Using Nature to sell Housing Development

I recently started working on a project for one of my Geography courses titled “The Rural-Urban Fringe”. The focus of this project is on nature and peri-urban development. In essence, my group has to talk about how nature is used to sell and promote housing development in exurban areas. An exurb is a non-rural residential community located outside a city, beyond the suburbs.

Many could argue that Peterborough is an exurb. I would argue that it is a city (pop ~80,000). However, Peterborough’s fringe areas (located outside of the urban environment) are experiencing the construction of numerous sub-divisions. Growth in the sub-divisions? O yeah, those urbanites (many of whom lived in places like Toronto) are seeking housing outside of the urban area where they are closer to nature, have more lot space and the ability to develop a sense of community.

As part of the project, I intend on biking around the fringe areas of the city to collect and document evidence of nature being used to market housing developments. The sub-division that I’m biking to tomorrow is called “Natural Habitat”. The developers have used this title because it’s catchy and will probably sell more and more homes. Underneath the title it reads “conservation lands”, “golf courses”, and “waterfront setting”. So, if you live in this sub-division you will have access to all of these wonderful things.

Empirical evidence suggests that residents of new large lot subdivisions (natural habitat for example) on once rural land have become worried about more residential growth opposing condos, apartments, theatres, restaurants and shopping malls near their homes. These residents escaped the urban setting to get away from these things. However, new growth is happening all over Peterborough as evidenced by the construction of sub-divisions.

This new growth is accompanied with various amenities which makes the rural life congested, chaotic and begins to see some attributes of the urban. Having said this, the housing developments are still selling because residents can enjoy their large open spaces. Being close to Big Box stores is just a bonus, although it will eventually erode any sense of community and pull people away from the downtown (thus eroding the local economy).

Sometimes families are attracted by a small town’s charm and will choose to buy a house distant from the city- only to find that the town’s physical character was soon compromised by excessive new development. The danger is that once one sub-division is built (near nature), this provides more of an economic impetus to develop another one because housing demand is good. Alas, this defeats the purpose which is to find a small community that can provide social and economic needs for these “exurbanites”.

Key message: Humans have always been in touch with nature. Over the years, we have and continue to witness mass urbanization which compromises nature, the environment and our access to green and open spaces. Thus, when sub-divisions are built in places like Peterborough (relatively close to Toronto), and when they use images like golf courses, trees and rivers, people are immediately attracted to it because it will ostensibly provide them with a healthier and more enjoyable lifestyle. There are burning ironies here that I will not discuss. They will be shared as I progress into my research.