General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[danbrotherston]

What purpose does consulting with the public serve? Why do property owners' opinions matter with what happens to other people's property? I don't see the purpose of democracy here. To me, it is like giving my input on a new sewage system, highway interchange. or new power lines. I'm not an engineer or designer, why the hell do I get to influence a project like that?

Because if there is going to be a new project in a neighbourhood, it's important to consult with existing neighbours. There are often legitimate concerns or questions about things and often there are good suggestions people have that can be implemented in a project. I mean...when it comes to things like bike lanes, I think all of us here would agree that we would love to see the cities and region in particular more involved because they often design really asinine bike infrastructure that is very dangerous.

Usually the public just has nonsensical opposition to a project (it's too tall, the shadows will be problematic, there will be too much traffic, they can't have "poor people" living near them which we often hear when it comes to affordable housing projects, "we're becoming like Toronto"...I even remember one guy quoted in The Record as saying we're becoming like Manhattan lmao) but if they are fair in their complaints, a developer can go back to the drawing board to make alterations to things such as adding setbacks to upper levels to mitigate things like shadows or adding lots of trees surrounding the project so neighbours don't see a massive building when they look out their windows.

They can also suggest great ideas such as adding park spaces, better lighting for the streets, artistic features (think Charlie West where they added a place to hang artworks as well as leasing out a portion of the windows at ground level to KWAG for small art exhibitions though I don't believe that was added due to public suggestions), improved sidewalks, public benches, safety features (i.e. signage/lights/alarms for parking exits), things like improved drainage features...with an office building I helped designed in Montréal, I once had a person point out that a certain part of the building could cause problems with ice buildup on the sidewalk and so we implemented a way to mitigate that - a totally minor and overlooked thing on our part. On another project I worked on in Berlin, some people suggested the developer include the green roof I had designed which would help with the heat island effect, so with some discussions I managed to convince the developer to include that despite the additional costs.

Allowing the public to participate in the process is a great thing and in most cases, it is beneficial in getting things approved if they know their concerns are being considered. And it's also beneficial in demonstrating to the residents of your city that their concerns can be taken into account, which in the long term is good if people know that things won't be blindly approved with no consultation. If this often annoying and unfortunate process didn't occur, you'd have people getting progressively more upset with choices that are made which can snowball into a larger annoyance, which can then influence things come election time or result in cities making drastic changes to what is and is not allowed.

That said, there is really no reason a project like Victoria and Park should not have been approved. Sure, it would have cast shadows on neighbouring houses but the benefits of the project far outweigh that minor inconvenience. Now I just hope NIMBYs don't cause another uproar and get 26 Charles and 88 Queen cancelled. However, I have some confidence they'll go ahead without any issue. The article in The Record seems like the usual worthless clickbait rage article that Luisa D’Amato gets paid to write. There aren't any quotes from residents raising any concerns (though I'm sure some people do have some), but rather Queen NIMBY Debbie Chapman being "flabbergasted" and anti-progress as usual. They probably have each other on speed dial so they can complain about stuff haha.

See...the problem is this is NOT true. I DON'T want to have to explain to engineers why they're bad at their job. Leaving aside the fact that they don't listen to me, they're paid to do this...they shouldn't be bad it. I shouldn't have to explain what they're doing wrong. I DO because I HAVE to.

Technical issues shouldn't be up to the public, we should have experts who are actually good at their jobs building the things the public says we want.

I.e., if the public wants safe places to bike (which they do) or equivalently if an effective leader convinces the public to want safe places to bike, then it should be up to experts to implement good infrastructure for safe biking. We SHOULDN'T know more than those experts, we should just be setting the overall goals.

How this translates into building development is through policy...we should communicate to our governments what we want (intensification, active streetscapes, artwork, etc.) and they--being or hiring experts in governing should develop policies which result in this type of development happening.