Downtown Kitchener Tall Building Urban Design Guideline.

[Lens]

One thing Etherington left unsaid is that bad as King and Columbia are, they look better than 90% of Kitchener. I have visitors from out of town this week and while driving around several times they said, why is it so ugly around here? and every time it was when we had crossed from Waterloo to Kitchener. They were indifferent to the high rises in Northdale, while they actively disliked Kitchener. The "emperor has no clothes" argument here is that most of "heritage" Kitchener is actually rather mediocre and not worth the designation.

Second he makes it sound like the reason King and Columbia is bad is high rises, which is just an ignorant comment.t It is possible to have a very nice town full of sky rises just it is possible to have a horrible town full of detached single homes.

Dramatic statement for effect?  What has happened up in that particular part of Waterloo is pretty much universally recognized as ugly, not at the Regional but at the national level (although its not just a matter of height, as the newer mid-rise student apartment buildings are in many cases as bad as, if not worse than, the highrises.  Kitchener has nothing to compare (Drewlo's recent efforts notwithstanding), nor would it in the absence of a student ghetto.  This is why I found Etherington's comments inappropriate - they were completely pointless in the context of Kitchener, which will develop these guidelines to suit its own needs, which are different from those driving development in Northdale.   The risk of duplicating Waterloo's Northdale mistakes, when Waterloo has already recognized the problem and moved to start correcting it, seems remote to the point of near impossibility, imho.

Seriously? Better than 90% of Kitchener? Feel free to give some examples of areas that are worse or even as bad as most of the student housing in Waterloo. While your visitors may think the area is ugly it's also interesting to note that most visitors wouldn't even know when they've crossed from one city to the other. While you've been quick to disregard most of Kitchener's registered heritage buildings, the city does have a good stock of old buildings and homes and neighbourhoods, that are for the most part fairly attractive.

To be honest. I think the skyline of Waterloo on university and around that area is very nice. It makes Waterloo look like the big city on the region while Kitchener doesn't come close. Even though Kitchener is twice the size of Waterloo in terms of population.

Our downtown is pretty bad right now tbh.

If you just look at the number of highrises in Northdale you might be fooled into thinking this, but get a little closer and you'll see the problem. No visitor from out of town is going to tour Northdale streets and think "Wow, Waterloo sure is a big city." It's just not going to happen. Also if you think our Downtown is bad then you most likely haven't been down there in a while.