04-17-2019, 11:51 PM
(04-17-2019, 06:11 PM)ijmorlan Wrote: My impression is that in general Canada is much better for this. It is still possible the government can decide that this particular block absolutely needs to be turned into a park or public square (I’m looking at you, Dundas Square!), but in general expropriations are done for legitimate infrastructure projects. Even in the past when we still bulldozed poor neighbourhoods, they were either turned into public housing (Regent Park in Toronto) or City Hall (Toronto), or the place just sat for decades (Lebreton Flats in Ottawa). It seems that generally we don’t just turn the expropriated property over to a developer to make tons of money for themselves.
That is consistent with my understanding as well. It really seems like it has to be for a legitimate public purpose and that we're much closer to paying fair market value for expropriated property. Halifax also has the Africville thing in its own non-brilliant history, so we're not perfect.