ROTHENBURGER: What’s so great about being the third fastest growing city in Canada?

It grew by 10 per cent between 2016 and 2021, to 114,142. That’s fast. Only Chilliwack and Kelowna grew faster. The city’s population by itself is currently on the brink of 100,000. That’s still significant growth in recent years, higher than both the provincial and federal averages.

But maybe the best thing about being third is that we aren’t first or second. When I wrote about growth and its challenges several years ago, I was thinking about infrastructure in general, and about the effect of always wanting more. Quoting author Bill Bryson, I said we’re always in need of more streets, sewers, public amenities, shopping malls, gas stations, car dealerships and drive-thru burger places.

We’re in love with growth. Politicians swear by it. We expect it. We love seeing heritage houses torn down to make room for apartment towers.

We don’t think enough about the problems of growth. The more we grow, the more it costs to get clean water, to get rid of our garbage, to run buses into the suburbs, to build enough clinics and hospitals, to heat our homes and offices, to police the streets.

As we grow, so do shortages of affordable housing. So do poverty, crime, planning issues and traffic problems. A few weeks ago, for example, a plan was unveiled to change traffic patterns at First Avenue and Lansdowne Street.

The reason the City’s transportation planners want to make changes at that intersection is that the population has gotten too big for the way it is now. In 2014, when it was created, the planners wanted to do it a different way. They didn’t want that southbound left-hand turn lane off First onto Victoria because they knew it would eventually cause problems.

But downtown businesses wanted that lane, so they got it. The engineers retreated to their drawing boards and waited for the population to catch up. Now it has.

When you think of the breadth of problems facing Kamloops right now, urban growth is at the root of most of them.

Why do we need more housing? Because people keep coming, and those who are here already keep having babies (Royal Inland Hospital had a four per cent increase in births from 2020 to 2021). But every new house or apartment or condo must be serviced with water, sewer, roads, drainage and buses. Who pays for it all? Everybody else.

Doctors? The more we grow, the more of them we need, and the fewer the number of people who have them. Some 40,000 Kamloops residents are without a doctor. That’s an astounding deficit.

Amenities? A Build Kamloops committee at City Hall excitedly looks at the prospect of spending multi millions on a new pool, an ice arena, a performing arts centre, field house, curling rink, and seniors centre. And soon, a new police station and city hall. We need them because there are too many people for what we’ve already got.

Keep going. Crime, drugs, jobs, pollution, congestion, sprawl, public transportation, schools, loss of agricultural land.

So what should Kamloops look like? What’s an ideal population? And what do we need that we haven’t already got?

Not surprisingly, there’s no agreement on the perfect population for a city, though various experts, philosophers, urban planners and dreamers consult their algorithms and calculate people per hectare and walking time from one side of the city to another and so on, and seem to net out at about 10,000 for a small town and somewhere between 100,000 and 150,000 for a small city. (Preferences for big cities go all the way to four million.)

Much of what’s being talked about in connection with growth is an expansion of what we have already. How many rinks and pools, shopping malls and towers does a city need?

Certainly, we need a performing arts centre and, with any luck, we’ll get one soon. Better air service would be good. More trails and bike lanes? You tell me.

There really isn’t much that a bigger population could give us that we need, but we always want more because we’re growing, after all.

Population alone doesn’t determine the livability of a city but it sure has a lot to do with it. I’m not saying for a minute we can stop growth, but being the third fastest isn’t the cause for excitement we might think.

Mel Rothenburger is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a recipient of the Jack Webster Foundation Lifetime Achievement Award. He has served as mayor of Kamloops, school board chair and TNRD director, and is a retired daily newspaper editor. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or Pattison Media.

by Mel Rothenburger

ROTHENBURGER: What’s so great about being the third fastest growing city in Canada?

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