General Urban Kitchener Updates and Rumours

[dtkvictim]

Developers - as well as tech groups and local BIAs, of who we should definitely not be listening to anyway - are ignoring the fact that using census data, not even half of Canadians have families anymore...so the argument that we need more single family homes is just ridiculous. But those professionals working in planning understand that fact. There is a reason we're building condos and why so many of them only have 1 or 2 bedrooms.

I believe there is a good chance you have the cause and effect backwards here. I am at the family starting age, as are most of the people are know. The majority of them, myself included, would like to have families but simply can't afford it. The single largest factor in that affordability is adequate family friendly housing, because in Canada that type of housing is almost exclusively increasingly out of reach single family homes. The only people I know who have had children are those who manage to purchase a single family home.

Denser family friendly housing can and should exist, but it's simply not happening. The only real density increases seem to be happening in the urban core, and I sure as hell wouldn't raise a family DTK (and while many on this forum may disagree with that, I think you are in the extreme minority with that opinion).

So the decrease in families and housing size, I think, is more driven by worsening economic conditions than by peoples personal preferences.

The cities and region have rules in place that already prevent most sprawl. Some projects or project areas do get approved (Doon is one area we still allow a lot), but overall we don't permit any such projects with ease, so developers don't even propose them anymore and haven't regularly done so in years. It's mostly the townships that allow traditional, sprawling suburban developments so you'd have to take their policy making up with them.

You didn't include the actual The Record story here so that comment seems a bit disingenuous anyway (here it is for those curious). In it, it says that the council members and mayor are aware that private developers are trying to pressure them into opening up more lands for development. But the cities and region all know they have plans in place to prevent sprawl, so I can't see a couple home building developers achieving much no matter how much money they have or how much they start to lobby to the general public about this (which I can see them doing...which would be annoying: Mayor Vrbanovic doesn't want YOU owning your own home!"). It's not like they're secretly paying people under the table or anything. The council basically just said "so yeah, some greedy devs are trying to talk us into opening up land for more sprawl" and The Record ran the story.

I don't know where you are getting your confidence that KWs growth boundary is untouchable. It's great that we have it, and it hasn't been touched yet, but you can look nearly anywhere in North America with an urban growth boundary to find examples of this promise being broken. Ottawa voted to expand their boundary just 2 years ago, and there is a good chance developer money had influence (not "under the table", but involved nonetheless): https://development.money/

Though it's probably worth considering that urban vs suburban developers probably have opposing views on urban growth boundaries.

What's the plan to stop the townships from inviting their own financial and environmental ruin with new low density development? It seems like the problem still exists, it's just moved outside of the formal cities.

IIRC, this City Beautiful video touches on that issue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gm-KrSqy1EM (I haven't rewatched it, so sorry if I'm wrong, but it's still relevant to the current topic).

But this is a really important point. Unless 1) the province steps in OR 2) cities start to build desirable alternatives to SFH sprawl, then the demand for this type of housing will find a way to be met.