Quote:
Originally Posted by Wolven
My hot take is that I disagree with your assertion. Buying in a former RC1 neighbourhood was an intentional decision to avoid living crammed with other people or having trouble finding a parking spot around my home. Now there is a developer trying to convert a bungalow into an 8 or 9 plex around the corner without enough parking or yard space. I expect that design will get shot down by the development process but they will probably come back with a 4 plex that will get approved, which (IMO) does not fit at all with the rest of the neighbourhood.
A part of my issue is that the city was already struggling to try and execute the Main Streets initiative. They put together their mock ups and drawings of these amazing walkable streets with retail and condos above and "15 minute city" concepts but once it was approved to go ahead they immediately let the developers cut corners and cheap out on the delivery. Now instead of a unified vision for "main streets" we are getting a hodgepodge of poorly executed density, but at least they built some sidewalks...
Instead of blanket rezoning, I would have rather seen a more planful strategy with zoning that is tailored to Calgary so that they could build neighbourhoods that fit together and stayed within the aging infrastructure and service capacity.
- If the schools in the neighbourhood are already bursting beyond what they can handle, adding another 500+ houses worth of density in the area is only going to make it worse.
- If they are already needing annual trips to 1950s neighbourhoods to maintain the crumbling sewer lines in the area then piling on more homes is only going to cause more problems.
In my opinion, a better solution would be to have the city have a firmer hand on developers to get the density and style that they want. Looking around the city there are massively wasted opportunities for development that would yield faster and more significant housing numbers than this blanket rezoning strategy that will give the city nickel and dime density increases.
- Ogden and the industrial SE section of town could have huge gains if they would push the corporations out and built a high density "inner city" 15 minute city there instead
- Kick the rail yard out of the inner city to further enhance that inner SE development opportunity
- West village is a mess and at some point they need to deal with that bus depot and the land remediation there... but they could take that whole waste of space of car dealerships and instead put a pile of 40+ story condo buildings with thousands of units in the downtown core (like everything else, remediation is only going to get more expensive with time)
- Westbrook is an empty field (on top of a c-train station) and they let a developer just sit on it until the land rights reverted to the city and now they are waiting on some other developer to step up and build the thousands of unit density that they envision on that land.
In each of these situations you have corporations mucking about and getting away with whatever they want for "profits" while the blanket rezoning puts a lot of individuals at risk of having the most expensive asset in their lives become devalued by hodgepodge cash grabs for "density".
I would much rather see the city take a more aggressive stance with corporations and start buying and developing land internally (and maybe even make profit in the process). At least then when they pitch a huge idea like main streets there would be a chance that they execute it to the vision and ensure the results that the people need... namely thoughtful housing inventory that meets the diverse needs of people in all walks of life and lowers the cost of housing but also maintains the infrastructure and services requirements of a growing population.
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I will tell you right now...if they tried that Ogden would be like an old-timey Frankenstein movie, I mean the villagers would be out with torches and pitchforks...and of course trucks and guns.
And secondly...
CPKC >>> City of Calgary (<- might even need more 'greater thans')
The City isnt telling them what to do with their railyards. Not gonna happen.