Urban growth is a major trend. As everywhere else, Quebec society continues its development through a process of urbanization and more specifically metropolization. The metropolitan communities of Montreal and Quebec account for 61% of the province’s population, and 67% of the value of goods and services produced (GDP) is concentrated there.
The Quebec Statistics Institute predicts that the administrative region of Montreal and adjacent MRCs could accommodate 82% of Quebec’s population growth expected between 2016 and 2041, or 926,000 of the 1.1 million people. These predictions are likely to come true if nothing decisive is accomplished in terms of land use planning.
Since the 1950s, agricultural land has served as raw material for the expansionist ambitions of cities. With the spread of the automobile and the popularity of the individual house with garden, cities spread out.
Despite awareness of the environmental, economic and social problems generated by this mode of development; despite the adoption in 1978 of the Law on the Protection of Territory and Agricultural Activities (which has since been partly perverted by the pressures of speculators, promoters and urban builders as well as by municipalities seeking property taxes), cities , notably Montreal and Quebec, continued to spread out over the best agricultural lands of the St. Lawrence Valley. “Since 1998, approximately 57,000 hectares of arable land have been artificialized, which corresponds to the area of 12 football fields per day for 25 years,” calculate the Union of Agricultural Producers and Équiterre.
Strengthen the protection of good agricultural land
To put a stop to urban sprawl and the waste of agricultural land, we must regain control of agricultural zoning and toughen its application, mainly in the St. Lawrence valley and its subsidiary valleys, where the best soils are concentrated. On the Laurentian and Appalachian plateaus, there is an abundance of poor quality soils (categories 5, 6 and 7) often fallow or deserted by agricultural activity.
In many cases, these lands are in municipalities grappling with development issues that need new populations and economic diversification more than protection measures. Here, agricultural zoning will have to be more flexible. Isn’t this what the president of the Commission for the Protection of Agricultural Land, Bernard Ouimet, demanded in his 2002-2003 report submitted to the National Assembly: “Where the diversity of uses in the sectors devitalized agricultural areas is necessary to ensure the survival of several regions, we believe that the legislation itself must reflect this reality in the resources entrusted to the Commission. »
This involves replacing wall to wall with the principle of differentiation which takes into account territorial specificities. Quebec also has a mission to promote and support the development of regional communities.
Densify urban areas
A second way to curb urban sprawl and protect good agricultural land is the densification of cities, that is to say the fact that a larger population lives in the same urban space. Greater density is not limited to residential, commercial or business towers.
There is a densification with a human face to be defined, a basic rule of which is found in the mix of functions and the mix of different types of housing while respecting an optimal ratio of the number of homes per surface unit. The principle of mixed functions aims to ensure that the population of the different sectors of the city finds nearby what is essential to life: housing, shopping, working, entertainment, culture, playing sports, treat, etc. Housing diversity responds to the population’s need for housing according to socio-economic conditions, the size and composition of households.
Moving from the concentrated model to the multipolar model
The unlimited growth of the metropolitan area of Montreal generates problems that are increasingly difficult to manage and costly to resolve. Let’s think about the single question of mobility!
Quebec has 17 regions, 87 MRCs, 131 cities and 1000 villages. In the coming weeks, the Ministry of Municipal Affairs will unveil the new government orientations in land use planning. It would make a wise and courageous decision by proposing among these the consolidation of secondary and tertiary centers in the region, and the improvement of their attractiveness and their competitiveness to accommodate an increased share of Quebec’s demographic and economic growth, ensuring thus the transition from a concentrated Quebec to a distributed Quebec. Regional cities and central municipalities would thus become centers of balance.
In a global and integrated vision of territorial planning, bring together these three approaches (modernized agricultural zoning, densification of urban areas, geographical deconcentration) for a more balanced occupation and vitality of territories and a reduction in growth pressure on the metropolitan area of Montreal and… on good neighboring agricultural land.