Greenbelt

The “Green Belt” is a two-and-a-half-mile-wide swath of low-density land that encompasses 65 square miles of metropolitan Ottawa and was described by Gréber as “a necklace for the National Capital”. Its purpose was to prevent urban sprawl and to carry out Mackenzie King’s vision of a city with open parkland. The benefits of that plan now seem priceless but were not met with much enthusiasm at the time, causing many disputes that delayed government acquisition of land by more than ten years.