11-02-2015, 01:46 AM
(11-01-2015, 05:37 PM)MidTowner Wrote: I agree with a lot of what you say. Out of curiosity, what entails "medium-density" to you, though? "Single-family detached housing" can be dense enough to support transit and other uses within walking distance. Actually, here in Kitchener-Waterloo, it did, and those neighbourhoods that now seem adjacent to the downtowns were streetcar suburbs with commercial mixed in, and where many people could walk to their jobs, most could take transit to their jobs, and most people did walk to do shopping and run errands. Before the car, there was no reason to set houses far back from loud, dangerous streets, and houses close to the street created the kinds of density that made these things possible. Again: it's possible to achieve a fair bit of density even with detached family homes.
Medium-density could be, perhaps, the equivalent of streets with two or three storey street walls - i.e. without the in-between spaces for cars and setbacks.
I think a greater density than in the past is needed to support transit, because it means supporting enough of it so that the transit is competitive with the automobile. But in terms of the history, my understanding is that these old subdivisions are far less dense than they were initially, with far fewer people living per house.