Building tall in Victoria

I always found the "but tourisms won't find us as quaint" argument against densification extremely disconnected. Victoria is the capital of a nearly 5-million strong province, home to a major university, host to Canada's Pacific fleet and perennial retirement spot for Canadians. The city will grow regardless, and even the tourism sector will be just fine without the faux-British outpost reputation. Besides, no one's actually demolishing old town so the premise of the argument is moot.

If approved, the project will set a new Vancouver Island height record multiple times with towers up to 32-storeys in height.

https://victoria.cit...d-improvements/

How much effect will the anti-height brigade ultimately have on this proposal?

Victorians have been complaining about highrise buildings deterring tourists for decades now.

It is the job of city developers and urban planners to figure out how to build or adapt urban environments to accommodate the living and working needs of this rapidly expanding population. There is a popular belief that taller, more densely packed skyscrapers are the way forward, because they optimise the use of space and house more people per square metre and limit urban sprawl.

But given the global commitments to emissions-reduction targets and mitigating climate change, is this the most sustainable solution from a carbon-reduction perspective?

Our recent study, which examined whether building denser and taller is the right path to sustainability, busts this myth: we found that densely built, low-rise environments are more space and carbon efficient, while high-rise buildings have a drastically higher carbon impact.

".......Moving to a smaller scale, the embodied carbon share across construction materials shows that minerals have the largest proportion by far, at 45%."

Edited by VIResident, 31 October 2021 - 06:35 AM.

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 18 March 2023 - 09:18 AM.

It's ludicrous to decry the "horrors" of the shade from a 5 storey building, especially in a neighbourhood filled with buildings of similar height.

Where we live, the neighbouring property has a pretty large juniper tree. Over the past forty years it's expanded upwards and outwards a huge amount. They've never kept it in check. Now our back yard has shade for much of the afternoon whereas before it was sunny, we even have our greenhouse in that spot. It certainly makes an impact on what you can grow. I thought we were all supposed to be growing our own veg? Getting more difficult to do, esp. things like tomatoes and cukes. Before we could sit out back in the sun for much of the afternoon, now it's shade. 

The CoV has some barely used planter boxes along Blanshard Street you could use to grow your vegetables.

There are a couple of other planters on Pandora, you might have to keep an eye out for some of the vegetables.

I’m still rooting for Nanaimo to one day claim the title.

I expect either Metchosin or Oak Bay will ultimately be victorious in this category. 

1971 view from Camosack Manor showing how tall the grain elevator at Ogden Point was compared to other things.