03-05-2024, 09:14 AM
(03-04-2024, 05:28 PM)taylortbb Wrote:(03-04-2024, 02:14 PM)westwardloo Wrote: They have just allowed developers to plan competing poorly thought-out sites that will be disconnected from the surrounding community. Its like they are building an urban suburb.
Last time I talked to City of Waterloo planners about this (which admittedly was a few years ago) they said this was intentional. The argument was that Waterloo can only support a finite amount of urban-ness, so if they allowed anything outside of uptown to be urban then it would draw businesses and customers away from uptown and threaten the success of uptown.
This is truly the dumbest thing I have heard it a while, but coming from City of Waterloo planners it doesn't surprise me. I have no faith in planners at our cities. They have consistently fucked up this city for the past half a century + Look at the vista hills/ columbia forest subdivisions. City planners had no problem letting BB build a huge suburban office complex on the edge of town while the Region planned a billion dollar transit system. Image how many customers Uptown would have if the offices were built near uptown? They also had no problem building office and medical spaces on the edge of town (Boardwalk) drawing even more customers and businesses away from uptown.
The people that live in these towers aren't all of a sudden going to go downtown because we designed a poorly thought out (Or lack of any) street system with surface parking that can only be accessed through a single access point.