Urban sprawl is not considered progress

Dear Editor,

I am writing this letter in response to an interview that Reeve Rolly Ashdown did on the CBC radio on about July 1 concerning the 10,000 (resident) subdivision that the County and their developer friends want to superimpose on the locals.

The interview starts off with local farmer whose family lived on the land for 106 years, his concerns were that his right to farm were being compromised by (increased) traffic, not being able to move his machinery, people walking their dogs across his crops. Ashton’s response to these legitimate concerns was that this was progress and to “suck it up.”

Well I am pretty sure that this kind of Carcentric urban sprawl was (considered) progress in the 1950s it is something that major urban centres including Calgary are trying to move away from for a number of different reasons.

The biggest being the cost of servicing these remote locations, over half of the City Calgary’s deficit is a result of servicing new development, that includes sewer water, roads schools, fire halls. I am told that the property tax payback for this is 50 years so that means the taxpayers have to borrow in order to subsidize the developers’ bottom line.

There are all the other reasons for not wanting to decimate the lush green landscape with the vinyl-covered blight of urban cancer, including the degradation of topsoil. It should be noted that the downfall of many great civilizations can attributed to the depletion of topsoil. In Rocky View County it seems we can’t strip it off and pave over it fast enough

In closing. I would like to say to Ashton that this kind of urban sprawl is not progress.

Albert Potter, Rocky View County