July 14, 2004

Two promising things

Ontario's new "anti-sprawl" plan for the Golden Horseshoe has been getting some well-deserved media attention recently. For anyone who's interested, the Ministry of Public Infrastructure Renewal has a website about it. Even better, you can go straight to the discussion paper:


On a completely different topic, odds are good that you use Internet Explorer for all of your Internet needs. It turns out that there are a lot of good reasons to switch to FireFox, a new browser that traces its lineage back to Netscape. It's also pretty easy to make the switch. If you're interested, there's a new site, switch2firefox.com, that explains both the whys and the hows.

Posted by madhava at July 14, 2004 12:09 PM
Comments

This needs to filter down to the municipal level, too, of course, but it's nice to see some action at the provincial level. The real way to influence urban intesification is, of course, through tax breaks.

Let's pretend, for example, that I'm a Fortune 500 Blue Chip looking to build a new lab in the GTA. I can build it in Markham, where land taxes are cheap and there are provincial incentives in the form of tax breaks, or in downtown Toronto, where land AND taxes are more expensive, and no incentives exist. At that point, when I'm responsible to Wall Street, there's little reason for me to care about urban sprawl.

So this proposal answers half of that problem - sorta. Ending provincial handouts to companies that build up office parks in the 'burbs, making the OMB recognize the need to intensify the vibrance and activity in downtowns, and linking the existing office parks with decent transit. All good.

Now we need the municipalities to follow suit.

(and I already use Firefox. Thunderbird, too.)

Posted by: beltzner at July 16, 2004 11:38 AM

I have to say that I was disappointed that this link does not work. I got an error message.

Posted by: Bernie at July 19, 2004 09:19 PM

Bernie -- that first link should work now. Thanks for pointing that out.

Posted by: Madhava at July 20, 2004 08:49 AM

NO...Thank YOU! :-) I plan to check this out.

Posted by: Bernie at July 21, 2004 10:10 PM