Look before you leap. That is a piece of advice that my parents told myself, and parents around the globe have no doubt imparted upon their young charges, since time began.Did Windsor's city councillors receive that same advice while they were impressionable young people as well? With all the signs pointing to a drastic societal change roaring towards us, now would probably be the best time to start preparing the citizens who voted them into office for the new world ahead of them.
"...persistently high gas prices may mean that the next building boom will take place not at the edges of metropolitan areas but far closer to their cores. People are more willing to drive 20 miles each way to work every day, burning a couple of gallons of gas in the process, when gas costs less than milk. But as gas prices climb, long car commutes become a rising tax on exurban homeownership, and the price people are willing to pay for homes in remote areas will fall.So why is it our councillors are still adopting sprawl-inducing amendments to our official plan and regional transportation policies at the expense of strengthening Windsor's core? Have they not heard the news? Are they hoping that these high gas prices will just go away sometime in the near future?. Well, folks, according to The Washington Post, these are realities that the most successful municipalities must prepare for if they are to survive into the next decade.
"...sprawl was built on the twin pillars of low gas prices and a relentless demand for housing that, combined with the effects of restrictive zoning in existing suburbs, pushed new development outward toward cheap rural land. Middle-class Americans, not able to find housing they could afford in existing suburbs, kept driving farther out into the countryside until they did. Gridlock in the suburbs and the expense of providing municipal services to sparsely populated communities imposed their own limits on how far we could spread. As a result, the density of metropolitan areas, which fell steadily in the postwar years, had begun to creep back up in the 1990s.
It's bad enough that Windsorites are feeling the blow this early, as our local economy has been forever bound to the sales of big V-8 and V-10 engines powering huge trucks and vans. We are the canary in the coal mine as we are the first to feel the collective trend away from these vehicles. Let's not impose more misery on the folks who call Windsor/Essex their home and keep hoping and dreaming that this is a nightmare we are soon to wake up from.
It is your duty as leaders to ensure that the big changes looming on the horizon do not take us by surprise. Please take your heads out of the sand and begin to take these developing global trends seriously.
ED: I forgot to link to the Windsor Star article that made me want to post this piece in the first place: Oil And Gold Surge. With oil topping $100 a barrel for the first time ever, people MUST be starting to take notice of this barrage of events.
