Population and Housing

[danbrotherston]

As for whether the region could accomodate 300,000 new people with infill. I mean, EASILY. Trivially. We've got so many subdivisions with nothing but sprawling single family home, even with only smart infill rather than completely demolishing and rebuilding, we could hit those numbers. But people would have to accept or be made to accept that a few homes on their street (I mean *every* street) will become a 3-4 story walkup. It sounds like such a small thing, but yet if you ask the NIMBYs you might as well be murdering everyone's children.

People underestimate the density of midrise. The floor space of the Pentagon (5 stories plus 2 lower levels) is much larger than the floor space of One World Trade Centre (94 stories). Not really the kind of construction we’re talking about for Waterloo but the same point about lots of midrise vs. a small number of very tall buildings.

Also don’t forget that public transit would automatically be in place for all the infill; the ridership on the existing bus services would just go up accordingly, eventually improving the fare recovery without any special effort and making future service improvements easier.

This is very much on point. Even in NYC, the largest building by square footage isn't particularly tall. Especially modern tower design with significant setbacks end up not being all that large.

The frustrating thing is that people also confuse density with crowding. Density does not mean crowding...lack of housing leads to crowding. Northdale is less crowded now than when I was a student, even though it has an order of magnitude more square footage of housing.