Fifteen years ago, when I was still living in China, my grandma always said to us, “there’s never that many motorcycles on the streets before. Even the alleys have got more crowded.” Four years ago, when I just moved back to Richmond, Canada, my mom told me, “the amount of cars now on the street is incredible. There were never that many cars in Richmond.”

The rate of economic growth in the past decade in both China and Canada was dazzling. After studying a few chapters of Microeconomics, I was very positive that such phenomenon reflects significant progress in the society and people in the society were better off with the rapid growth. I thought, arrogantly (arrogance came from understanding a few pages of the Econ textbook), resources have been utilized rather efficiently!

But such growth comes with tradeoffs. One of them is the compromise of public leisure spaces like playgrounds. I was completely unaware of the issue until I came across a blog of one of my classmate–Dayah Johal. She addresses the issue which more and more townhouses, which comes with smaller yards, are built in the city of Richmond while fewer and fewer playgrounds are put into proposal. Children then become the indirect victim of the municipal plan which favours in profitable real estate market.

This is a picture I took in May, inspired by such harmonious view.

Next time, while we are enjoying the harvest of economic booming, we might want to take a minute and think, “are we growing too fast?”

Dayah Johal. “Kids Contending in Construction”. Dayah Johal’s blog. Sept 12, 2012. <https://blogs.ubc.ca/dayahjohal/2012/09/12/kids-contending-with-construction/>