04-22-2021, 08:01 AM
A lot of good and interesting points. A couple of things jumped out as something on which I would like to comment:
This isn’t necessarily for or against what you’re saying, just a related point. Zoning for many years forbade redevelopment of the neighbourhood, long after the families had moved out and the houses renovated with extra bedrooms. Under current market conditions (specifically, being right next to a major university that has outgrown other student housing options), there is no way families are going to outbid apartment developers for the land. If zoning had allowed redevelopment, the houses would have been gradually expanded and/or replaced; instead, when the valve was opened, most of the neighbourhood was suddenly redeveloped.
Arguably this doesn’t make much difference in the long term. But I’m not even certain about that. With gradual redevelopment allowed, there would have been a lot of houses which would get additions, or be split into duplexes or triplexes, or both, and some of them would have been kept as such for longer, simply because the additional gain from full replacement with a larger apartment building wouldn’t have been as large. Think of older parts of the city like King St. in Waterloo, where if you look above and behind the commercial facades you can see traces of buildings which were originally built on a very different streetscape.
Very poorly designed, indeed. As an example, I used to visit friends there. Their unit was on Westmount Rd., but we accessed it by parking in a lot behind and going through their back door. The only key entry to their unit was on Westmount Rd., even though hardly anybody would come in that way; certainly, I can’t imagine they would have done so.
Also, and this isn’t really about the design of the buildings themselves, but installation of an air conditioner required permission from the commissar and the demonstration of “need”. The idea that maybe the tenants should just pay for their own electricity and that it’s none of the landlord’s business whether they use some of it for air conditioning doesn’t seem to have occurred to the geniuses running the place. NB: the units are individually metered — there are rows of electricity meters at the end of each block of houses.
(04-21-2021, 11:32 PM)nms Wrote: Northdale was also home to housing stock that would have permitted families to live there.
This isn’t necessarily for or against what you’re saying, just a related point. Zoning for many years forbade redevelopment of the neighbourhood, long after the families had moved out and the houses renovated with extra bedrooms. Under current market conditions (specifically, being right next to a major university that has outgrown other student housing options), there is no way families are going to outbid apartment developers for the land. If zoning had allowed redevelopment, the houses would have been gradually expanded and/or replaced; instead, when the valve was opened, most of the neighbourhood was suddenly redeveloped.
Arguably this doesn’t make much difference in the long term. But I’m not even certain about that. With gradual redevelopment allowed, there would have been a lot of houses which would get additions, or be split into duplexes or triplexes, or both, and some of them would have been kept as such for longer, simply because the additional gain from full replacement with a larger apartment building wouldn’t have been as large. Think of older parts of the city like King St. in Waterloo, where if you look above and behind the commercial facades you can see traces of buildings which were originally built on a very different streetscape.
Quote:I do, however, think that the Columbia Lake Village is generally a soulless place with few opportunities for community building or for connections to the wider neighbourhood.
Very poorly designed, indeed. As an example, I used to visit friends there. Their unit was on Westmount Rd., but we accessed it by parking in a lot behind and going through their back door. The only key entry to their unit was on Westmount Rd., even though hardly anybody would come in that way; certainly, I can’t imagine they would have done so.
Also, and this isn’t really about the design of the buildings themselves, but installation of an air conditioner required permission from the commissar and the demonstration of “need”. The idea that maybe the tenants should just pay for their own electricity and that it’s none of the landlord’s business whether they use some of it for air conditioning doesn’t seem to have occurred to the geniuses running the place. NB: the units are individually metered — there are rows of electricity meters at the end of each block of houses.