Douglas Todd: The future of housing affordability in Canada lies in providing support to mid-sized centres, such as Kamloops and Kitchener-Waterloo
For a vast country like Canada, the second largest in the world by land mass, we are a strangely urban place.
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Our biggest cities continue to grow larger — and more unaffordable — while populations in our rural regions dwindle and many smaller cities struggle.
Canada, oddly, is far more urban than countries like Italy, where more people reside in rural areas, often in elegant towns that are the envy of North Americans.
What’s to be done? While some city dwellers are drawn to the idea of slower living on a farm or in the forest, not many can afford it. Jobs and educational opportunities are more plentiful in urban centres — and remote work via the internet has not taken off like many hoped.
However, a new breed of economists and other policymakers think there is a middle way. They say we must put more emphasis on mid-sized cities.
Even though Glaeser is a free-market libertarian who opposes most zoning rules and promotes highrises, the enthusiasm he embodies is often shared by people on the left. That includes B.C.’s NDP government, which is drastically increasing density within Metro Vancouver.
The new studies, however, argue big cities are overrated.
Their study concluded that, if supersized cities like New York and Miami hadn’t existed in the past century and no U.S. centre had a population over one million, the American economy would have done virtually as well as it has, and business inventiveness would have continued apace.
The authors maintain Canada cannot solve its housing affordability crises by adding more dwellings to big centres like Vancouver and Toronto.
Instead, Kronick and Beaudry recommend politicians target a certain number of mid-sized cities — like Kamloops, and Kitchener-Waterloo, Ont. — to support them in becoming larger, thriving hubs that can “meaningfully reduce housing costs nationwide.”
Strengthening certain midsized Canadian cities, Kronick and Beaudry, would “reduce in-migration into our big cities, mitigate price pressures there, and help lower costs for everyone.”
“Big cities will always draw talent and investment — and they should,” say Kronick and Beaudry. “But by growing our secondary cities into attractive destinations, we can reduce housing pressure on major urban centres and make affordability a reality nationwide.”
They envision the beneficial aspects of “secondary cities” like Kamloops (population 110,000) and Kitchener-Waterloo (600,000) becoming larger centres of about one million. (The authors don’t use population levels to define what constitutes a “secondary city.”)
Growing smaller cities into bigger ones would, among other things, they say, create competing housing markets for residents of metropolises like Metro Vancouver, potentially reducing prices overall.
The proportion of people in rural Canada — regions with populations with fewer than 400 people per square kilometre — has dropped to 17.8 per cent. That compares to 29 per cent in Italy.
That’s why Kronick and Beaudry promote the idea that housing affordability can be improved in big centres like Vancouver and Toronto when “secondary cities” are made far more attractive to employers and skilled workers, which should eventually enable them to “supply housing at lower cost.”
To help smaller cities become larger, the report says, governments must contribute to their infrastructure, make it easier for them to build, encourage local businesses, “invest in transit links that connect large and smaller urban centres” and forge stronger local colleges and universities, which will enhance innovation and productivity.
It’s time to end our obsession with bloated big cities. This creative proposal, which transcends the politics of left and right, deserves attention.