Agricultural land concerns must be part of the affordable housing discussion
By Lethbridge Herald on May 31, 2025.
Editor,
Re: Housing is more unaffordable than ever, Herald, May 22.
Around the world, urban populations have skyrocketed. In most European countries, strict land-use regulations are critical to limit urban sprawl and to protect land used for food production. Anyone driving from Lethbridge to both Coaldale and Calgary will see an explosion of acreages with huge single family homes. This has removed some of the most productive land anywhere in the world from agricultural use. In major cities in all countries, people live and work in high rises. This is completely normal. Not limiting land for development will lead to more expensive food and, inevitably, food shortages. Once you build on it, that agricultural land is gone forever. As Joni Mitchell put it “You pave paradise and put up a parking lot.” Let’s not do that!
Leslie Lavers
Lethridge
6-5
The UCP has taken away the right for Municipalities to control sprawl.
This is to allow the wealthy to build large suburban homes under the guise of ‘affordable’ housing (a brainchild of our inestimable MLA?). Then again, it probably would be more affordable to build three storie McMansions on what-was-recently good farmland.