Hamilton to become a Third World City

Vincent J. Curtis

21 Sept 21

RE: Hamilton’s growth means changes in housing.  Op-ed in the Hamilton Spectator 21 Sept 21

The article by Mike Collins-Williams, CEO of the West End Homebuilders Association simply shows that the builders can build anything you want.  If you want to turn parts of Hamilton into Calcutta or Moscow, Soviet Union, circa 1975, they’ll happily do it.

But why?  Why should the next generation of Hamiltonians pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for what amounts to a hovel today?  Why should the next generation of Hamiltonians accept far less in their housing than the middle-class of today have?

If you think that these densified projects aren’t going to turn into crime-infested urban blight, you don’t know the history of these things.  That ugliness spreads into the nicer neighborhoods adjacent to them.

It’s incredible to me that fear of “climate change” is the reason Hamilton is contemplating turning itself into a third-world city.  The polar ice caps will melt, sea level will rise, hurricanes will get more intense, war and pestilence will get worse because Hamilton expands its urban boundary to accommodate 236,000 more middle class people?  Really?  Oh, it’s just a tiny contribution to that?  How tiny?  Approximately zero?  Hamilton degenerates so China can spew more CO2 – Hamilton is that self-effacing?

Regardless, Hamilton is going to need one or more Mountain accesses to accommodate.  Another ring road will need to be built.  Older Hamiltonians will remember the fight over the Red Hill Valley Expressway – a debate I contributed to when the Consolidated Hearings Board came to Hamilton.  On the books were other optional routes, and if memory serves, one of them ran from Hwy 403 along Twenty Road out to Fruitland Road, and then down Fruitland Road to the QEW.  That option may need to be dusted off.

Highway 413 and a ton more civic infrastructure can’t come fast enough if Hamilton is going to get 236,000 more people in thirty years.

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