Relationship between Provinces and Municipalities
In this week’s Urban Policy class, we discussed the relationship between Provinces and Municipalities, specifically focusing on the question of “what is the provincial interest in cities?”.
It was really interesting to hear everyone’s thoughts and opinions on the value of provinces building strong relationships with cities. Majority of students provided a political and fiscal outlook, expressing that there is a great need for cities to cooperate with provincially set policy goals in order to be sustainable and feasible in the long run. The discussion lead to analysis of the provincial interest to make sure local governments were delivering services efficiently while being fiscally sustainable to provide high quality and equitable services. Cities like Toronto are significant service providers that have a strong ability to help provinces like Ontario to compete in the global economy. Especially with cities that grow fast, it’s important to ensure there’s well developed regional planning to manage growth and innovation.
The supply and demand of housing is a growing policy issue that needs to be addressed through strong provincial and municipal partnerships. Majority of Ontario’s population lives in the Greater Golden Horseshoe, as more and more jobs are created in the GTA, population growth is seen to follow along. As we always see in the headlines “Toronto still struggling to deal with the housing crisis”, not only is it difficult to find cheaper housing options, there isn’t enough supply to house the whole population. In 20 years, we are seen to expect a growth of 13.5 million people in need of housing in the Greater Golden Horseshoe.
In class I had the opportunity to learn that in order to manage this population growth, we would need to develop 38,000 new housing units per year in the GTA, however our average is about 18,000 in 4 years.
Although there is optimism to deal with the housing crisis, the question of when is it actually going to be solved is yet to be answered, puzzling our future as potential home buyers.
Petek
