02-12-2018, 06:28 PM
(02-12-2018, 05:47 PM)Viewfromthe42 Wrote: Accessibility really seems like something we have chosen to ignore. Walk around UpTown and Downtown and have a look at how many buildings aren't accessible. They are historic and preserved, but definitely not accessible. It's unfortunate that we forget some of the things we are inadvertently preserving when we preserve "heritage" buildings, things like inaccessible spaces, or neighbourhoods created and zoned specifically to exclude non-whites/new immigrants.
And some of the buildings are in that weird state where they are only a step away from being accessible. I feel like the King St. project started last year would have been a good opportunity to fix some of those. Wouldn’t help with upper floors, but most retail establishments are on the ground floor.
I’m not sure what you’re getting at with the last comment about racist zoning and related oppression. That is gone, and in any case there is no need to replace the buildings to eliminate it. By contrast, inaccessibility of a building may require expensive or even infeasible renovations to fix (depending on all sorts of circumstances including the use and size of the building).