General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[ac3r]

I would actually say that D'Amato is not so much complaining about the building -- she is writing more about the bonusing structure built into the 1985 zoning by-law. She says it has achieved its goals, and that's a good thing. But that it's time to adjust how it works. And I do agree that the quid-pro-quo of bonusing should be adjusted, not to prevent density, but to ensure that the density brings appropriate value to the city.

Who cares? It's articles like these that give NIMBYs ammunition for their fight to keep this city from going anywhere but a dead end. We need to keep building and building densely.

Here's a good post from a Reddit thread in reply to "It’s now long past time to rewrite that bylaw so that it responds...":

These buildings are kind to the environment. They locate thousands of people on the same small parcel of land rather than spreading them out across the countryside. They locate people in walkable neighbourhoods near transit and thereby reduce emissions from driving. They encourage high-income individuals to live in 700 square feet instead of 3000 square feet, so they buy less useless stuff and share heating and cooling with shared walls. It's a clear environmental win.

And it's also a win for the housing crisis. The more houses we add to the overall stock, the better - but we can't achieve that if residents and council keep complaining about bylaws and shadows and having NIMBYs stall projects.

And we can certainly build more housing using midrise buildings, row houses, townhomes and so on but until we change zoning rules, that's not going to happen. We can't sit around waiting for this sort of stuff. These sort of projects need to get built, even if the projects themselves aren't great (ugly architecture, little or no commercial space, a lack of multi bedroom units and so on). They're downtown, located near rapid transit, multiuse trails, businesses, stores and so much more. They're perfect. I think it's obvious that these people (the journalist and NIMBYs) are just against tall buildings. Every time one is proposed they go crazy and do all they can to stop it.