03-10-2021, 10:02 PM
(This post was last modified: 03-10-2021, 10:05 PM by danbrotherston.)
(03-10-2021, 09:43 PM)nms Wrote: "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.
Lol...wow...you're an optimist. We have folks protesting buildings which don't even require a zoning variance, they didn't know about the zoning. I'll eat my hat if the average NIMBY was involved in the zoning planning process. They certainly don't understand it, because zoning variances and bonusing are part of the zoning process, they're baked in.
"Every building in the Region is the result of "progress" and "change""...
I was very specific with my words. People don't always perceive change, for example, if things are moving slowly, they won't notice (climate change comes to mind). They also don't perceive change if that change does not modify qualities they consider important. So if you replace a house, with a house, or a multi-unit home with a town home or something, chances are good, people won't object because you aren't qualitatively changing the things they care about. Sometimes they do, see the mcmansion nonsense in Toronto, but usually they don't care. But an apartment building, that's a scary new thing, and people get upset.
Now, I'm not trying to dictate anything about urban form. ALL I want to achieve is more housing. That is the ONLY goal I have left at this point, we are in an absolute crisis, and the only way through is more housing. And we are nowhere NEAR that goal. We need something like 10,000 homes per year built just to meet projected growth. We aren't even close. So, how do I feel about Polocorps decision. I guess they're not demolishing everything and leaving it an empty lot so that's good, but the townhome development with zero affordable housing is worse than what was there in terms of affordable housing, and only marginally better in total housing stock.
What I see is a group of people, who apparently don't even live there, who have deprived a hundred people in our community of housing. I find that reprehensible. And I'm not going to mince words about that.