03-10-2021, 09:43 PM
"Anti-progress" and "Anti-change" suggests that there is no room for negotiation when a project is proposed. I understand that when a developer pitches an idea to City staff that there is an awful lot of boring background back-and-forth that happens before the project becomes public. The challenge for others in the neighbourhood is that when the project is revealed, they are presented with a "once and done" proposal, often with variance requests that rankle the neighbourhood as they watch hard fought for rules and guidelines get nibbled away. The rule and guidelines likely came from public consultation processes that these very same neighbours may have had a hand in drafting.
Every building in the Region is the result of "progress" and "change". Viewed several decades (or even a century) after construction, there have been hits and misses. There have also been civic or developer visions that were either still-born or didn't get far past the pilot stage before they stopped for any number of reasons. Can those who are called "anti-progress" or "anti-change" be faulted if they observe that a proposed project appears to replicate some of the failures of the past, or worse yet, create a new problem that no one has seen yet? It also important to remember that there is no homogenous vision for what the perfect urban form is. (We don't have Napoleon III and Georges-Eugène Haussman to wipe the slate clean and start over as they did in Paris in the mid-1800s)
I think that Polocorp has done a good job to come up with a compromise that uses the land and salvages some of their investment.
Every building in the Region is the result of "progress" and "change". Viewed several decades (or even a century) after construction, there have been hits and misses. There have also been civic or developer visions that were either still-born or didn't get far past the pilot stage before they stopped for any number of reasons. Can those who are called "anti-progress" or "anti-change" be faulted if they observe that a proposed project appears to replicate some of the failures of the past, or worse yet, create a new problem that no one has seen yet? It also important to remember that there is no homogenous vision for what the perfect urban form is. (We don't have Napoleon III and Georges-Eugène Haussman to wipe the slate clean and start over as they did in Paris in the mid-1800s)
I think that Polocorp has done a good job to come up with a compromise that uses the land and salvages some of their investment.