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‘Progress’ definition needs to be updated

I have been thinking a lot about two stories in the July 5 edition (Major project eyed in Cedar and City shares ideas on tackling sustainability).

To the Editor,

I have been thinking a lot about two stories in the July 5 edition (Major project eyed in Cedar and City shares ideas on tackling sustainability).

The first article is about expanding the city’s population eastward into Cedar. This notion has been called ‘progress’ since the end of the Second World War.

The second article is about the efforts necessary if we wish to take care of ourselves and our planetary home.

With 70 per cent of our greenhouse gas emissions (non-renewable fossil fuels) coming from transportation alone, the study commissioned by the city has established the fact we need to redesign the city so as to reduce the need for motor vehicles and to improve our public transportation system.

The problem is that if we continue to ‘progress’ in the same old way by spreading out the city even further, then we will only become less sustainable.

Thus ‘progress’ also means more pollution and less community, plus higher taxation required to support the ever-increasing roads, sewers, water lines, police, fire and ambulance services, to name a few.

Isn’t it time we defined progress to mean something like “the means by which we pay our bills and remain on planet earth for the foreseeable future”?

Ian Gartshore

Nana