Amalgamation

[panamaniac]

Kitchener could be. It's the economic, cultural and social power house of the region. Waterloo is just a giant student ghetto now and Cambridge is stagnant and seems to have no willpower left.

To be fair, Waterloo is a giant student ghetto AND the Region’s bourgeois haven.

[ijmorlan]

Kitchener could be. It's the economic, cultural and social power house of the region. Waterloo is just a giant student ghetto now and Cambridge is stagnant and seems to have no willpower left.

If Kitchener were separated out, what would Waterloo be part of? I’d be pretty surprised if they made Waterloo Region minus Kitchener into a new City of Everything Except Kitchener.

[nms]

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Peel Region de-amalgamation. After 25 years of forced amalgamations elsewhere in the Province, I don't think anyone can point to tangible cost savings (cost savings was one of the main arguments in favour of amalgamation). After 50 years of Regional government, I think that most Regions have done a good job of integrating services for big and generally unsexy infrastructure (eg waste management and sewage treatment). If the Peel Region process blows up, I can't imagine any politician wanting to try it again elsewhere.

[ac3r]

Kitchener could be. It's the economic, cultural and social power house of the region. Waterloo is just a giant student ghetto now and Cambridge is stagnant and seems to have no willpower left.

If Kitchener were separated out, what would Waterloo be part of? I’d be pretty surprised if they made Waterloo Region minus Kitchener into a new City of Everything Except Kitchener.

The Region of Cambriloo, perhaps?

[danbrotherston]

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Peel Region de-amalgamation.  After 25 years of forced amalgamations elsewhere in the Province, I don't think anyone can point to tangible cost savings (cost savings was one of the main arguments in favour of amalgamation).  After 50 years of Regional government, I think that most Regions have done a good job of integrating services for big and generally unsexy infrastructure (eg waste management and sewage treatment).  If the Peel Region process blows up, I can't imagine any politician wanting to try it again elsewhere.

Peel is being de-amalgamted? I'm not sure I understand what that would mean for them, but possible I am missing some context.

Amalgamation has almost never ended up achieving the stated goals of cost savings. It has always achieved its actual goals of diluting and reducing the power of cities in favour of more conservative suburbs.

But I do think the regional model makes sense. The problem is that different services make sense to provide at different scopes. The regional model gives more flexibility to achieve that a little bit.

Although less flexibility than the Netherlands seems to achieve, where services are actually strangely decoupled from government. For example, our transit, garbage collection, and libraries are all organizations (not for-profit corporations) independent of our local government (some are contracted by the local government, so ultimately funded by, but run separately from) but all operate over a different geographic scopes.

[tomh009]

[quote="nms" pid="109158" dateline="1684893507"]
Peel is being de-amalgamted? I'm not sure I understand what that would mean for them, but possible I am missing some context.

Amalgamation has almost never ended up achieving the stated goals of cost savings. It has always achieved its actual goals of diluting and reducing the power of cities in favour of more conservative suburbs.

It's not really a deamalgamation as much as it is an end to the regional layer in Peel, giving Mississauga and Brampton greater independence, for better or for worse.

The amalgamation of Metro Toronto into a single-layer city has made a lot of sense in the long term, I think. The patchwork of individual cities was quite confusing to many people -- and without signs, it was impossible for most people to know which city they were in.

[danbrotherston]

Peel is being de-amalgamted? I'm not sure I understand what that would mean for them, but possible I am missing some context.

Amalgamation has almost never ended up achieving the stated goals of cost savings. It has always achieved its actual goals of diluting and reducing the power of cities in favour of more conservative suburbs.

It's not really a deamalgamation as much as it is an end to the regional layer in Peel, giving Mississauga and Brampton greater independence, for better or for worse.

The amalgamation of Metro Toronto into a single-layer city has made a lot of sense in the long term, I think. The patchwork of individual cities was quite confusing to many people -- and without signs, it was impossible for most people to know which city they were in.

I mean people make the same complaint about KW quite often. But I don’t think that’s an argument for amalgamation. And in Torontos case even if it made sense (which I cannot say, I was barely aware of Toronto at the time) it was both politically motivated and also an unmitigated failure that has lead to the current era of austerity and bad governance.

[tomh009]

I don't think the amalgamation has really caused either the austerity or the bad governance. The amalgamation was 25 years ago (Mike Harris!) and the new municipal government was arguably working fairly well in recent years, until the provincial government meddled again. And the austerity ... that is again thanks to provincial policies, not the amalgamation 25 years ago.

[danbrotherston]

I don't think the amalgamation has really caused either the austerity or the bad governance. The amalgamation was 25 years ago (Mike Harris!) and the new municipal government was arguably working fairly well in recent years, until the provincial government meddled again. And the austerity ... that is again thanks to provincial policies, not the amalgamation 25 years ago.

For at least the past decade Toronto has seen aggressively austere budgets that have harmed the city. And if you look at the electoral maps and voting records, this has been driven by the suburban voters which wouldn't have been part of the city government before amalgamation.

https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/01...-says.html

I haven't seen any data about the first 15 years of amalgamation, but I think the results in the past 10 years has been pretty clear.

[tomh009]

I have no data on Toronto vs other cities but resistance to property tax increases is not unique to either Toronto or to suburban voters, and many (most?) politicians are very averse to increasing property taxes. And the provincial government is unwilling to provide additional funding from provincial income taxes.

So, in this case, I would argue that correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

[danbrotherston]

I have no data on Toronto vs other cities but resistance to property tax increases is not unique to either Toronto or to suburban voters, and many (most?) politicians are very averse to increasing property taxes. And the provincial government is unwilling to provide additional funding from provincial income taxes.

So, in this case, I would argue that correlation does not necessarily mean causation.

Correlation doesn't imply causation, but fortunately, we do in fact have a record of the causation: the voting records. It is the suburban councillors who have been driving the austerity policies.

That being said, I do agree that all Ontario cities have had austerity problems and it is only those which have been able to grow unrestricted which haven't suffered as much for it.

[Bytor]

I don't think we need amalgamation (though I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to it), but I do think we need to be reorganised.

For example, Breslau, Elmira, Wellesley, Baden, New Hamburg, and Ayr need to be made "urban". Make those towns "urban", perhaps even fully separate their from the surrounding townships in the way that Guelph is separate from Wellington County.

Right now those towns are planned by rural township governments, but they are not rural towns, and those townships can effectively fudge on their "hard countryside line" boundaries with zoning just outside those towns and keep in-town land for low-density, single-detached residential.

They are prime source of sprawl and that needs to be contained. In New Hamburg, for example, apartments are limited to a tiny, tiny fraction of the residential-zoned area and can only be three stories tall. Further, they limit unit density to 35 units per hectare. That would limit a building like 310 Queen St. S. (at Queen & Courtland) would be limited to 14 units and half it's current length.

These towns are swiftly growing and they would benefit greatly from being required to have urban-style planning to make them think about how that growth will happen. They are at the stage now, but not for long, where they could actually implement smart growth for 15 minute communities and missing middle housing a lot faster than the Cities can.

Extend GRT's mandate to them to support that smart growth, requiring stops no more than a 5 minute walk from 85% of the houses & businesses, but also express bus service (15 minute headways) all day long into the Cities' business cores.

If there's any other services that the Region only provides in the Cities, bring them to the towns as well.

Implied is a concomitant reorg of the Council structure.

[neonjoe]

Wellington County does have the municipalities of Centre Wellington etc. Some of the bigger communities in these include Fergus and Elora. Fergus is actually quite large now and also has the same sprawl problems as our rural communities.

[westwardloo]

Wellington County does have the municipalities of Centre Wellington etc. Some of the bigger communities in these include Fergus and Elora. Fergus is actually quite large now and also has the same sprawl problems as our rural communities.

I believe their point is that those towns (Elmira, New Hamburg, Breslau) are seen as small rural communities so they tend to grow as such, with sprawling single family home subdivision. If there were a more focus on urbanizing and densifying our surrounding towns we could save even more farmland. The Regions official plan made density minimums for the cities, but no minimums we applied to the towns.

[neonjoe]

They did apply a countryside line around those rural centres at least. The townships will soon realize that they will not be able to grow their suburban pyramid scheme of sprawling suburbs if they abut the countryside line.