Mega-density development versus prime farmland
This blog about saving the Garden City Lands, Richmond, BC, explores the issue in depth. The Garden City Lands Coalition site introduces the issue.
In 2009, the Agricultural Land Commission rejected the application to remove the Garden City Lands from the ALR. That brought the struggle to save the Lands into a period that is quiet but crucial.
This is the third in a series of posts related to the apparent infraction of ALR rules by Lulu Island Winery. That has significant consequences for the strength of BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR), and saving the ALR is one of the motivations of many supporters of saving the Garden City Lands. The earlier posts, [...]
In late July 2009, I described in Community to Canada Lands I how the Garden City Lands community was making every effort to help Canada Lands Company CLC know how to provide community benefit for Richmond.
One way the community spoke was in a torrent of letters, all expressing the writers’ opinions, not form-letter repetition. The [...]
A previous post discusses Garden City Lands MOU contingencies: Community input, the 16-page booklet that the Garden City Lands Coalition Society directors prepared for Richmond’s council and staff. It is a crucial document that could easily make the difference between success and failure, andthe directors wanted its production quality to be equally good. Ideally, it [...]
Ryan Lake’s “Corporate power runs political process” (Richmond News, Sept. 2) is one of the more discerning letters to the editor we’ll ever read, and it can easily be applied to the Garden City Lands issue.
It ends, “My only remaining hope is that I am wrong.” As a wise citizen who speaks out with words of [...]
Mowing is happening on the Garden City Lands again, and the Coalition has been receiving messages from citizens who think it should stop. However, the matter is not as simple as it may seem.
Unquestionably, there are some good arguments against mowing. The following are based on advice from Michael Wolfe:
Wildlife lose habitat. For instance, endangered [...]
Eating locally is very important to a lot of supporters of conserving the Garden City Lands, which they see as the future location of a significant amount of urban agriculture and as the generator of a lot more. Try visiting the Hellman’s Eat real, eat local website. You’ll probably be glad you did.
Also, the Gardens link [...]
Richmond school trustee Carol Day recently letter to the Richmond News published, and we’ve heard a lot of favourable comments about it. Carol wrote:
The Garden City lands are still in jeopardy as talks continue between Canada Lands Company, the Musqueam and the City of Richmond. These three parties will ultimately decide the future of these [...]
Update added late on May 22: When last seen, the Scotch invaders were retreating.
Ecology has a lot to do with balance. On International Biodiversity Day, May 22, 2009, Michael Wolfe will draw on his skills as a conservation biologist, educator, and Garden City Lands expert to guide humans who care about the ecological balance of [...]
This post is essentially my five-minute presentation at the surprise council meeting of May 11, 2009, as promised in the “Results of surprise . . .” post.
Mayor and Councillors,
I suggest that the lands in the proposed agricultural zone in the Regional Growth Strategy should include all lands that are either zoned agricultural by Richmond or part [...]
As an earlier post describes, some Richmond candidates in British Columbia’s May 12, 2009, election have already acted to help save the Garden City Lands. There are now various ways our MLAs can help ensure a green future for the lands for community benefit. That is true even though the province is not a party* [...]
The Garden City Lands Coalition as a group is not involved in the referendum on BC-STV (single-transferable vote), the new voting system recommended almost unanimously by the Citizens Assembly, 160 citizens from every part of British Columbia. However, I noticed at a public meeting on the issue at the Richmond Culture Centre that all the people there [...]
Please visit our very special new page, “Earth awareness,” by guest blogger Howard Jampolsky. Well known in Richmond, Howard is a businessman, officer of the Canadian Jewish Congress (Pacific Region), and politically active citizen. In this well-informed column, Howard relates the Garden City Lands issue to Earth awareness and his own identity and encourages the [...]
This post is a follow-up to the excellent “Optimal community value—CLC” post by guest blogger Carol Southgate. Besides publishing that message on this blog and in both Richmond newspapers, Carol sent it to Mark Laroche, the president of Canada Lands Company, with a cover letter dated March 29, 2009. At the same time, Carol forwarded [...]
Jessica Lai’s “Guest shot” column, published online and in the April 9 Richmond Review newspaper, provides insight into the difficulty of understanding the Garden City Lands issue.
Her simple advice combines idealism with common sense. If I’ve grasped the gist, it comes down to this:
If Canada Lands Company, the party that has had the greatest control [...]
People often mention that the Garden City Lands issue is complicated. It is time to try again to simplify it. How is the following attempt at a current summary? All constructive advice is welcome, either in a comment below this blog post or via email to the Coalition. (Apparently we have a shy readership, since [...]
A year ago, several Save-Garden-City presenters at the public hearing into the now-rejected ALR-exclusion application used a conceptual map as a visual aid. The map, with some discussion, remains available on the “Future” page of the Garden City Lands website. In this post, I’ll begin with the relevant excerpt and then, from this year-later perspective, [...]
This post is written by a guest blogger, Richmond’s Olga Tkatcheva, a quality assurance professional who is a City Centre activist.
I read with interest Carol Southgate’s article where she is talking about the mandate of the Canada Lands Company to dispose federal properties like the Garden City Lands to “produce the optimal benefit for the [...]
Above, Councillor Harold Steves pauses to listen to some Richmond citizens near the main entrance to the Garden City Lands. He had just finished walking the lands, making notes at intervals to further develop his extensive first-hand knowledge.
In contrast to that approach, the failed applications to exclude the Garden City Lands from BC’s Agricultural Land Reserve [...]
This post is written by guest blogger Carol Southgate of Richmond. A blueberry grower, Carol is a member of the Richmond Agricultural Advisory Committee.
Now that the Agricultural Land Commission has shown foresight in its decision to retain the Garden City Lands in the ALR, it is time for Canada Lands Company to revisit its mandate, [...]
This topic was addressed in an earlier post, but this post is a current replacement.
The “Spotlighting Renegotiation Provisions” post and other blog posts and letters to Richmond newspapers have referred to sections of the basic Garden City Lands agreement, the memorandum of understanding (MOU). This post provides (a) key MOU excerpts related to renegotiation, mediation, and [...]
I’m asked why I put so much into this one issue, the Garden City Lands.
Well, it seems to me that a large green space on the edge of a city centre is better than urban sprawl there and that nothing is safe in an agricultural land reserve if its guardian gives up fertile land just [...]
