{"content":[{"text":"! \n ! \n Expensive,*Inconvenient*Suburbs*Need*to* \n Change* \n Today, close to 70 per cent of all Canadians live in suburbs. Most bought homes early in their adult life. \n Most raised families. And many are now living alone or with an aging spouse in houses designed for four \n to six people. The kids have grown and left, so nearby schools are unsupportable, too. Even the strip \n malls are failing as old neighbourhoods hollow out -- as young buyers head to ever-more distant points \n in search of the latest \"cheap\" development.","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.254522,"width":0.760407,"height":0.20541299999999996}},{"text":"Gordon Harris, Contributor \n Urban Planner, Development Strategist \n March 24, 2014","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.476859,"width":0.286773,"height":0.05095500000000003}},{"text":"It's not exactly breaking news: suburban sprawl costs a fortune. The most common pattern of \"urban\" \n development is an expensive and wasteful environmental blight that is inadvertently promoted by a \n host of clumsy government subsidies. We are actually taxing ourselves so we can live more \n uncomfortably.","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.544738,"width":0.7434520000000001,"height":0.06792500000000001}},{"text":"The proof of this perversity has been available for decades, a fact brought to my attention by a friend \n who had heard that I was on this week's Canadian Urban Institute panel entitled: Innovative Approaches \n to Managing Suburban Sprawl in Canada. The event leverages an excellent new report by Sustainable \n Prosperity's David Thompson, exposing the hidden costs of sprawl and suggesting a host of solutions. \n Having seen some of Thompson's work, my friend reached into his (remarkable!) library and produced a \n surprisingly similar report -- The Cost of Sprawl -- which had been prepared for the U.S. Environmental \n Protection Agency ... in 1974.","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.629586,"width":0.7618980000000001,"height":0.11853100000000005}},{"text":"The details were all there: with the advent of the personal automobile, North Americans had started \n spreading our cities aggressively over the land. Developers started buying properties on the urban fringe \n and breaking them into loosely packed, lightly serviced lots that could be sold cheaply. As each \n neighbourhood filled, developers and homeseekers ventured further afield.","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.765041,"width":0.761726,"height":0.06792500000000001}},{"text":"Governments followed along. Municipalities took responsibility for the services: the roads, sewer, water \n and power lines, the garbage collection and maintenance -- even though there would never be enough \n taxpayers per square kilometre to make those services affordable. Senior governments built free-to-use","bbox":{"left":0.118601,"top":0.849889,"width":0.7596820000000001,"height":0.05095499999999997}}],"images_bbox":[],"images_bbox_not_text_overlap":[]}