Complimentary Blueberry Juice

I’ve always had a problem with the word development. As is the case with language, words can have many meanings. Yes, one can refer to a learning curve or gaining a skill set as development. Or, one could refer to an athlete’s progression as development, there’s even a phrase for it, draft and develop, in the professional sports team sentiment.

In the general sense, this word means improvement.

And so we come to the way this word is used most often – in my opinion, I have no proof for that assertion – in terms of land use planning. To develop the land. Means, effectively, to improve the land. But this term is misleading and problematic. For there is only one definition of developing or improving the land: increasing tax generation.

All other definitions of development are ignored.

Do you care about the land? What’s on the land? Is there a forest? A wetland? Is it valuable from a nature point of view? Are there some unique features of nature on the land? Does the community value the land as it is?

None of that matters when it comes to land. It’s either nothing, or it’s developed. We even have a spinoff phrase for suburban expansion that we use: development. I called a real estate guy selling some land about a year ago, and he said it’s nothing, there’s nothing there. I said there’s lots there, it’s agricultural land. He said yeah its nothing, you can do whatever you want, you can develop it. Printed boldly on the real estate sign was:

INVESTMENT OPPORTUNITY.

All land is seen, through the eyes of the government, western society, and capitalism, as either worthless, or for generating money.

This gets us into all sorts of policy problems, because the prime motivator for any land is to develop it or to increase tax revenue. But there are myriad other factors that we ignore to our own detriment. After all, we live on planet earth and are subject to the laws of the universe, which don’t really care much about tax revenue. And so we drain the wetlands for farmland: development. And so we replace the farmland with houses: development. And so we pollute our local Lake Winnipeg and have to import all our food: oh well. Costs are borne by the very society that is supposedly developed.

Developments of the surburban sprawl type are an ever-expanding plague on our cities, swallowing up farmland for profits and like the most effective of vulture capital enterprises: offloading the costs and expenses onto everyone but the company doing the development. This is a prime reason Canada is in a major cost of living crisis: we are sacrificing everything at this altar of suburban expansion and growth. Our cars, our food, our life, is resembling WALL-E more by the day, blue store, or red store? No longer is it good enough for a company to make $1.00, you must make $100, and in a few years, $1000. Meanwhile, we are not in control of the cost of energy (despite being a petrol state), or the cost of trade, and we have offshored everything we require, which costs our society to import. We’ve eviscerated our community diversity for this.

As always, we can choose to manage our land differently, we can choose to prioritize nature, forests and wetlands. We can choose to prioritize local agriculture and reduce reliance on foreign imports, providing meaningful careers and employment. We can prioritize what the community wants, (and turns out they have good ideas on how to manage their communities!). We can prioritize green space and naturalized areas for protection. We can develop the land ecologically, so it is in better shape tomorrow, than it is today, not for tax revenue, but for other value sets that are not counted towards GDP. It is imperative for the health of our communities and the health of our societies that these things are available, and it is imperative that agriculture and biodiversity are not bulldozed and destroyed for more development.

I really like and appreciate Aldo Leopold’s Land Ethic, detailed in his classic A Sand County Almanac. (I wrote a recommendation of the book here). Here is a selected excerpt:

“Perhaps the most serious obstacle impeding the evolution of a land ethic is the fact that our educational and economic system is headed away from, rather than toward, an intense consciousness of land. Your true modern is separated from the land by many middlemen….If crops could be raised by hydroponics instead of farming, it would suit him very well. Synthetic substitutes for wood, leather, wool, and other natural land products suit him better than the originals. In short, land is something he has ‘outgrown.’

The fallacy the economic determinists have tied around our collective neck, and which we now need to cast off, is the belief that economics determines all land use.

The so-called “planning” of “planning departments” is a byzantine joke, where anything can be changed, and plans altered, to suit a higher value of economics to determine the “appropriate” land use.

We must regain control of our communities and our land use planning by these absurd systems. Some things should simply be out of reach. After all, what is the point of protecting an area, say, a wildlife refuge, if we can instead suddenly decide that it is better suited for oil exploration? What is the point of zoning an agricultural area, if we can instead suddenly decide to scrape off its fertile topsoil and build an American-style car-dependent suburb?

There are legions of people who are educated and willing to care for the land, steward it responsibly and improve it for future generations. In my opinion, this should be a highly valued job, and one that governments provide, fund and champion.

From Leopold:

Wilderness is a resource which can shrink, but not grow.

Sorry if this one was a bit of a downer. Time to put on one of my favourite films, Brazil.

Graham

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