03-31-2022, 09:28 AM
(03-30-2022, 08:51 PM)Acitta Wrote: Can four highrises turn a Kitchener neighbourhood into an ‘urban village?’
KITCHENER — Civic planners aim to transform a faded stretch of King Street East into a “walkable urban village.”
But urban village is not a technical planning term. Developers have made no reference to it in proposing to build four highrise towers between 23 and 30 storeys in the central neighbourhood that includes the intersection of King and Ottawa streets.
Also mentioned in this story, 1668 King St. E. and 20 Ottawa St. N.
I generally think that we need to build as much housing as possible - which these projects achieve - but I do wholeheartedly agree with this quote from the article:
Quote:One challenge is that piecemeal development may undermine unity of design in a broader neighbourhood.
“Instead of the municipality establishing clear guidelines and sticking to those guidelines, development is happening on an amendment-by-amendment basis,” she said.
I personally feel this exact same frustration with the Victoria/Park tower project. It's a gorgeous design that absolutely should be built for many reasons, but it's frustrating not knowing what the Region's plan is for the reconfiguration of Victoria, or what the city is planning for the development of the rest of the Bramm Yards. Should we be expecting another ION in the future? Bike lanes or a multi-use trail? The new towers will look out of place on day 1, but how will they look in 10 years? Should we be expecting the whole area to be redeveloped including more towers? Is the city planning on reserving some space for a park?
Similarly, I've previously vented my frustration on this site for the lack of system-wide planning going into the Duke Street bike lane. Duke needs to have bike infrastructure, but the city's own planning documents outright reject some road configurations because it would restrict bus access. However, the city's tool isn't capable of comparing other scenarios, like moving bus routes onto the adjacent King St? This just feels like lazy planning.
To me, it feels like the city lacks the courage to actually have a holistic vision for these areas. This, in turn, gives NIMBYs mountains of ammunition for fighting these housing projects. I can't fault them, since the city has never given a clear indication of its vision - if it even has one. The best we have is the PARTS plans, but even those only give vague interpretations. King/Ottawa is just dripping with potential, but I have no idea what the actual plans are for this area in the future.
I guess I don't have a final point to make here, I just wanted to vent about how poor my impressions are of the planning departments in the Region and City.