And it's important to distinguish here, the Herald purposefully misrepresents the issue. This isn't about some hipsters and academics condemning suburbs as sprawl. Not everyone is saying to stop building suburbs and not all suburbs are contributing to sprawl. The problem burbs are car dependent, isolated, low-density neighbourhoods that promote inefficient deliver of services, automobile dependency. and lack connectedness to the urban fabric. But it's entirely possible to build suburbs that address those issues. From my take, that's what Nenshi and co. are trying to do. They're trying to build in a multiple account analysis from various socially optimal outcomes, not jsut the bottom line of developers for new housing developments. The salad days for the development industry are over, they need to recognize that and it has nothing to do with the individual personalities on council. They're trying to roll the clock back in time. The world, North America is wising up and moving onto new modes of development. They can either engage or they can continue to try to stop the tide from coming in.
People like myself don't want to limit peoples' choices for the housing types that they want by some fiat of city council. What we want to do is get the pricing right so that you pay of the full cost of the type of housing you want, that you have a legitimate choice of housing options of all types, and that the built form of the city starts to resemble one of interconnectedness and sustainability.
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