 20 years whether the plan succeeded.
The two communities have taken very different paths toward meeting the goals set out in Places to Grow, a master strategy for managing population growth intelligently and preserving as much green space as possible.
Markham hired a high-profile visionary, California-based “new urbanist†Peter Calthorpe, to design communities with densities approaching that of downtown Toronto. It pioneered the idea of suburban intensification, redeveloping areas that have already been built on.
The town also engaged in audacious debates about whether it should urbanize thousands of hectares of prime agricultural land just because it could — and chose not to.
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