The Meaning and Value of Rural

Defining Rural

[this excellent letter by a North Saanich resident appeared before the election in 2022 in the Times Colonist]

In some communities when people are planning to move to a rural community, real estate agents will give them a scratch and sniff manure card.  Heads up!  Sometimes it stinks around here. The importance of rural is being hotly debated in the 2022 municipal election for North Saanich.  There are references to the pastoral vistas, the hedgerows, and not much traffic.  And it’s true, rural does mean those things.  But it also means less infrastructure, fewer staff at District Hall, and (consequently) lower taxes. We don’t need streetlights, sidewalks, or Starbucks.  Why?  Because our purpose, as defined by the Regional Growth Strategy, is to grow food and provide green space.  Think back to the height of the pandemic, and the experience of there being not much produce on the grocery shelves.  With the lack of water in California that will almost certainly be a repeat experience.  North Saanich is one of the last areas in the Capital Regional District whose purpose is food production.  Cast your eye south down the Peninsula and what do you see?  Gordon Head used to be farm country, as did Cordova Bay, and parts of Saanich.  But this has been eroded by the slow march of densification.  Neighbourhood nooks, sensitive infills and village centres are all part of the game to connect the urban dots.  In North Saanich our preservation of rural is linked to food security, carbon sequestration, and green space – for the region.   

S. Chandler

Four Urban Planners for a Rural Community?

 Posted to Next Door, 12 Aug 2022, by Spring Harrison in response to another post there:

Rural scenes in North Saanich - Hay fields beside Willingdon Road near the airport and cows grazing in fields beside Tatlow Road. — Nextdoor 

 

Good observation. Which leads to the question, why do we have four urban planners working for a municipality that is, by definition, not urban? Perhaps a rural/agricultural community, as defined by the Regional Growth Strategy, needs an Agrologist, not urban planners. 

The RGS is clear, the Urban Containment Boundary is a line, not a zone. There is no such thing as a hybrid urban/rural entity. They are mutually exclusive as the RGS recognizes. Housing solutions are to go on the urban side, leaving the rural side intact to fill its legitimate functions.  It is disingenuous at best to state that spot increases in housing density throughout the District would not alter the rural character. The RGS says otherwise which is good enough for me. 

If there are housing problems in the area, and there certainly are, perhaps the question should be, are the urban areas within the CRD doing their best job at providing affordable housing? This is their mandate, not ours. 

Is it up to the rural communities to provide solutions where those who have that responsibility have failed? 

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