General Urban Waterloo Updates and Rumours

[dubya]

Amazing to think of housing like this being built so close to the core, although it does respect the existing neighbourhood.

By neighbourhood I'm guessing you mean overall feel, or what is called "form". Though building a giant mansion here would have changed this form / feel, scale doesn't mean a development like this is preserving the neighbourhood either.

The garage frontages are the most obvious affront (figure the pun) to the form as few, if any houses in this area will have a built in garage at the front of the house. Inherently, old neighbourhoods like this were built prior to household car ownership. Many residents of the neighbourhood have since added a garage but these are almost universally found behind the home. By placing something as prominent as a garage front and centre, these homes deviate from the neighbourhood form, recalling instead homes of a more modern era.

New types of architecture like this aren't necessarily bad for the street and neither are new forms. In this case, these homes are actually not preserving the neighbourhood though they may yet enhance architectural value through high quality / modern finishes. The black window frames are an encouraging sign...

Take neodevelopments.ca/our-work/ as a good example of a local developer that is changing neighbourhoods architecturally through modern finishes and larger windows but actually doing a better job than this developer of preserving form.