{"id":10706,"date":"2011-06-15T23:20:17","date_gmt":"2011-06-16T04:20:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingmontreal.ca\/?p=10706"},"modified":"2013-01-21T12:02:26","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T17:02:26","slug":"the-regionalist-does-montreal-need-a-belt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/montreal\/2011\/06\/15\/the-regionalist-does-montreal-need-a-belt\/","title":{"rendered":"The Regionalist: Does Montreal Need a Belt?"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The analogy of the “belt” which is used to describe the way in which cities around the round have tried to contain and\/or manage urban growth may seem a little bit odd, but it is in many ways quite fitting: a belt is something we wear so that our pants don’t fall down; it doesn’t make you thinner (although it may appear to do so). And it doesn’t really prevent you from gaining weight, because belts are adjustable (up to a point). So it is with greenbelts.<\/p>\n

One might ask, then, does Montreal really need a belt? The Green Coalition seems to think so<\/a> – and they have managed to rally behind their proposal approximately 80 organizations, including 15 municipalities<\/a>. This is of course good news for Montreal: citizens, politicians and civil society actors coming together to ask for the preservation of green space on a regional scale<\/em>. But I think it is important to pause for a second and ponder our choice of words: is it really a “green belt” that we need, or it is something else?<\/p>\n

Here it is important to trace the idea of the greenbelt to its source. One thing is clear: greenbelts have a long history and no single origin. There are descriptions in the Old Testament of \u201ctowns and cities with inviolable rural hinterlands\u201d, which suggests that the preservation of agricultural land is a preoccupation that dates back at least a few thousand years. There were also attempts to establish a cordon sanitaire <\/em>around London, England, by the Crown and the Commonwealth Parliament as early as the 16th<\/sup> and 17th <\/sup>centuries.<\/p>\n

Something else is clear, though: the modern greenbelt movement originated in England in the late 19th century and was motivated by two distinct (but interrelated) historical conditions: urban overcrowding (which, it was believed, caused the alienation of urban dwellers from nature) and the encroachment of \u201curban sprawl\u201d onto rural and agricultural lands (which was perceived as threat to “Englishness”). The London Greenbelt was therefore “sold” both as a way to increase the poor’s access to recreational land, as well as way to “preserve” the countryside (which was and continues to be the recreational land of the rich). Similarly, the first active proponents of greenbelting in the U.S. were members of the Regional Planning Association of America (RPAA), like Benton MacKaye and Lewis Mumford, and they also saw the greenbelt as having a double-function: repelling the “metropolitan invasion” of the countryside, and giving urbanites (read “gentiles”) access to nature.<\/p>\n

Hence the tension that existed – and continues to exist – in the very idea of the greenbelt: it is both elitist and populist in its appeal, pro-urban and anti-urban in its objectives, inclusionary and exclusionary in its effects and progressive and regressive in its outlook (note: the progressive and regressive effects of greenbelt policies are well-documented, but beyond the scope of this post… hit me up if you want to know more). One interesting example of this was provided to me by John Rahaim, who is currently Director of Planning in San Francisco and was formerly Director of Planning in Seattle. He recounts that once the greenbelt was implemented in Seattle, activists and environmentalists started paying less attention to the loss of natural habitats within the greenbelt – which (he intuited based on his experience) resulted in an accelerated rate of habitat destruction.<\/p>\n

All this to say the following: Montreal certainly needs a strong vision for the preservation of open-space and natural habitats, as well as strong leadership for politicians and civil society. But we should be careful what words we use (and what we mean by the words we use). Toronto has succeeded in creating a “greenbelt” that is neither anti-urban, nor anti-rural (I will cover it in\u00a0 more detail in a different post, as it deserves to be treated separately). But Toronto’s greenbelt is not really a belt – it is an all-emcompassing land-use planning regime (along with Places to grow) that extends far beyond the immediate urban periphery.<\/p>\n

Unless we are ready to walk the walk, then, maybe we should call our greenbelt plan something different – so as to avoid using an idea that connotes something ambiguous and may work against our larger, higher-order objective, which is to live harmoniously with nature, both within the city and outside of it.<\/p>\n

The Regionalist is a column written by Jo\u00ebl Thibert about regional planning, regional transportation and other regional stuff. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The analogy of the “belt” which is used to describe the way in which cities around the round have tried to contain and\/or manage urban growth may seem a little bit odd, but it is in many ways quite fitting: a belt is something we wear so that our pants don’t fall down; it doesn’tContinue reading “The Regionalist: Does Montreal Need a Belt?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5046,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7835,7839,102,7842],"tags":[6080,4029,6398,9,934,10,4321,6397,6081,569,125,6079,208,353,948,28,152,830,1267,307,204],"class_list":["post-10706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-green-space","category-neighbourhoods","category-spacing","category-urban-design","tag-benton-mackaye","tag-civil-society","tag-commonwealth-parliament","tag-development","tag-director-of-planning","tag-environment","tag-green-coalition","tag-john-rahaim","tag-lewis-mumford","tag-london","tag-montreal","tag-regional-planning-association-of-america","tag-regionalism","tag-san-francisco","tag-seattle","tag-spacing-montreal","tag-toronto","tag-transportation-2","tag-united-kingdom","tag-united-states","tag-urban-agriculture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe Regionalist: Does Montreal Need a Belt? 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