Losing the path to "sustainability"

With land use in Victoria, we're losing our way. We've lost the path. Look at the bottom picture: there used to be a short path leading from the end of the cul-do-sac of Queen Anne Heights (off Fairfield Road) through to Romney Road. It was an area of large woodland gardens around heritage houses. You can see what the path leads to now: another box of a new house dominating the landscape, blocking the way.

All paths lead to dense building in Victoria -- to the paving of land and the destruction of treescape. The loss of the Chadwick Oak (see previous post) was a matter of deep grief to tree-lovers; there is another in James Bay identically threatened by developers, and the next one will be the monarch watching over tiny St Alban's Church in the Oaklands neighbourhood (see 2nd from top). That property was sold by the Anglican Diocese, and furious negotiations are now going on between the Oaklands Community Association and the new developer-purchaser in a probably futile attempt to keep the land undeveloped.

The top photo shows the boulevard, recently planted with native plants, which the City of Victoria is pleased to call a "park" (complete with signage) -- an area stretching along Ryan Street in front of the small church and its hall. If they claim this as park space, why didn't the City act to acquire the lot behind it as more park? It was an obvious little chunk of landscape to acquire. It must have cost as much just to fiddle with Pioneer Square, the 900 block of Pandora, and Beacon Hill Park's traffic pattern, none of which actually increases parkland.

The City Council seems to see its role as facilitating developers' profit-making, not the provision of green space in residential neighbourhoods so that kids can grow up without nature deficit disorder, and well-loved trees can be preserved to continue their job of beautifying the city and counteracting pollution and climate change.

B. Julian