Welcome to the Burlington Uptown Weblog

This blog is all about Uptown Burlington, consisting of the mostly suburban communities surrounding Appleby Line & Burloak Drive, north of the QEW. The area has been growing and developing rapidly over the last 5 years. Much of this development has been exciting, seeing many new people moving into the area and the creation of new services and parks for its residents. Make no mistake about it, this is a great place for people to live.

However, being a mostly suburban community could be problematic for this area in the years to come. Many readers will note the recent increases in the price of gasoline. If anyone has stopped to think about the reasons why, they would have realized by now that North America's current car centred lifestyle will not be sustainable for much longer. Extra capacity to produce more and more oil every year is not available, most countries are declining.

Oil companies have not invested the money necessary to find enough new sources of oil to replace the wells that are in decline. In Alberta, we have the oil sands, which can help stem the decline, but use massive amounts of water and natural gas to extract. They will be useful, but there's no way we could mine the stuff fast enough to sustain all of the transportation needs of the world.

As for alternative energy, there may be some benefits to adding wind and solar power to our electricity generation to ease the transition from fossil fuels like coal and natural gas, the use of wind and solar on a massive scale are not going to save us. Hydrogen needs to be generated from either natural gas or electricity, so it's really just like a convenient battery.

We're going to have to face it: ten years from now, half of us will probably be unable to afford to travel by private automobile. Those of us who can afford to drive will probably have a difficult time maintaining the other elements of their lifestyle in a world where energy is no longer as cheap and taken for granted as it is today.

I care about our community - I do not want to see it turn into an automobile slum that no one cares about. I see things like the graffiti on the rail barrier at Dundas & Appleby, and it saddens me that people can be so unconcerned about the place that they live.

I highly recommend any visitor to this blog, to take a look at some of the writings of an American author, James Howard Kunstler. His most recent book, The Long Emergency, is a highly recommented illustration of the kinds of changes we need to make to keep our society functioning, and our community as the changes we are starting to feel from the stretching of our hydro grid close to the breaking point, to the continued increases in the prices of crude oil, gasoline, electricity and all forms of energy we use. I see him as a kind of kindred shit-disturber - with a sharp wit and a very no-nonsense style. I hope that this weblog can serve half as well as Mr. Kunstler's has to educate about the 'clusterfuck' we're heading for, while entertaining along the way.

For this community to continue to offer a high quality of life, we need to encourage one another to make decisions that emphasise the people who live here. Cookie cutter suburban big-box development is unnecessary, and will lead us down the path towards being another boring strip that people occasionally drive to, but noone wants to live near.

Ten years from now, when the big box retailers can no longer afford to transport cheap shit from China, what's going to become of the giant aircraft-hangar like sheds? We need to make this community one that people will feel safe walking in, and one that actually has some interesting places to walk to without having to traverse giant, half empty asphalt deserts.

While at times, Burlington's city council is attempting to guide the development in the area to a more compact, more walkable form, they haven't really been able to enforce many of the guidelines that were laid out when this community was created. It's almost as if they've taken the attitude that wrong development is better than no development at all. Here's some of the bonehead creations that are being built or have been built in the last few years:

- Wal Mart at the corner of Appleby and Dundas - a megastore surrounded by a sea of parking lots and a few chain stores trying to cash in on the traffic.
- The new Appleby Arena, which is set back about 100 feet from the road with a huge parking lot.
- 2 drive through restaurants (although they are built close to the sidewalk, the main entrances face the parking lot)
- Two new shopping centres going up at Appleby and Dundas, designed not for local people, but drivers on their way between destinations.
- 3 new full-service gas stations with car wash & convenience store
- A giant car wash
- A huge underpass for the railway

It definitely seems that the development we have allowed to happen, geared more towards our cars than our people. There have been a number of positive things - such as the new condos going up which are close to the street line, and the big land developers have kept to an aestetic of building a neighbourhood reasonably well. Unfortunately, the commercial sector just doesn't seem to get it. Big business is focussed only on the bottom line. In bygone days, the local businessman used to take an interest in the community, and lived in the same area where the business was located. Now, decisions about what kind of buildings to put in our community are made in some corporate office down in Bentonville, Arkansas by someone who doesn't give a damn about what the people living in the Orchard have to look at every day. Some of the things that would serve to make this area great:

How about a pub, facing the street (people should walk to the pub anyways instead of drive).

An ice cream shop that serves ice cream to people walking or cycling along the pathway?

Larger homes along major collector roads which allow live/work arrangements, for professionals like doctors (hey - we need more of those don't we?), accountants, lawyers, chiropractors, etc.

At the corner of Dundas and Appleby - wouldn't this be a perfect spot for a farmers market? Close to farms in rural Halton, and within walking distance of thousands of residents. It would be nice for the market to have its own home, instead of in a mall parking lot.

I'd like to hear your thoughts about what would make this neighbourhood great.