BUILD IT AND THEY WILL COME - the truth about traffic.

There is a lot of huffing and puffing going on over the Province subsidizing a “light rail system to nowhere.” The controversy swirls (controversies always “swirl” it’s journalistic cliché like tornadoes always “devastate) around the creation of a light rail system in Kitchener-Waterloo. Critics claims there is no “downtown,” the equivalent to saying “there is no there there.” The issue is not really whether or not the line is a rail link to nowhere. It is a much larger and more important issue: what does rapid transit do in the 21str century to remake urban life?

The concept of “build it and they will come” was enshrined in the movie “Field of Dreams.” It was pure Hollywood. But it was more. It was a realization, still unclear to most people that progress begins around an idea. To put it more simply: you don’t build houses then hope the city will build a road to get you there. Unless you really believe in the idea in Field of Dreams. I do. From my own rusty memory, a cautionary tale: when E.P. Taylor wanted to build Canada’s first new city, conveniently on his acreage on the middle of nowhere, he would build it only on the condition that an expressway connecting it to downtown was also built. If only we had built a subway line instead of the now famous Don Valley Parking Lot.

In “The Asphalt Nation,” a brilliant exploration of the rush to pave America and create car-imperative development and shopping malls, the author Jane Holz Kay echoes the “build it and they will come” idea. She says that developers always build at the end of the newest super highway. Unfortunately, in an urban environment far too dominated by developers who own land and have to use it, we endure relentless urban sprawl. (Toronto already has the longest commute times in North America.)

We do seem to have learned, perhaps by accident, that when you build a good transit system, people and businesses will want to be close by. Did the Spadina subway line happen because there were all those apartment buildings in the Eglinton-Marlee area, or did the buildings happen because the subway line was there? Some might argue that the development preceded the subway because the never-built Spadina Expressway was supposed to happen.

Once we realize that we cannot allow urban development to remain in the hands of land-rich developers, we will really start planning. Not to worry. The developers will follow.

If part of the new urban planning is to create densely populated areas close to facilities, the process known as creating a “critical mass” – we will start to get out of the woods.

Kitchener-Waterloo will have their light rail transit. The effect will be to turn attention away from ravaged farmland, and back to the urban centre. If they build it, people will come. The entire corridor, and the junctions at each end of the new line, will attract business and developers simply because they want to position themselves near easy transit.

If there is ever to be an end to the monstrous evacuation of city cores in favour of prime farmland, we have to adjust to the new reality. Never mind the smog and the cost of car travel. Hey – someone might even put a bicycle corridor along the same new artery. Wouldn’t that be revolutionary?