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Urban sprawl is bad, so stopping urban sprawl must be good, right? That’s the executive summary of an argument put forward by Ottawa environmental groups that want the city to add no new suburban land to its next 25-year growth plan.

Superficially, it’s an appealing notion. The case is easily made that a denser, more compact city is cheaper to service and easier to get around. There are, however, a few small problems with the argument.

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The first is the term urban sprawl. When used properly, it refers to unplanned, uncontrolled development at the edge of a city. Ottawa doesn’t have that and hasn’t had it for a very long time. The city decides what will go where and how dense new development will be. Far from sprawling, Ottawa has been reluctant to expand the size of its urban area. That’s why we see new suburban development that packs people in in a manner that would make sardines claustrophobic.

The city’s numbers show that intensification is gaining ground. The city’s Official Plan hoped intensification would deliver 40 per cent of all development between 2017 and 2022. During the first two years of that target period, intensification was 47 per cent, with a real spurt in 2018, when it accounted for 55 per cent of all urban and suburban development.