06-27-2022, 02:08 PM
(06-26-2022, 08:22 PM)bravado Wrote: 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?
It's probably not so black and white, as the answers you've gotten already show. But I can help but wonder if the extreme friction of public consultation is caused by grossly inadequate zoning? We know our population is going to increase by X amount, if our zoning doesn't have room for this growth with a signification amount of buffer space (allowing the market to decide which plots to develop, and allowing for unpredicted growth) then the issues of public consultation are inevitable.
If the public consultation was reframed as "We are going to upzone the city to meet the next 15 years of growth" then the consultation could be a productive discussion of how people want to see the city grow. But critically there could be no discussion of compromising that original goal. Any development that follows is not up for discussion.