General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

At the risk of being "contrarian"...like I said originally. It's "cool" to hate the new stuff. I mean, it's a classic line. So yes, I suspect that the majority of our largely conservative (little c, not big C) city would object to the new buildings. I don't think that matters much, as I pointed out, things which there is now a swell of support behind (Brutalist architecture) that was hated before as well.

I must ask, what would be less offensive than my building? At a certain point, the objection becomes "I don't like BUILDINGS" rather than "I don't like THAT building". This is the response I am hearing most often at this point. I'm all for different forms of housing, but tall buildings are one of the forms I support. Or to put it another way, are there buildings in the city which you can point to that you do not find offensive?

You've packed a huge amount of things that I'd like to address into those 2 small paragraphs, to the point that I'll only address a few them in order to stay coherent.

On your point to the conservative mindset of our city: I think you're conflating opposition to change and development with people's aesthetic preferences. While there may be significant overlap between those two when it comes to people's actions, I was speaking purely to the latter. I believe we'd have far less NIMBYism if so many people didn't feel at best "meh" about the appearance of proposed developments.

About tall buildings, as a believer that restrictive zoning is one of the single biggest issues with our city: of course I support their right to be built. That said, I can probably count on my fingers the number of high-rise buildings globally that I find to be beautiful. Fascinating, interesting, attractive? There are probably thousands around the world, but beauty is the only visual benchmark for livability that matters to me. I do view my support and my concerns for high-rise buildings to be an unreconciled contradiction in my mind though, so I'm open to developing those ideas further.

As for your building (which sits in the lower bound of high-rises, so see my above paragraph), my words probably read as inappropriately hard on your building in particular, but I didn't mean it that way. The buildings that have been painted entirely a drab grey are worse. The parking lots are worse. The general lack of greenery on Charles is worse. My thoughts towards your building are only one part of my overall negative view. I'm not sure how to answer what I find "less offensive" without just listing my personal tastes, but I can tell you that the huge concrete stripe doesn't help my already grey view. My tastes are quite broad, but almost always include ornamentation and natural (or natural appearing) materials and colours, so you can probably see why I am unsatisfied by most of what gets built these days.

And for what it's worth, I'm always pleasantly surprised by the two apartments on Ellen St just north of Center in the Square, at least compared to most other apartments of similar scale.

Lol. I mean, we're fully in agreement that zoning is our biggest obstacle.

In terms of buildings, there are multiple facets. In terms of how a building looks in a cityscape, this can be interesting, and frankly, I like big buildings in that regard, I go up to our roof and just look around the city.

In terms of how a building interacts with the street, this is a function of massing and first floor uses, and some things generally about the building.

For example one of my favourite buildings in the city is the apartment building at 221 Queen St. Conestoga Apartments. The building itself is a fairly plain apartment building, but it's a mixed use building with retail on the first floor, it's not amazing, with the ramp and all, but for the era, it's really good. And further, the residents often put up lights on their balconies, and it really adds colour to my experience of the city.

The apartments on Ellen are pleasant enough, I certainly don't find them objectionable (I even looked at a unit in those buildings), I'd even say I like the esthetics of them, but as we've established, I'm not as critical as some. But I don't find them nearly as interesting as 221 Queen.

Another example, is Margaret Ave. between Queen and Young. It has many forms of housing, including Avenue Terrace...a small lower end condo building which I really like, and Queen Margaret Place, a pair of tall apartment buildings. While I don't think the buildings are particularly interesting in themselves (although I think QMP has a store), they make for a really interesting and varied neighbourhood.

I think objecting to any given development is problematic. Even the student developments we all love to hate, that I admit are not great, could be just fine in the right context.  And this is why I fully agree with you, that the primary problem is restrictive zoning, because they end up forcing everything to be similar.