{"id":5377,"date":"2011-03-15T07:48:15","date_gmt":"2011-03-15T11:48:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacingottawa.ca\/?p=5377"},"modified":"2013-01-21T09:07:22","modified_gmt":"2013-01-21T14:07:22","slug":"spawl-free-with-no-commute-the-whistler-advantage","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/15\/spawl-free-with-no-commute-the-whistler-advantage\/","title":{"rendered":"CLIVE DOUCET: Sprawl-free with no commute – the Whistler advantage"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"
Whistler Mayor Ken Melamed inspects the infrastructure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

It seems like you\u2019ve landed in paradise when you arrive in Whistler. The road winds along a coastline of staggering beauty with mountain peaks draped like snow capped cathedrals in every direction. I kept wanting to rub my eyes like a child, expecting to wake up in the familiar, calmer landscape of the Ottawa valley. I\u2019ve skied for a long time but never in mountains with the variety of pitches and landscapes as Whistler.<\/p>\n

We skied off the mountain top down into Blackcomb glacier where no photograph could capture the magnitude of those towering rock faces and great fields of glistening snow. To be there was as unforgettable, as was the skiing. I was told by a resident that it was the best skiing he\u2019d seen in 41 years – white powder from every peak to valley floor. You could let your skis run for more than four kilometers without stopping on one of the longest runs in the world. After four days of non-stop skiing, I began to wonder if it was possible to be snow drunk\u00a0 so unending, so white and encompassing was the landscape.<\/p>\n

Happily, I had a good excuse to stop and I did to meet with Whistler\u2019s Mayor, Ken Melamed. He very kindly took the time to explain to me what it\u2019s like being Mayor of Canada\u2019s largest resort municipality. It\u2019s a unique town and Ken is a different kind of Mayor. He has been a ski patroller for 28 years and still volunteers one day a week.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the mountain, there\u2019s no ideology, there\u2019s just people brought together through a common love of skiing and nature,\u2019 said Ken. It makes taking off his Mayor\u2019s cap easier and helps him keep in touch with how the municipality\u2019s greatest employment centre (3,500) is doing.<\/p>\n

We often hear about the European Nordic cities as great examples of sustainable urban policies but Whistler is a fine Canadian example. The Mayor explained that the town centre has been built on a pedestrian model. Most of the hotels and apartment buildings are within 200 meters of the town square and the ski lifts. This has paid off \u2013 50 per cent of Whistler\u2019s winter visitors arriving in Vancouver by air come without cars.<\/p>\n

The town has put a moratorium on more hotels; only residential growth is permitted. It has also signed on to a strong town and regional urban growth line to limit sprawl. The reason is economic as much as environmental, for the more land that is developed the less that remains for people to enjoy hiking, cycling and skiing. So the council has made protecting that resource a priority.<\/p>\n

Whistler also has its own Housing Authority which requires that a certain percentage of new housing include units are built on a cost-of-living basis. This requires no subsidy from the municipality, and purchase is restricted to service workers. Qualified people can buy the cost of living units from the developer at cost. The sale value is not permitted to rise more than cost of living each year. The municipality is part of the title and there is a 100 per cent compliance.<\/p>\n

As a result 75% of the town\u2019s service workers can afford to live in this high-end municipality. This also cuts down on sprawl. Whistler\u2019s competitors, places like Vail and Aspen, have close to zero capacity to house service sector workers. They almost all commute \u2013 not so in Whistler.<\/p>\n

If all cities did this, they could increase their quality of life and reduce sprawl whether it was in Ottawa, Halifax or Toronto. All it takes is a willingness to try something different, but that takes political courage as well as imagination. Ken\u2019s council recently introduced paid parking in the town. This was quite a shock to residents who are used to parking for free, but the municipality needs the revenue to cover the operating costs and to help fund transit. It receives no sales taxes or income tax on all the economic activity, no share of the lift tickets and like every other municipality it has to pay its bills.<\/p>\n

The argument for sustainability is most often made in \u2018damage to the environment\u2019 terms. The polar ice cap is melting and climate change pressure on species such as the polar bear. I\u2019ve been long convinced that the only way the sustainability argument can win sufficient votes from the electorate is to make it in economic terms such as as the Mayor of Whistler does.<\/p>\n

The municipality of Squamish is about an hour down the road from Whistler, and is built along conventional modern lines. Six lane arterial main street, strip mall parking lots at road side, and big box franchise outlets next to the parking lots. Whistler is a long way from being sustainable and there\u2019s still much to do to make it so, but the difference between Squamish and Whistler is stark. One municipality seems oblivious to the problem, the other is working hard at solutions.<\/p>\n

photo by Emmanuel Mendes dos Santos\/coastphoto.com<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It seems like you\u2019ve landed in paradise when you arrive in Whistler. The road winds along a coastline of staggering beauty with mountain peaks draped like snow capped cathedrals in every direction. I kept wanting to rub my eyes like a child, expecting to wake up in the familiar, calmer landscape of the Ottawa valley.Continue reading “CLIVE DOUCET: Sprawl-free with no commute – the Whistler advantage”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7083,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"_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":[5302],"tags":[3104,687,817,485,547,351,3105,3102,3106,1109,394,903,3098,3103,3100,421,501,3099,3101],"class_list":["post-5377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-features","tag-blackcomb-glacier","tag-canada","tag-clive-doucet","tag-clive-doucet-on-cities","tag-cycling-2","tag-halifax","tag-housing-authority","tag-ken-melamed","tag-kens-council","tag-mayor","tag-ottawa","tag-ottawa-valley","tag-santos","tag-skiing","tag-squamish","tag-toronto","tag-vancouver","tag-whistler","tag-whistler-mayor"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nCLIVE DOUCET: Sprawl-free with no commute - the Whistler advantage - Spacing Ottawa<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/ottawa\/2011\/03\/15\/spawl-free-with-no-commute-the-whistler-advantage\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"CLIVE DOUCET: Sprawl-free with no commute - the Whistler advantage - Spacing Ottawa\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"It seems like you\u2019ve landed in paradise when you arrive in Whistler. 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