Urban Land Encouragement and the Greenbelt in the Greater Toronto Area

In this paper, I look at the implications of the Greenbelt legislation that was introduced in the so-called Greater Golden Horseshoe Area in 2005 and is coming under its first review. The main rational for the legislation was threefold: (1) to protect green space from further land encroachment by Toronto’s massive urbanization pressures; (2) to secure the hydrological system that is important for the Toronto region; (3) to safeguard several ecological sensitive areas and its biodiversity. In tandem with this legislation, a second provincial legislations came into place with the purpose to direct growth to already built up areas. While it is hoped that the exurban expansion into the countryside will be alleviated with this policy, the provincial pressures on municipalities to support conditions for growth lead to different local perspectives on what the greenbelt constitutes. This paper looks at the two municipalities – Markham on the “inside” of the green belt, and Barrie on the “outside" of the belt – and how they negotiate and integrate the physical barrier in their growth agendas, while contributing to further decline in biodiversity. By using these two perspectives, one from the inside, one from the outside, I will investigate how far the greenbelt is seen as a limit to growth, a repository for biodiversity or an important hydrological system. For this, I will look at the few remaining agricultural areas and their relationship to urbanization on the one hand and the protected landscape on the other. This paper draws on elite interviews with representatives in two municipalities (Markham and Barrie), review of reports, and newspapers. It is hoped to draw general lessons from it in regards to questions of biodiversity decline and water regime change in the context of urban development pressures where legislation, discourse and social practices are contradicting each other.