(01-14-2022, 04:16 PM)westwardloo Wrote: While I agree with some of the points this article is trying to make. I know my house 1949 is poorly insulated and definitely has air leakage issues. I have been trying to get a home energy audit for months so I can get rebates to fix this. Having said this personally I prefer the look and built environment of neighbourhoods built before the 1960's. It seems somewhere along the way cities just handed developers all the power in deciding how our city would be laid out. Suburbs from 1960 on were layed out to maximize developers profits but leave a cold disjointed built environment. One developers subdivision rarely connects to the next developers subdivision expect through an artillery's road. No commercial street has been developed, just car centric strip malls and power centers. Where as my neighourhood layout is in a grid pattern that connects various different developers properties together. There is a mix of single family, walk ups, midrises, (even a few towers thanks to the 1960's) and has small commercial shops scattered throughout. I rarely have to use my car to do my day to day errands.
I’m pretty sure you have this backward. The older parts of cities were built when basically anybody could build anything anywhere. Zoning is a 20th Century invention.
I remember seeing a billboard advertising for sale the vacant property on which it sat. I think this was on Fischer-Hallman Road in south Kitchener, some years ago; the property is probably now a recently-developed one. The billboard said something like “land available for strip mall”. I remember thinking, how does the seller know that a strip mall is right there? Of course the answer is that is what it is zoned for. Doesn’t matter if the owner thinks apartments or an enclosed mall or one big store or commercial above retail or whatever else will be more useful to people in that location — it’s zoned for a strip mall and if it is to be built as anything else, a big complicated process that can realistically only be navigated by a professional developer needs to take place.
I theorize that almost all development is now done by professionals who fundamentally are in the development business; whereas previously a significant amount was done by existing property owners who actually cared about their property. For example, the home owner who builds a house next to them, or rents out their main floor as a store and moves upstairs, or builds a store right in front of the house, or whatever. Now an owner who wants to do something interesting or creative is probably prevented from doing so by the zoning code. As a result they just sell to a developer who is in it for the money.
Not that I have a problem with people who are in it for the money; I buy most of my stuff from such people. But I think it makes a difference in their attitude towards what they are doing.