There’s a push to remake Saskatoon around a certain vision of “progress” such as high density housing, mass transit, bike infrastructure, the 15-minute neighbourhood, etc.. All these things are ideas and they all have some degree of merit, but let’s be honest about what’s actually being weighed against what.
The one thing I consider is that this isn’t tradition standing in the way of progress, but one planning philosophy replacing another. The car-dependent, spread-out Saskatoon we have today wasn’t an accident, but it was itself the product of a deliberate postwar planning ideology that wide arterials, single-use zoning, cheap land, garages for our cars concepts that celebrated having land and home ownership. What we call “how things have always been” is a historical measurement of progress from the late 40’s until roughly 30 or so years ago.
So to me the real question isn’t old vs. new, it’s do we spend scarce capital retrofitting a low-density city built for cars into something it currently doesn’t have the population, funding model, or ridership to support? Or do we improve what exists, incrementally, where the numbers actually justify it?
To some extend, it feels like an agenda is being pushed. That’s a perspective I often hear today from many in Ward 3, and the city as a whole. But to be fair, some of this long-range planning is legitimate. Infrastructure decisions made today involving road widths, utility corridors, land reserved for future development, etc. need a 20-year horizon because planning later is usually far more expensive and stressful.
The distinction I’d draw is this: planning ahead is defensible when it’s tied to population growth we can actually forecast, and a funding model that is evident and responsible. It becomes a problem when the horizon is used to justify spending now for a version of the city that may or may not arrive.
Of course, this isn’t to say I agree with everything we have done, or necessarily what we will do in the future. What I will say for certain is a fair, progressive city doesn’t assume the newest planning trend is automatically the right one for this city, at this density, and with this tax base. It tests ideas against fiscal reality and the way people actually live now, not against how a different city, in a different climate, with a different history happens to look.
Progress isn’t a direction, it’s a result, so let’s measure it that way.