Is NIMBYism behind frustration on development or do Vaughan residents not realize sweeping change is happening?

Does the conversation on highrise buildings in low-rise neighbourhoods need a 'cultural shift'?

Yorkregion.com
Aug. 10, 2021
Dina Al-Shibeeb

Vaughan residents behind development complaints insist that they aren’t NIMBYs -- an acronym for “Not In My Backyard” -- the euphemism often used when tackling this simmering hot issue in the city.

The Vaughan Citizen has reported a plethora of stories about how residents disagree at times with these bids, dubbed at times as “outrageous,” in what they call “already established neighbourhoods.”

These stories are plentiful in Vaughan. After all, Ontario anticipates York Region to attract the most growth in the Greater Toronto and Hamilton Area for its 2051 growth plan. Also, Vaughan is set to see the most intensification within York Region, bidding farewell to the remainder of its Whitebelt, incensing many environmentalists.

This is all happening amid declining birth rates, with Ontario expecting to see a quarter of its population hitting 65 in age or older by 2041. It is no surprise that the federal government is also planning for a record immigration, and its provincial counterpart wants to further intensify development on highways and public transit corridors -- a move backed by environmentalists to reduce sprawl -- especially in Vaughan, which the first subway in the Greater Toronto Area outside of Toronto.

Shauna Brail, an associate professor at the Institute for Management & Innovation, University of Toronto Mississauga, explained that while these “residents might not self-identify as NIMBYs, I’d encourage you to follow up further when residents use language that includes efforts to protect ‘stable residential neighbourhoods’ and produce ‘family homes’ as the rationale for rejecting intensification efforts.”

For Brail, an economic geographer and urban planner, these “terms often signal exclusionary efforts in neighbourhoods comprised primarily of single family homes,” contrary to intensification needed in emerging cities such as Vaughan.

“It’s entirely possible that the challenge has nothing to do with immigration or planning, but rather is a matter of changing the conversation on accommodating growth, which requires education, a cultural shift and the inclusion of a greater number of voices in the planning process,” explained Brail.

Adam Grossi is a director of planning and development at First Avenue, a company that has upset residents at Hawman Avenue for its 12-storey building bid in a neighbourhood they describe as “already intensified.”

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Grossi agrees with Brail’s view on change.

“For individuals outside of the development industry, I understand how there can be confusion between the province’s vision for growth and intensification, and how that gets implemented at the regional and municipal levels,” said Grossi.

“Change is often resisted,” Grossi added. “Things can seem drastic especially when it is the first of its kind.”

However, there are other residents who feel that the speed of this intensification and basing Canada’s GDP only on immigration is unrealistic.

“It is becoming increasingly important that the Canadian public are made aware of this rush to fill every open space with highrise apartment buildings, the thoroughly negative implications of that for societal health with millions of people destined to raise families in holes in the sky with no associated recreational spaces (parks) for their children,” said Vaughan resident David Green.

Green criticized the government strategy of growing Canada's GDP simply via massive immigration. He cited Sweden, which has a population of just 10 million, as an example, Canada should follow.

For him, that Canada is “so big, it surely can absorb a few more millions of souls. This is a fallacy.”

“Over 90 per cent of Canada's population lives within 25 miles from the U.S. border,” he said. “Available space in that band of land is diminishing and increasing sharply in value.”

However, for Brail, the population growth in Canada has already being “characterized by urban sprawl for some time with much growth taking place close to, but on the edges of, built up urban areas.”

But she insists that Ottawa’s immigration’s goal isn’t unrealistic.

“Economically, socially, culturally and ethically -- Canada, including Vaughan and York Region, needs immigrants,” the associate professor concluded.