1095 replies to this topic

[Jackerbie]

Isn't it more likely that lands would be handed over to local First Nations rather than to Esquimalt?  I guess could be both. Ownership to the FNs but jurisdictionally within Esquimalt.

 

It's not that the lands would be handed over to Esquimalt, it's that Esquimalt has pro-actively included some design objectives for future redevelopment of the land, whoever it is that undertakes it.

 

Any examples for us to make a fuss about?

 

Like this?

http://dailyhive.com...proved-may-2018

 

A recent built-out example would be Garrison Woods in Calgary, formerly CFB Calgary: https://goo.gl/maps/DLbsjH8hsT22

 

And a still-in-progress example would be Bassins du Havre in Montreal, which was a Canada Post processing facility: https://goo.gl/maps/kgVbWK7S4592

[aastra]

Victoria's situation seems exceptional to me. Legitimate waterfront site, effectively undeveloped for much of it and very thinly developed for the rest... even the "think of the trees" angle holds no water because much of the property is treeless.

 

Edit: South of Bewdley Ave and east of Clifton Terrace you can paste at least two full Selkirk waterfront developments, and still have a ton of raw open space left over.

Edited by aastra, 18 October 2018 - 03:39 PM.

[nerka]

Victoria's situation seems exceptional to me. Legitimate waterfront site, effectively undeveloped for much of it and very thinly developed for the rest... even the "think of the trees" angle holds no water because much of the property is treeless.

Think of the moss - you monster!

[aastra]

All of the existing rocky areas would be preserved as natural space, so from March through May there would be much more moist moss than you could ever muster up the means to measure. You may even get the occasional report of a moss monster.

[aastra]

 

Think of the moss...

 

I do, often. I'm disappointed that I don't give that impression.

[PPPdev]

Garrison Crossing in Chilliwack for being a community from scratch did a really good job

[LJ]

A few of these developments should take care of the housing shortage....

[RFS]

A royal bay type development would be best

[lanforod]

Garrison Crossing in Chilliwack for being a community from scratch did a really good job

I know the area fairly well. It took a long time, but CFB Chilliwack had turned into a very nice area. Garrison crossing is great.

[RFS]

https://www.theglobe...-building-more/

 

'after more than half a century, isn't it time to finally admit Canadians would simply rather live in the burbs and figure out how to make that happen?

Chief among those virtues is price. “The suburbs are affordable,” says Haider bluntly, pointing out that rents in downtown Toronto are double those in the outer ring of the Greater Toronto Area. Anyone truly concerned about housing affordability ought to be a tireless advocate for more suburban development on cheap and plentiful farmland.
Besides being easier on the budget, the Suburban Dream also aligns perfectly with what most families actually want.

 

The suburbs also seem to improve your mood. Work published earlier this year by University of British Columbia economist John Helliwell finds a strong correlation among lower housing prices, lower-density housing and selfreported happiness. “Life is significantly less happy in urban areas,” his study concludes. While rural residents are the happiest of all, people living in suburb-heavy cities such as Calgary, Oshawa and Trois-Rivières are also high on the leaderboard. Hyper-dense Vancouver, a city Gordon considers the “poster child” for good urban planning and intensification, is the unhappiest place in the country. It’s also Canada’s least affordable city.

 

Suburban backyards, for example, provide a greater diversity of species and habitat than some natural ecosystems. These ample landscapes also permit better wetland protection than dense, paved-over urban areas. And despite claims that the suburbs are endless, soul destroying rows of homogeneity, the Canadian experience proves them to be lively and welcoming destinations that are especially attractive to minority and immigrant families seeking upward mobility and their share of our collective national dream.

[Mike K.]

Yes, but what if we increase Vancouver Island’s urbanized area to 2.5% from 2.4% with unabated urban sprawl? What then??? What will happen to the animals?

[aastra]

 

Hyper-dense Vancouver, a city Gordon considers the “poster child” for good urban planning and intensification, is the unhappiest place in the country. It’s also Canada’s least affordable city.

 

Just one problem with this thinking: Vancouver city is hyper-dense for a tiny portion of its land area. Most of the population of Vancouver city lives in very quiet and very green SFD neighbourhoods.

[Jackerbie]

Anybody can cherry pick arguments that support their beliefs when it comes to development. Yes, SFD neighbourhoods are an affordable option for many people. But, low density neighbourhoods also cost more to service and upkeep, straining municipal budgets.

 

Yes, UBC found that there is a correlation between lower housing prices, lower density, and happiness. But, Waterloo found a correlation between length of commute and happiness, where people with longer commutes are generally more stressed and less happy.

 

Yes, suburban yards offer more landscaping than dense urban areas. But, research shows that suburban neighbourhoods are less biodiverse and are in fact creating ecological homogenization on a continental scale.

 

Long story short: increasing the urban area is not the issue per se, it's how those areas are laid out and what we put in them. Greenfield development can be done well or poorly, just as urban redevelopment can be done well or poorly.

[Mike K.]

Anybody can cherry pick arguments that support their beliefs when it comes to development. Yes, SFD neighbourhoods are an affordable option for many people. But, low density neighbourhoods also cost more to service and upkeep, straining municipal budgets.

 

 

The straining municipal budgets debate is a little too simplistic, IMO.

 

Municipalities set the taxes. If the budget they set is straining their resources they need to re-visit the taxation issue. But if, on the other hand, a so-called lack of resources or a tight budget keeps a municipality from going off the rails and pursuing pet projects with a legacy of subsequent added taxation then maybe it's a good thing to keep taxes just at the point where the homeowners feel they're paying 'enough' and the municipality has just 'enough.'

 

SFD residents also tend to consume more in the way of services and items from local businesses. A larger home needs more items, and more items keep local businesses in business. Municipal coffers are dependent on business, so on it goes.

 

Fuel taxation pays for a litany of pet projects and funds all sorts of public endeavours. SFD residents tend to drive more and they tend to drive greater distances which further pad government coffers.

 

It's all an intricate web of inputs and outputs but believe me, if everyone, today, decided to move into 'walkable' communities and live in condos the government would find itself in a world of financial trouble.

[RFS]

People in suburban SFDs also have more kids which keeps the wheels of society turning

[Casual Kev]

Sprawl per se isn't inherently bad, but the problem is that in North America it almost always happens to build communities that are completely car-dependent and reliant on other urban centers to provide employment and services; their very low-density characteristic also means you need many of them to actually house a growing population. The upfront costs of setting up infrastructure like roads and utilities aren't too great and are usually covered by the new developments themselves. But the long-term costs of adding congestion to existing infrastructure, services needing to span greater areas, jobs needing to account for increased commute, only a select few being able to live effectively without owning a car and public transit needing a larger reach get tacked on permanently and on an overwhelming scale, at the cost of other jurisdictions and even the sprawl residents themselves.

 

Transit in almost all of the US is destined to be **** because the way their cities are built it's simply too expensive to run bus lines or LRT across sprawling suburbs; people already need to drive to do even the simplest errands anyways. Even here in Canada, car ownership is virtually obligatory and a 4-person household might need 2-3 personal vehicles to go about their business. City cores that provide most white-collar employment get overwhelmed by traffic from the suburbs, with either them or entire provinces having to deal with the cost of more cars on the same roads. Businesses need to do a lot of extra thinking when locating not only because of their client base, but they might fail if the commute to their workplace is too crummy for their employees. And so on. 

 

The Ruhr-Rhine region in Germany hosts over 10 million people, but despite being relatively small (a bit larger than Metro Vancouver + Fraser Valley) the land area is mostly farmland, the population is spread out across many cities and they don't have Japan-like density to accommodate its population. Cities are functional on their own and interconnected with integrated train, bus and subway networks on top of the Autobahn system. When you don't need to hop on a car just to grab a few groceries, or you have more options than downtown offices or outskirts factories, you open up a lot more possibilities other than spending everything you have to solve gridlock in the highways.

Edited by Casual Kev, 25 October 2018 - 12:09 PM.

[Mike K.]

Luckily Victoria's footprint is hilariously tiny and we don't have any of the issues you refer to, other than symptoms of congestion on roads built 50 years ago and which are expected to maintain a regional population 5x the size of when they were built.

[Casual Kev]

Luckily Victoria's footprint is hilariously tiny and we don't have any of the issues you refer to, other than symptoms of congestion on roads built 50 years ago and which are expected to maintain a regional population 5x the size of when they were built.

Obviously we are a small metropolis at best, but my point is that if we're going to keep sprawling then these new communities need to be more than just bedrooms for parents with school-aged kids. Victoria will remain after everyone who ever posted in VV becomes cosmic dust and keep growing so the city needs to think well ahead.

[Mike K.]

We're not sprawling. Our growth is so small and expansion so limited that we've barely built into the periphery over the last 30 years.

 

It's very, very hard to tell these two satellite images apart. That's how small our sprawl is.

 

1984

 

 

2016

 

[dasmo]

Um, of course you wont see much in the core. It's been well established for a while. You can easily see the sprawl by the image comparison. It's not high density sprawl so its not a flat our grey.... Bonus is you can also see the trees filling in from the logging in the 80s!