Infill development may help to sort out the influx of residents coming to Vaughan

As cities build and scale up, infill is a proposed solution

Yorkregion.com
May 9, 2023
Brian Capitao

Vaughan like many cities in York region is feeling the squeeze of traffic, as population density sweeps into older neighbourhoods.

But these are the growing pains of a burgeoning city that is looking to the future and best-laid plans are put to the test.

One such method to deal with an influx of people coming in is through what is known as infill. Infill is a growing trend in urban planning and is the rededication of land in an urban environment.

Proponents of infill explain how it can maximize space and be a boon for locals by supporting current infrastructure like schools or public transit.

“Infill would lead there to being more residents in a given space, so higher population density, which would lead to more children using schools, for instance,” said Jean-François Obregon, a local environmentalist with a master’s degree in planning and urban development from Toronto Metropolitan University (formerly known as Ryerson).

Obregon adds there are concerns around declining enrolment in schools and infill can be a possible solution. He also makes mention that infill would lead to an increase of higher public transit use, which would make good for fare recovery.

However, proponents and critics of infill alike argue that development can have notable environmental consequences.

According to a report done by the United Nations through Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, “established cities will achieve the largest GHG (greenhouse gases) emissions savings by replacing, repurposing or retrofitting the building stock, targeted infilling and densifying.”

But infill without proper green space can also cause the creation of urban heat islands.

“It’s important that there be protection of existing trees on that property and vegetation as much as possible, so that once it’s built, you have that. Something else there should be a regulation against is, how much can be paved of the lot square footage,” Obregon told the Vaughan Citizen.

“Something I’ve noticed is that there’s a trend of individual homeowners getting rid of the grass and putting stone or pavement, and I’m not quite sure why they’re doing that, because that might contribute to the urban heat islands,” added Obregon.

It’s a sentiment echoed by Michael Drescher, associate professor at the School of Planning at the University of Waterloo.

“The material that we are using to build this infrastructure, whether houses or other buildings and roads and so on -- so concrete mainly, asphalt. And then the way we also we cover (and) geometrically arrange those elements, they lead to the storage or the capture of solar radiation by these elements instead of reflecting them back into space. And it’s done a lot by vegetation,” said Drescher.

This is due to the nature of reflective surfaces, says Drescher. “So, there’s more heat stored in the materials itself. Some of that radiation is not directly stored, but it’s cast back,” he added.

So vegetation plays a pivotal role in development because the ramifications of changing the ecology of the landscape are significant.

“It takes a while, it takes tens of years or longer for an area that let’s say was degraded to reach the soil carbon stock that it had before, before it was degraded,” Drescher told the Vaughan Citizen.

According to the Canadian Encyclopedia, in the early 2000s a federal initiative began to “focus on sustainable designs to reduce demands for energy and lessen emission of greenhouse gases.”

Overall, it is believed infill is a net positive for the environment compared to urban sprawl.

“Sprawl would require clearing wood lots or forests and losing increasingly precious agricultural land for what tends to be single, detached home development,” said Obregon.

So governments began to support infill development as a way of revitalizing urban areas within existing neighbourhoods.

“There needs to be protection of sustainable design guidelines that mitigates or reduces urban heat island, so trees, vegetation and limitation of paved over square footage on the lot,” added Obregon.