Quote:
Originally Posted by Bill Bumface
Ignore the political slant. We can't freeze the city in time and pretend it's not growing at a rapid rate.
The centre of a 1.5M person city looks a lot different (and needs to look a lot different) than a 750k person city.
It's not reasonable to buy a place and expect the type of buildings adjacent to your property to be the same for 50 years.
Yeah shadows and noise and stuff suck, no question. I'd love to be able to veto my neighbours selling their house to some family with a barking dog and screaming kids so that it doesn't reduce the enjoyment of my property. That's not reasonable though, is it? In being good citizens, well all have to suck up some change and some compromise as our city and the world changes around us.
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Unfortunately I'm starting to learn you are right. However, when things are obviously done for personal profit, without care for the people involved, and false arguments are employed, I get concerned.
For example, many people say that the communities, they wish to change, are old and in poor shape, and that is absolutely untrue. Most homes built in the 1950s have been significantly upgraded to increase their value. Also the building that went on in the 1950s was, in many ways, superior to what has happened in the last 20 or so years. I was talking to a group of renovators, working on an older home up the street recently, and they told me that when they go into the attic of a house built in the 1950s, it is perfectly dry. In fact they said they found an old raizor blade that didn't have a drop of rust on it in the house they were working on. Whereas, they said in all the houses built from the 1990s on, the attics were all wet.
Another untruth is that the upzoning is done to give the poor people a chance to live in the nicer areas. When you can purchase a 1950s bungalow for $700,000. with a large lot, and then turn around and subdivide the lot, and build two infills for $800,00. each, you certainly aren't helping the poor.