Posted at 5:00 a.m.
(Quebec) The Urban Development Institute of Quebec (IDU), the lobby of real estate developers, wants to fight against sprawl and proposes the merger of the Ministries of Transport and Municipal Affairs to create a superministry of Territory.
“Things about the territory must contaminate Transport, and this territorial vision must contaminate all the other actions of the State. You have to have a global vision of the territory,” says former Liberal minister Jean-Marc Fournier, head of the IDU for two years now, in an interview with The Press.
In the debate on land use planning, Mr. Fournier asserts that the position of the real estate developers he represents is clear. He stands behind the mayors and mayoress in favor of the shift towards densification. “The real estate industry is on the same side as the environmentalists. We must avoid urban sprawl, we must rethink urban planning, we must develop local neighborhoods,” he says. Mr. Fournier is a supporter of the city “15 minutes”, where you have access to school, work and local shops within fifteen minutes of walking or cycling.
In his opinion, the creation of a Ministry of Lands would make it possible to include the cost of urban sprawl in government choices. He cites the case of the Gatineau hospital. The City wants it to be built in the city center, which is not certain.
“At Health, I understand, they have a budget. They would like to go where the land is the least expensive, exactly as citizens do, because we do not take into account the cost of setting up public transport, aqueducts, new public services,” he said. A land ministry could “take into consideration the economic effects” of sprawl.
The old world
Mr. Fournier is impatiently awaiting the land use planning policy to be tabled in the coming weeks by the Legault government. It is, he says, a “road map that tells us where to go”. “It’s impossible to consider the climatic context in front of us without rethinking our way of life,” he says.
He is not surprised by the declarations of the Minister of Transport, François Bonnardel, who considers that densification is a “fashion” and who proposes a project for a highway tunnel between Quebec and Lévis. “Life all in the car existed until the 2010s. There is an awareness now, 2050 is getting closer and closer. The young people have gone there, the older ones, less. We are in a transition between the old world and the new world,” says Mr. Fournier.
We are between two worlds, the car-driven world of before and the world we hope for by 2050. And if we do it with respect, and not with antagonism, we have a chance of getting there. return. If we do this “your gang against my gang”, we might lose another 10 years.
Jean-Marc Fournier, CEO of the IDU
Mr. Fournier, who describes himself as an “old man who is getting younger”, says he is “surprised” to see how little the political world talks about these issues.
“Not in my backyard”
Mr. Fournier sees several obstacles that must be overcome to build the city of tomorrow. First, municipal funding. Decontamination, development of cycle paths and shared streets, social housing: cities do not have the means to match their ambitions and are prisoners of the property tax. “I am guilty myself, I was in Municipal Affairs in the 2000s and we did not do it. I say it while whipping myself, ”he underlines. The federal and provincial governments must therefore increase their funding.
Another problem: currently, the system encourages the development of crowns. The government builds highways, paid for by all citizens, and land is cheap. On the other hand, in the centers, it is often necessary to decontaminate land, and governments charge royalties to promoters who densify around public transport projects, he laments. “We charge fees that penalize good climate behavior, but the state builds the highways, and all Quebecers pay for that. »
And finally, Mr. Fournier believes that it will be necessary to fight against the “not in my backyard” syndrome, which often comes, he says, to block densification projects.
Even if the mayors have a discourse against sprawl and they say they favor density, the fact remains that, when in a neighborhood, there is a densification project and the “not in my backyard” is expressed, quite generally, the mayors will change their minds.
Jean-Marc Fournier
To break this dynamic, Mr. Fournier believes that citizens must be better informed. “To what extent are Quebecers aware of what our territory represents, what the climate crisis means, and the need to change our way of life? We have to start talking about it. That’s where we’re going in the next 30 years,” he says.
We must also change the referendum formula, which, according to Mr. Fournier, blocks densification projects. “There may be other modes, other technical details to add to prevent the particular interest of neighbors from overriding the common interest,” he believes.
A backward-looking government, according to the opposition
In the National Assembly, the Legault government has been described as backward-looking by the opposition parties. “Densification does not mean raising a family in a downtown condo,” launched Liberal parliamentary leader André Fortin, who denounced the “ideas straight out of the 1950s” of Minister François Bonnardel. According to the parliamentary leader of Québec solidaire, Gabriel Nadeau-Dubois, two visions clash. “There is the vision of the past: more urban sprawl, more air pollution and therefore more traffic. And there is the vision for the future: more density, more environmental protection and therefore more quality of life,” he said. “The mayor of Laval agrees that we must limit urban sprawl, the mayor of Saint-Lin too. So it’s not a battle between cities and regions. This is not a battle between cities and suburbs. It’s a battle that we all have to fight together in Quebec, ”he added.
To “serve the regions, it takes roads”, retorts the government
What is called urban sprawl can also be regional development, argues the Legault government, which emphasizes that to “serve the regions, it takes roads”. ” You should be careful. When we talk about urban sprawl, we have to ask the question: are we doing regional development? The important thing is to create good living environments, ”said the Minister of Municipal Affairs, Andrée Laforest, at the National Assembly on Tuesday. Premier François Legault said he agreed with the idea that big cities “must become denser”, but he added that “the regions have the right to develop” and that Québec solidaire “wants to do a moratorium on the development of the regions”. “We think that the regions should be developed. And to serve the regions, well yes, it takes roads, ”he added.