Dear Editor,
I will avoid the inevitable downsizing to either a condo or apartment complex as long as my wife and I can maintain our detached home and yard.
The writing is on the wall though as we already need to hire-out maintenance work that is beyond us now.
But what is the alternative, if we oppose high density developments?
Yes, such developments come with their own problems including increased traffic.
Urban sprawl is a problem that all municipalities must deal with. It is better to build up, isn’t it, then to see productive farmland built over and lost, along with habitat for birds and animals.
As humans, we also need green spaces.
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Too much has been lost because of developers taking the easy and cheapest way out – aided and abetted by municipal planning departments – by paving over paradise as the song from the 1960s said.
It was true then, and it is still true today.
For most people in this part-time, minimum-wage-with-no-benefits economy, owning a detached home anywhere in the Fraser Valley is a pipe-dream.
But people need housing and higher density developments can provide that.
Such developments need to be people friendly, not simply boxes to warehouse people in – as that comes with its own set of social problems and isolation.
I might hate the idea of eventually downsizing, but I hate the sight of urban sprawl even more.
This pandemic should be a wake up call to become as self-sufficient in food production as possible. So, for that reason alone, higher density is the only viable future as the population grows. Otherwise the future will be the fulfillment of the Fraser Institute long held dream of seeing the entire Fraser Valley covered in housing from the Coast to Hope.
I couldn’t imagine anything more horrific.
Robert T. Rock, Mission City
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