03-12-2019, 11:34 AM
(03-12-2019, 11:17 AM)robdrimmie Wrote:(03-12-2019, 10:26 AM)tomh009 Wrote: In your view, what counts as a "giant wall"? How big a garage would you have accepted?
In general I think that a plain wall (of any material that is largely homogenous in appearance) on my property line starts to feel somewhat imposing somewhere around 3m or so. I'm comfortable with 8 foot fences, but 10 exceeds some threshold and I'd almost certainly refer to a two storey fence with the adjective "giant", it's considerably different than what I'm used to. Imagining a 15m concrete wall instead of a fence is absolutely imposing and deeply disheartening. I recognize that's not what's actually in the proposal, but it's reasonable to me to start with that notion as the extreme worse case, and push the wall back until it feels better.
The building behind my house is a modern LCBO - around two storeys, simple yellow brick wall with some lights and no other adornment. It feels perfectly fine (and was built there after I moved in in a previously open field so is somewhat relevant) and starts somewhere around 10m from the other side of my fence. I'd definitely be comfortable with another storey but likely irritated if it went much beyond that.
The visual monotony really matters in this scenario. If there were a mural or interesting architecture it would ease my concerns. If it was three storeys, then there was another setback for the fourth and beyond that would help as well. There's something that really resonates in me about "human scale" and my understanding of that is somewhere around 4 storeys at the street, and then the tower set back some amount. I don't think a five storey parking garage is at human scale.
This seems fairly reasonable, but I will again point out, this is a back yard, laneway. Certainly I don't want my home to face a blank wall, but in behind, it's a lot more reasonable.
Also, IIRC, this wasn't going to be a blank wall but an "architecturally interesting" garage. While I'm not sure that's much better (I'm guessing, at best something like the uptown parkade), it's definitely not a blank wall. A mural or something would probably be a big improvement (I look at several murals in the laneway I see from my building), it's something that's hard to promise in perpetuity. It would be nice if there were better solutions to that kind of thing (same with transit passes in lieu of parking, they're usually time boxed in some way).