08-13-2025, 09:27 AM
(08-12-2025, 12:19 PM)ZEBuilder Wrote:(08-12-2025, 09:53 AM)Momo26 Wrote: We are obsessed with building up. Condo market has spoken and people dont want shoe boxes. (Up to 3/4 story in a tasteful manner is okay as there is still interaction with streetscape at those heights, but not high rises).
How much land has been freed up for us to build outwards rather than upwards?
KW fundamentally can't build out, this section is the last area of KW for sprawl it needs to be dense. If we build beyond that we are severely encroaching on the recharge area of our groundwater aquifer. Which we are already encroaching on in Rosenberg.
If we build on that aquifer recharge area we are risking severe contamination from salt and all the other garbage that leaks into the ground. This means that your aquifer is then gone. Not to mention more impervious surfaces decreases the amount of infiltration which reduces the amount of water in the aquifer so then you have less water to serve even more people.
KW is already going to require a water pipe to Lake Erie or Ontario in and around 2050 given projected demand levels. If you screw with the aquifer you're going to need more at an even larger capital cost. Not to mention sprawl is useless when it comes to the tax base, the infrastructure cost alone is astronomical to maintain with low rise sprawl. You need density or significantly higher taxes, we already know we aren't getting the later. So you can only have density. Whether you like it or not KW is going to get more dense because we fundamentally can't expand out.
Giving the OP a bit of the benefit of the doubt here, I've read that mid-rise density can actually get pretty far in terms of providing housing, which they did allude to in that post. Maybe we have a bunch more 6 storey housing.