Bratina's Aerotropolis Fly-By

While serving as Ward 2 Councillor, Mayor-Elect Bratina expressed grave concern over the recommendation to proceed with Aerotropolis plans. He was unsuccessful in his bid to delay the decision, to allow for greater consideration, given the volume of material that council was being asked to absorb and comment on in such a compressed period of time.


What seemed to have a great amount of resonance (from a perspective of reason), albeit largely ignored, was Bratina's observation (supported by a planning report) that the correlation between projections of an ongoing and sustained successful air traffic business, should not serve as the foundation by which the whole business case for Aerotropolis should sit. In other words, we ought not to over emphasize and thus rely on the airport as a driver of economic activity. And then there is the matter of high energy costs due to the service configuration and provider....... 


CATCH has does an excellent job of citing some of Bratina's concerns and reference. These are captured below. Do you   agree with Bratina's views? Please read what he said, below. 

CATCH News – November 11, 2010

The new mayor and the aerotropolis

Less than two weeks before he won the mayoralty, Bob Bratina staked out his position on the aerotropolis in the final debate on the conversion of prime agricultural land to the airport-centred industrial development zone. Here’s some of what he had to say:

On the adequacy of the information presented to council prior to the decision:

“We keep receiving new information. We have information that was gathered by a member of the public that the actual amount of land involved is something different than what was indicated in the staff reports. There’s so much confusion around what’s before us, and what the intentions are. I mean things like this – we were told that we couldn’t hook up one more residential service because we didn’t have any more capacity in the water system; and it says in this report we can service another 156 hectares.”

On his unsuccessful motion to delay the decision:

“This would obviously come before the new council on the referral, and we would ask councillors, re-elected or new councillors, to once again try to absorb all the material – the 2200 pages of material that we were given four days before we were expected to vote on it..”

On the airport’s future as highlighted by an independent planner’s report:

“The most important finding of the report is the identification of the risk of using overly optimistic air traffic projections in the development of forecasts for employment land need, employment type and employment area location. Since the AEGD is supposed to accommodate up to half all employment growth in Hamilton over the next 25 years, there is a significant risk should the projections not be met. The risk would extend to the general economic health of the city a s well as the substantial expenditure of public funds needed to make the area ready for development. The airport employment growth district over-emphasizes the airport as a driver of economic activity.”

On the impact of aerotropolis on food security:

“We’re playing dice with the future of our city. Under vision 2020 we were supposed to assess the ability of our agricultural lands to provide nourishment for this city. We could virtually be a city state and almost provide ourselves with a substantial amount of food that we require. As far as I know, that study was never done. And so here we have some of the great agricultural land in Canada. We have fresh water – other places are experienc ing drought – and we’re putting the future of our children and our grandchildren at stake for land speculation. Shame on us!”

.