Posted on 12/06/2016 9:41:06 AM PST by SouthernerFromTheNorth
Here's why rural Ontario is fading and cities aren't
The urban-rural divide is swiftly becoming one of the most pressing issues of economic policy in this century. From Europe to England to the United States and yes, here in Canada, the sweeping changes to physical landscapes have translated to sweeping changes in political landscapes.
As David Reevely pointed out last week, Ontario’s urban centres have seen economic growth and recovery that the stretches of rural land separating those centres simply haven’t. There are multiple reasons for this, one being that Ontario’s municipalities have been practising a policy of intensification for years now. That policy encourages people to live in cities where there is work, in part to preserve existing farmland and protected lands outside urban centres. Intensification is an answer to ugly and wasteful suburban sprawl, and a response to the flight of young people out of the suburban and rural areas and into cities.
This policy of intensification comes at a time when rural life is growing less and less attractive. Certainly the cost of land and living is low, which should be enough to keep some young people in the area. But most of the jobs that guarantee a living wage can no longer be obtained without a university degree, and even workers with graduate degrees are forced to reckon with the corporate preference for no-strings-attached contract workers, and the vagaries of the “gig economy.” We cannot tell our young people that in order to succeed they must be educated, then complain when they leave home for that education.
On the other hand, characterizing this divide as the fight between “Liberalville and Toryland” sounds catchy, but doesn’t tell the whole story. Cities don’t win the presence of major employers because they’re socially or democratically liberal. They win major employers because they’re better places to live, and better places to live tend to be socially progressive.
This August, Toronto was ranked the fourth most liveable city in the world. (This, despite its decrepit subway system and its history of carding and other odious practices.) Are the executives at major firms really going to tell some of their most valuable employees that they’re moving locations to a less expensive area where they might be the only visible minority in a crowd? Or where they might not find a Pride event? This has nothing to do with who is in power, and everything to do with longstanding local culture.
That said, the urban-rural divide in Ontario is just as important and as dangerous as the urban-rural divide that doomed England to Brexit, and created the opening for Donald Trump in the U.S. More resources must be allocated to including people from all walks of life in Canadian prosperity.
That includes refugees from Syria, and it also includes the people in the rural reaches whose jobs have been automated away. It’s terrible that Ontario said no to green energy this year. Those jobs could have made significant changes to the way of life in rural Ontario – building and maintaining windmills and solar panels is a strategy that would save jobs and the environment.
Madeline Ashby is a strategic foresight consultant and novelist living in Toronto. Find her at madelineashby.com or on Twitter @MadelineAshby.
I know the general area, but I’ve never been that far north in Ontario. The closest I came was on a few trips along the northern route of the Trans-Canada Highway through Dryden.
Red Lake is a few hours north of Dryden. Dryden has a big paper mill and a better grocery store. The concrete road essentially stops at Red Lake. There are logging roads that go much farther north.
“Cities always have an advantage of economies of scale.”
Part of the problem is that this concentration of people is also a concentration of power.
For example, here in the DC metro area, there are enough people to force the rest of Maryland and Virginia, and even the rest of the country, to pay for and subsidize the riders of the subway system. I can see the need for it, but I have a hard time accepting that all of this is built and run on expectations of receiving funds from outside the service area, but with little input from the outsiders. I understand roads in rural areas are beneficial, too, but the population centers control the spending for those also.
What we’re talking about is called “internal colonization”, where the cities control the distribution of wealth gained from the entire country.
Lot choose the well-watered plain; close to Sodom & Gomorrah.
Genesis 13:10-12
Service businesses locate as close as possible to their customers (and employees) so that's the advantage of locating in a city rather than the exburbs despite the much high location costs. Not everyone in the city needs a triple bypass so in that case locating within reasonable reach of a national airport might be better. In fact, it would be cheaper for the taxpayers to have most uninsured patients report to the Southwest Airlines check-in desk to be treated in their home countries rather than treating them in the big city.
In the case of Toronto, you have to be a millionaire to afford to comfortably live there these days without roommates or crowded conditions. A single family home - on a small lot - easily costs over $1 million anywhere in commuting range.
The Canadian Shield also penetrates into parts of the Upper Midwest (Upper Peninsula of Michigan, northern Wisconsin and northeastern Minnesota), and they have been struggling but not nearly as much, as energy costs are lower and they have more (relative) power in their states
On HGTV here they run some househunting show that was shot in Toronto. It is truly shocking.
Little rundown 2BR row houses that you can find around here
for $40-50K are pushing $1 mil. Canadian.
Agricultural areas have been losing population for a long time.
Nothing new there and it's not the result of some recent policy change.
Or on “goodly lands” located on fault lines near oceans!
Southern Ontario between Windsor and Toronto is definitely not in the Canadian Shield, but rather resembles northern Ohio or the Michigan “Thumb”, which are rich soil growing regions.
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