Nonetheless, I wish they would try to actually strategize ways to promote growth of offices downtown. A downtown cannot thrive on condos and restaurants alone, which is more or less all ours is. That is unsustainable and will 100% inevitably fall apart in the future if there is no diversification.
The fact that suburban office rates are doing much better also highlights how narrow the focus downtown and uptown is and how dumb the people who work for us each day are.
Most people have (or will have) families and require space. They need larger homes, condos and apartments. If all we build downtown is primarily 1 and 2 bedroom condo units, that is also not sustainable. That is worsened by the fact that we built a total dog shit transit system that no matter how much money we waste fine tuning signalling or improving the headway by 30 or 60 seconds because it will quickly hit a peak where it ceases to become useful to commuters. Just look at how empty the park and ride lot at Fairview is...there's maybe 1 car there if you don't include the idling taxi cabs, security vehicle and the odd bus. I mean, would you use it? Really, would most people commit to wasting hours to days of their life just to drive a car, park it, then take a slow, dirty and unreliable train to work? Unless someone really has nothing going for them in life, probably not. They'll just drive to work. Nobody who lives in the suburbs is going to waste their time going downtown to work unless it's the last resort (or pays really well...very few companies downtown pay very well, though) on our transit system. That will only add to the challenges to evolve our core areas...unfortunately it's a bit too late to fix the LRT.
Ideally, the cities and region need to go all in on our future...but they aren't really doing that. They see the easy short term evolution and sure it seems great. We've got a LRT system and skyscrapers going up all over the place. We see tangible change, but it's so limited. The LRT is crap and these skyscrapers and towers can only really fit a couple and 1 child for a little while, until they move away. Unless we can diversify the cores of the cities, diversify the sort of housing we build and...well we can't do much about the LRT...then we're going to quickly reach a dead end in terms of evolution, at least for a good 50-60+ years when we build a subway and can do better than tissue box sized condos. But even then it will require a diversified economy to support. Downtown Kitchener was lucky that Google moved in, but they didn't really need to. Tech companies do quite well in suburbs or satellite towns. If all that is downtown are these small condos and restaurants then the next generation may complain about how short sighted we were beyond building stupid bike lanes, 1 bedroom condos and endless restaurants. They'll just continue to live out in the suburbs. The same way most of us have been doing since the 1960s.
The fact that suburban office rates are doing much better also highlights how narrow the focus downtown and uptown is and how dumb the people who work for us each day are.
Most people have (or will have) families and require space. They need larger homes, condos and apartments. If all we build downtown is primarily 1 and 2 bedroom condo units, that is also not sustainable. That is worsened by the fact that we built a total dog shit transit system that no matter how much money we waste fine tuning signalling or improving the headway by 30 or 60 seconds because it will quickly hit a peak where it ceases to become useful to commuters. Just look at how empty the park and ride lot at Fairview is...there's maybe 1 car there if you don't include the idling taxi cabs, security vehicle and the odd bus. I mean, would you use it? Really, would most people commit to wasting hours to days of their life just to drive a car, park it, then take a slow, dirty and unreliable train to work? Unless someone really has nothing going for them in life, probably not. They'll just drive to work. Nobody who lives in the suburbs is going to waste their time going downtown to work unless it's the last resort (or pays really well...very few companies downtown pay very well, though) on our transit system. That will only add to the challenges to evolve our core areas...unfortunately it's a bit too late to fix the LRT.
Ideally, the cities and region need to go all in on our future...but they aren't really doing that. They see the easy short term evolution and sure it seems great. We've got a LRT system and skyscrapers going up all over the place. We see tangible change, but it's so limited. The LRT is crap and these skyscrapers and towers can only really fit a couple and 1 child for a little while, until they move away. Unless we can diversify the cores of the cities, diversify the sort of housing we build and...well we can't do much about the LRT...then we're going to quickly reach a dead end in terms of evolution, at least for a good 50-60+ years when we build a subway and can do better than tissue box sized condos. But even then it will require a diversified economy to support. Downtown Kitchener was lucky that Google moved in, but they didn't really need to. Tech companies do quite well in suburbs or satellite towns. If all that is downtown are these small condos and restaurants then the next generation may complain about how short sighted we were beyond building stupid bike lanes, 1 bedroom condos and endless restaurants. They'll just continue to live out in the suburbs. The same way most of us have been doing since the 1960s.