Infill housing is not the enemy of nature

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 20/03/2025 (200 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

What do infill housing, rain gardens, backyard cottages, and the urban forest have in common?

When the City of Winnipeg was approved for the federal Housing Accelerator Fund, the funds came with a few conditions, which were meant to remove barriers and incentivize the type of housing needed to create livable, diverse and climate-resilient communities.

I’ve been hearing a lot of concern over how an increased push for infill housing will be disastrous for nature within the city. People worry about a loss of trees, an increase in impervious surfaces, stress on our water treatment systems, and the loss of biodiversity. I’ve even heard it claimed that the HAF zoning changes will lead to increased urban sprawl.

At first glance, it sure does seem like development, and particularly infill development, is at direct odds with protecting the environment. But I think collectively, we have a massive blind spot in our environmental advocacy, and that’s that we assume that what we have right now — the status quo — is good, or neutral.

I thought of this as I read an Indigenous history of Glenelm, written by University of Winnipeg professor and Canada Research Chair in Indigenous people, history and archives, Mary Jane Logan McCallum. Less than 200 years ago, this part of Elmwood was a rich wetland — something that’s hard to fathom when I look around my neighbourhood, with its plentiful houses and parks and bridges and roads.

Winnipeg, the city that we know and mostly love, was established by harmful, nature-destroying practices. We cleared the land and filled in streams to build our neighbourhoods. And then we cut down more trees to build houses. Then we amalgamated villages into one sprawling metropolis in which the car was the only practical mode of transportation. Maybe we didn’t know it at the time, but we actively took part in creating the climate crisis we grapple with today.

Far from being good just the way it is, we must acknowledge that the city we have today, and a land use pattern that requires driving for most trips and oceans of roads and parking to support it, is inherently bad for nature and for climate, with 50 per cent of our city’s emissions coming from private and commercial transportation.

It’s easy to advocate for changes that ostensibly prevent further harm, but harder to embrace the changes that are needed to mitigate some of the harm we inflicted on the natural environment in the first place.

When we’re zoomed in at the neighbourhood level, it can look like infill is bad for the environment because we may lose individual trees and yard space. But when we zoom out, there is no question that infill is climate action in and of itself. It adds the gentle density that is so desperately needed to provide the user base for schools and recreational amenities, as well as customers for neighbourhood businesses. And critically, it creates a user base for the level of public transit that’s reliable and people want to use to get to more destinations. These two factors are essential because they make it possible to walk, bike or take the bus more often — a crucial part of Winnipeg’s Climate Action Plan.

And at the very same time, infill reduces demand for greenfield development and further energy-intensive construction and maintenance of roads and parking. Infill both helps to make our city more climate-resilient, and prevents the destruction of yet-untouched natural areas. This can’t be overstated: saying “no” to infill in our neighbourhoods doesn’t stop development. It simply pushes it elsewhere.

If adding more trees and greenspace was all we needed to do to get out of the climate crisis, it would be a different story. There are certainly things in this vein that we should be doing: acquiring and conserving riverfront land, and incorporating street trees and green infrastructure like rain gardens as a matter of course. But “adding” nature is just one piece of the climate action puzzle. Retrofitting our existing built environment is another. We must be willing to sit with a little discomfort when our comfortable status quo gets shaken up in the course of evolving into a more climate-resilient city.

Opposing infill in the context of environmental advocacy is siloed thinking we must move past. A city is a complex human ecosystem, and we need to stop thinking of nature as a standalone, disparate element. We must be clear-eyed and avoid making choices that reinforce further wasteful, carbon-intensive land use patterns.

So back to my first question. What does infill have in common with rain gardens? What do backyard cottages have in common with street trees? They are all essential parts of climate action in the urban context.

Emma Durand-Wood is a parent of three in Elmwood and an advocate for liveable cities.