Settlement Areas: Hrm Alliance and Downtown Cores

settlement areas: Our HRM Alliance says that a greenbelt would both preserve local ecosystems and redirect growth to downtown cores, suburban main streets and rural areas across Halifax Regional Municipality, according to The Chronicle Herald. The planner in me says get the true cost-accounting of urban sprawl and then your decision is easy. Condemning mushrooming suburban growth as a great failed experiment, Toronto-based attorney David Donnelly is joining forces with the Our HRM Alliance to push for a full-on greenbelt around Halifax. Let people live downtown and in existing settlement areas and save taxpayers a lot of money, Donnelly told the Chronicle Herald. While new buildings and neighbourhoods can be built on such terrain, servicing them with roads and water/sewer lines is costly and existing taxpayers end up footing the bill. He said that the problem of urban sprawl in Halifax is worsened by the city's geography, which includes thick forests, rocky outcrops, lakes, coastal inlets and wetlands. (www.immigrantscanada.com). As reported in the news.