Draft OCP Ignores Most Important Question
Summerland's Draft OCP (like every other Okanagan OCP) sadly continues to ignore the most fundamental and difficult question, which is:- Growth cannot continue forever, that is a physical impossibility. so at what point must growth stop?
Do we just keep on growing until the Valley becomes an undesireable place to live and we run out of space and water? What kind of a third rate plan is that? If we want to preserve any of the qualities that brought us all here in the first place, we must address the question, "what is a realistic carrying capacity for the Okanagan Valley"? For example, pollution is mainly proportional to population density. How much pollution is tolerable in a valley with temperature inversions?
Okanagan OCPs only address the short term future - up to 20 years maximum. They plan for where to grow next. No Okanagan community has yet had the courage to come to grips with the basic problem of how much would be too much. We cannot ignore this question and just pass it along to our children and grandchildren to grapple with. By then it will be too late.
Our population is increasing at an ever accelerating rate, due to the inevitability of that darling of financial planners, compound growth. Instead of just letting our population accelerate along a rising curve, which is stupid to the point of imbecility, population growth should slowly taper off to nothing over many years so we end up with a steady state, sustainable economy and population level and no economic shockwave.
No doubt yet another person will cry "you can't shut the gates to newcomers!" May I remind that person that over the past 10 years 1,400 Summerlanders have died and a far greater number have moved away. Thousands have moved in to replace them. A steady state population still allows for lots of folk to move here every year. Only half of the folks in town today lived here 10 to 12 years ago. "Shutting the gates" is a nonsense. If we really did shut the gates Summerland would almost be a ghost town within 30 years or so. No one advocates that.
Do we just keep on growing until the Valley becomes an undesireable place to live and we run out of space and water? What kind of a third rate plan is that? If we want to preserve any of the qualities that brought us all here in the first place, we must address the question, "what is a realistic carrying capacity for the Okanagan Valley"? For example, pollution is mainly proportional to population density. How much pollution is tolerable in a valley with temperature inversions?
Okanagan OCPs only address the short term future - up to 20 years maximum. They plan for where to grow next. No Okanagan community has yet had the courage to come to grips with the basic problem of how much would be too much. We cannot ignore this question and just pass it along to our children and grandchildren to grapple with. By then it will be too late.
Our population is increasing at an ever accelerating rate, due to the inevitability of that darling of financial planners, compound growth. Instead of just letting our population accelerate along a rising curve, which is stupid to the point of imbecility, population growth should slowly taper off to nothing over many years so we end up with a steady state, sustainable economy and population level and no economic shockwave.
No doubt yet another person will cry "you can't shut the gates to newcomers!" May I remind that person that over the past 10 years 1,400 Summerlanders have died and a far greater number have moved away. Thousands have moved in to replace them. A steady state population still allows for lots of folk to move here every year. Only half of the folks in town today lived here 10 to 12 years ago. "Shutting the gates" is a nonsense. If we really did shut the gates Summerland would almost be a ghost town within 30 years or so. No one advocates that.
posted by tony cooke |
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