Strong Towns: Can urban sprawl kickstart Windsor's economy?

This week a leading North American urban planning blog profiled the Windsor mega-hospital debate. Strong Towns suggested a plausible, yet very financially risky reason to build our new hospital so far away from Windsor's most densely populated areas.

"Why would the city go along with such a plan? One possible motivation is to lay the ground for suburban development. Specifically, a proposed 400 hectare (roughly 1.5 square mile) residential and commercial subdivision, which would lie south of Windsor Airport, near the proposed hospital, is contingent on the rezoning of the land and would seemingly need the mega-hospital project in order to kick-start the development. It would include room for 3,280 homes—roughly half of the total number of new homes Windsor anticipates needing in the next two decades, just in this one currently-agricultural area." Read the full article: Activists fight to keep Windsor's new hospital in the heart of the city. About the blog: Strong Towns is dedicated to making communities across the United States and Canada financially strong and resilient. It began as a modest blog, gradually growing to an international movement with almost 3,000 members. One of its key goals: "Stop obsessing about future growth and start obsessing about our current finances." After you've read Daniel Herriges' article, please leave a comment and share it widely!

For more reading 1.  Proudly building for the past:   "By the time that hospital is built 15 years from now, when I’ll only be 101,” said [former Windsor City Councillor Hilary] Payne with a chuckle, “it will be surrounded by subdivisions.” Windsor Star columnist Gordon Henderson comparing the development - a century ago - of Ottawa's Civic Hospital to the situation in Windsor in 2019. Note 1: Henderson fails to mention that Ottawa's General Hospital, which still exists today, was built downtown (in the Byward Market area) in 1845. The Civic Hospital was an additional facility, not a consolidation of two hospitals, unlike the proposal for Windsor-Essex. Note 2: Henderson describes the acquisition of the land in question from the Town of Tecumseh, but fails to mention that future population projections in 2003 were significantly more optimistic than they are today. He does not recognize that responsible leaders adapt to new demographic, financial and environmental circumstances, rather than stubbornly putting the viability of the project at risk by relying on outdated data from nearly two decades earlier. ~ 2.  Using community design to create healthier lifestyles: “If we approach community design from a health outcomes and well-being perspective, we can potentially reverse epidemics like obesity and chronic diseases, and address issues like social isolation and poor mental health.” What might happen if we designed our communities differently to make it easier to form healthier habits? ~ 3.  Both simple and brilliant:  "People should be free to live in a prairie-style house on a quarter-acre lot in the middle of Minneapolis, so long as they can afford the land and taxes. But zoning subsidizes that extravagance by prohibiting better, more concentrated use of the land. It allows people to own homes they could not afford if the same land could be used for an apartment building. It is a huge entitlement program for the benefit of the most entitled residents." A strategy to address the housing shortage.