Urban sprawl isn't inherently a bad thing, but the kind of sprawl Calgary saw, combined with the years of status-quo governing in the decade before causes lots of problems. Unchecked urban sprawl while a city is already behind in developing existing infrastructure is what caused the problems in Calgary and the unwillingness to adjust the tax revenue to support that growth has left us in the budget situation we are now in.Originally posted by hampstor
Urban sprawl:
Myself, I find the term 'urban sprawl' quite offensive. You're basically saying that the drive to grow our city for the last 30+ years has been bad, everyone who has purchased homes in new communities is bad, and built business further out is bad.
I believe the concern people have been voicing with 'urban sprawl' is actually not that we've built further out - but they feel that the inner city has been neglected. While new neighborhoods are being built with new roads, underground powerlines, the inner city neighborhoods have gone decades without those benefits.
Calgary's infrastructure lagged in the 90s and when you combine playing catchup with an outward boom you cannot expect there to be any sustainability (its that reactive vs. proactive thing). You're left with band-aid jobs that people don't like waiting for the next wave of money and labour to become available for the next set of giant projects while at the same time making projects like LRT improvement become nonviable (lack of density isn't good for mass transit).
So basically the city cannot continue to support outward growth without adjusting to the growth it has already seen, because its obvious that the citizens aren't willing to pay for it as shown by the outrage of raising some of the lowest property taxes in the country.