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Kokkei Mizu
May 31, 2011, 4:25 PM
I'm asking this because there's a development near my house (which is already an urban sprawl type of neighbourhood built in the 50's) where they are building one street with about 30 homes where one house used to sit. The land wasn't a farm, just one house with a big property.

Would you consider this infill or urban sprawl, or both?

Here's a map of where it is in relation to St. Thomas and London.

http://goo.gl/maps/vhjP

MolsonExport
May 31, 2011, 4:42 PM
^more infill than sprawl.

Simpseatles
May 31, 2011, 11:51 PM
There's a couple of these types of infill developments on Hyde Park south, and I'm not a big fan of them! They are tightly packed condominiums with almost no backyard, and giant garages in the front.

Although I would consider them infill, the type of planning behind them definately has the sprawl mentality in mind. Just in a very tight space. Which bugs me because it doesn't succeed in providing the people who want to live the suburban lifestyle what they want (big enough yard, privacy), or the people who want to live the urban life what they want(pedestrian orientation, welcoming appearance, shops).

manny_santos
Jun 1, 2011, 2:27 AM
The age of building houses with big backyards is over. We can't afford to keep wasting land for houses with big backyards at the rate we have been, or else food prices are just going to keep going up as our planet's population skyrocketing. And more people are going to go hungry. Any food grown on Southwestern Ontario farms doesn't just get used to feed Canadians or Americans.

The so-called suburban lifestyle was a fairy tale that is not sustainable. All future development in London, except for some industrial developments, need to be infill. The amount of land London's urban/suburban area can easily fit 500,000 people. We've got enough land within the urban development boundary to last us at least another 60 years, at the rate London's population is growing.

It's all about shared sacrifice. I've said it before and I'll say it again: just because individuals want something doesn't mean they should automatically get it.

On a personal level, I could care less about ever having any backyard. It's not something many urban dwellers in other parts of the world have anyways.

Simpseatles
Jun 1, 2011, 2:43 AM
^Well said. But I still stand by my perspective. Even if building the "suburban dream" is no longer feasable in London, this type of infill shouldn't be the alternative. Just look at the crap behind the Superstore and barracks. While building "sprawl style" developments inside the city may be better than outside, it doesn't change the fact that they are poorly designed and could be turned into higher density residential areas, that are much more appropriate for their setting.

bolognium
Jun 1, 2011, 3:42 AM
That new neighbourhood is a little disappointing, Simp, but I think it's actually quite dense. As far as single-detached areas go, that one seems to be packed tightly.

Also, I'm pretty sure it's mostly young families, which is great.

vid
Jun 1, 2011, 5:47 AM
I consider sprawl to be building on land that has never been built on before, at a rate exceeding population growth. (Some ratio could be determined by experts.) Doing this on pockets of undeveloped land within the city isn't as bad as doing it on land outside the city as the infrastructure already exists in the city to support the development. I wouldn't consider the example in the original post to be urban sprawl, but it is drawing it pretty close. The neighbourhood was probably urban sprawl when it was built.

Off topic, but this is really interesting (http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=214676243429975615507.0004a494d54ee58e38503&ll=42.773353,-81.188235&spn=0.008537,0.017617&t=k&z=16). Alma College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_College_%28St._Thomas%29). Not often you catch an event from this angle.

Kokkei Mizu
Jun 1, 2011, 3:34 PM
Off topic, but this is really interesting (http://maps.google.ca/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=en&msa=0&msid=214676243429975615507.0004a494d54ee58e38503&ll=42.773353,-81.188235&spn=0.008537,0.017617&t=k&z=16). Alma College (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alma_College_%28St._Thomas%29). Not often you catch an event from this angle.

Haha yeah... I don't know if that's an inside joke within Google, or if it was just bad luck. Definitely doesn't make St. Thomas look that great from Satellite.

Also, I don't know if anybody looked at the land on Google Street View, but here you go: http://goo.gl/maps/AbQQ

The house in the back was moved, and the barn demolished.

Wharn
Jun 2, 2011, 4:05 AM
The age of building houses with big backyards is over. We can't afford to keep wasting land for houses with big backyards at the rate we have been, or else food prices are just going to keep going up as our planet's population skyrocketing. And more people are going to go hungry. Any food grown on Southwestern Ontario farms doesn't just get used to feed Canadians or Americans.

I agree with the need to reduce the size of backyards or rethink land use, but not for the reasons that you mentioned. The amount of farmland lost due to urbanization since World War II has been pretty marginal compared to the amount lost due to abandonment. Higher density needs to be encouraged not because of marginal loss of farmland, but because of the prohibitive costs of serving extremely low density housing. The problem is, whenever developers try to increase density in new subdivisions, they often do so in a very unpleasant manner.


On a personal level, I could care less about ever having any backyard. It's not something many urban dwellers in other parts of the world have anyways.

Having a backyard of some kind is actually very common throughout the world, even in extremely dense countries like Japan. Surprisingly, many Japanese houses have courtyards surrounded by low walls where people can go out and sit. Some of them, especially in smaller cities like Hakodate (about the same size as London) can be quite large and even have grass lawns and garages. In Britain, which somehow manages to feed itself and has more people than Canada crammed into a space about the size of Southern Ontario, plenty of people have backyards with gardens. Obviously urban dwellers the world over enjoy having an outdoor space that is not just a slab of concrete jabbing out of a wall, and it is not the government's business to deny them that if it can be feasibly built. Maybe when Ontario achieves a population density similar to South Korea, we can consider more drastic measures.

MolsonExport
Jun 2, 2011, 1:42 PM
I like having a backyard....mine is rather smallish, but it is great for the kids and BBQ. Front yard, I don't care so much about. What I really hate is the fact that most new homes are pretty much all truck-faced garages in the front main floor: Double garage with a 3-foot wide front door. No window on main floor. Makes for a fugly landscape at eye level. In addition, double garages on narrow lots implies that most frontage is actually driveway and not lawn.

My home is one of the few notable exceptions on my street: I have a very large front window on the groundfloor, with only a 1.5 width garage. Consequently, my lawn is larger than most, and thus, I can have a nice garden in the front.

Simpseatles
Jun 2, 2011, 7:24 PM
My family has a large backyard, and we make great use of it. We have a nice deck, a garden and a koi pond. While I could see myself living the apartment or condo lifestyle downtown for a period, I will eventually want some sort of home with a nice yard. This is something that I value.

What annoys me are people with large yards, that do nothing but simply watch the grass grow!

manny_santos
Jun 3, 2011, 2:05 AM
Nothing wrong with having some sort of backyard - but many of the ones I've seen in London are large enough to fit another whole house on, or more. The lot behind my parents' house has a backyard large enough to fit a small condo complex! And the people that live there don't even use their backyard.

Wharn
Jun 3, 2011, 2:23 AM
Nothing wrong with having some sort of backyard - but many of the ones I've seen in London are large enough to fit another whole house on, or more. The lot behind my parents' house has a backyard large enough to fit a small condo complex! And the people that live there don't even use their backyard.

This is likely a result of the childish privacy complex found in so many North Americans. Though there are plenty that do well in standard low-density layouts, there are those who absolutely cannot bear having any contact with their neighbours, and thus seek outrageously sized lots.

For the record, I would consider these houses near Kilally Road to have reasonably-sized lots: http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Kilally+Road,+London,+Ontario&aq=0&sll=43.021988,-81.263542&sspn=0.00102,0.002411&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Kilally+Rd,+London,+Ontario&ll=43.028165,-81.227074&spn=0.008094,0.01929&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=43.028112,-81.227371&panoid=K8D2YGfdyQVJZCFTk_7tgw&cbp=12,150.12,,0,-2.5

These ones south of Hyde Park, not so much: http://maps.google.ca/maps?f=q&source=s_q&hl=en&geocode=&q=Hyde+Park+Road,+London,+Ontario&aq=0&sll=42.982486,-81.328869&sspn=0.0081,0.01929&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Hyde+Park+Rd,+London,+Middlesex+County,+Ontario&ll=42.979613,-81.332195&spn=0.0081,0.01929&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=42.97984,-81.333618&panoid=ucOpzvkz2A0Cjdv2L1mf2A&cbp=12,144.33,,0,-0.5. Imagine what this kind of development does to our property taxes and utility network maintenance fees.

manny_santos
Jun 3, 2011, 2:24 PM
This is likely a result of the childish privacy complex found in so many North Americans. Though there are plenty that do well in standard low-density layouts, there are those who absolutely cannot bear having any contact with their neighbours, and thus seek outrageously sized lots.

Couldn't have said it better myself. In the Byron area where I grew up, the typical residents wake up in the morning, emerging from their 2-car garage in an SUV, drive to their job, drive home into that garage, and disappear never to be seen again. Intelligence says these people are in hiding in their rec rooms or in their backyards, protected from the outside world by ultra-tall wooden fences. The only people that ever emerge from their secure compounds are those who have dogs and must walk them, and the kids who go to school.

After I spent that month in Latin America two years ago, where the streets were vibrant with kids playing, adults out shopping, and people selling food on the street, the first thing that struck me coming into my parents' neighbourhood was how DEAD everything was. I thought I was in a cemetery. Everyone was hiding inside. From what? Their neighbours? And where were the kids? Not outside kicking a ball around, but likely inside playing Xbox for hours on end.

It's not unique to London either. I'm working in a smaller Ontario city right now and it's the same deal in the suburbs there. Absolutely dead.

Wharn
Jun 6, 2011, 3:01 AM
After I spent that month in Latin America two years ago, where the streets were vibrant with kids playing, adults out shopping, and people selling food on the street, the first thing that struck me coming into my parents' neighbourhood was how DEAD everything was. I thought I was in a cemetery. Everyone was hiding inside. From what? Their neighbours? And where were the kids? Not outside kicking a ball around, but likely inside playing Xbox for hours on end.

You don't even need to go to Latin America for that. Townhouse complexes, by virtue of their higher density, often encourage people to interact more with each other. In my London complex, backyards have no rear fence, and so people often mingle together, talk and have outdoor BBQs. I rarely saw this happen in my old Toronto suburb. Speaking of the Imperial Capital, The Danforth area in Toronto, and even certain sections of Scarberia, are alive and teeming with people.

Then again, increasing density is not always the answer. In particular, I was surprised with how antisocial everyone was in my ex's tower block on Richmond. Nobody even responded to a friendly "hi" on the way in the door :(

manny_santos
Jun 6, 2011, 4:29 AM
Then again, increasing density is not always the answer. In particular, I was surprised with how antisocial everyone was in my ex's tower block on Richmond. Nobody even responded to a friendly "hi" on the way in the door :(

I don't know if that is a density problem or a London problem. However, I recently discovered there are places in Canada less friendly than London. Has anyone here been to Simcoe? That's my new winner.

Wharn
Jun 7, 2011, 1:42 AM
I don't know if that is a density problem or a London problem. However, I recently discovered there are places in Canada less friendly than London. Has anyone here been to Simcoe? That's my new winner.

I've noticed it in other apartment blocks before, first as a child at my grandparents' low-rise in the Don Mills and Lawrence area in Toronto, then when visiting friends. You hardly ever saw the neighbours, and when you did they tried their best to ignore you. Just that one example in London happened to be especially closed-in.

Kokkei Mizu
Jun 25, 2011, 4:20 AM
Okay, I have another riddle for you guys. Obviously urban sprawl is an issue, and we're getting smarter, as a society, in some ways. However, I think some regulations encourage it.

For example, imagine a country highway on the outskirts of London, or even in the middle of nowhere. Now, imagine where a gravel road intersects that country highway. A developer comes along and wants to build a 200-home development, pretty much making their own town. The catch, however, is they want to build a row of 10 commercial stores, as well as some townhouses, less than 5 metres from the edge of the country highway. The developer will redevelop the highway in this newly created town to have curbs, gutters, wide-sidewalks, and parallel parking.

Back in the 1800's, this would fly. But I doubt it would nowadays. How come?

MolsonExport
Jun 27, 2011, 12:58 PM
I don't know if that is a density problem or a London problem. However, I recently discovered there are places in Canada less friendly than London. Has anyone here been to Simcoe? That's my new winner.

Yeah. Nice guys finish last. London is friendly, but what's the deal with the never-ending bad news on the job front?

Wharn
Jul 2, 2011, 7:32 PM
Yeah. Nice guys finish last. London is friendly, but what's the deal with the never-ending bad news on the job front?

I would not classify London as a "friendly" city overall. Though the North and West tend to be fine, I've definitely noticed some people in other parts of town have serious attitude problems, often directed towards students in particular. I can understand that residents get frustrated with Fanshawe/Western party antics, but treating random students off the street like crap is not a solution to noise pollution. Torontonians, the classic "meanies of Canada", seem to be cold and uncaring, but they don't actively go out of their way to make sure that you feel put down.

jammer139
Jan 2, 2022, 8:41 PM
Interesting article on the urban sprawl issues from a Mississauga perspective.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-mississauga-a-cautionary-tale-as-cities-sprawl-out-across-southern/

ssiguy
Jan 2, 2022, 9:23 PM
London certainly sprawls but not any more than any other Canadian cities. Despite Vancouver's claim of density, it sprawls forever into the Fraser Valley.

Big city urbanites always bitch about cities sprawling but not so much their own. This is because if you live in a bigger city in a pre-1960 neighbourhood, you can get everything you want so they never actually see the sprawl going up in the suburbs. In midsize cities like London, you are often all over the city for different things so you encounter it all the time.

To my way of thinking sprawl is when a city develops huge low density areas outside the already urban ones where there is still a lot of land available in the city for infill. In a fast growing city, with a relatively higher density inner area like London, sprawl is somewhat unavoidable. Yes, you read that right, London is a fairly high density city for it's size. London has quite a solid built urban form and there is almost no where in the pre-1960 areas of the city that has more than one block of undeveloped land.

The problem with trying to contain sprawl is that it requires not just the city to try to contain it. If the city decides to greatly increase density requirements, people will simply move outside of it's borders. We see this in London as Komoka, Kilworth, St.Thomas, and Strathroy are booming in both population and development and there is not a damn thing the city can do about it.

If London wants to really control urban sprawl it must also convince the districts right outside it's borders to do the same and chances are poor that they will as all those new people and developments bring a lot of new tax revenue.

jammer139
Jan 3, 2022, 1:16 AM
The challenge for these bedroom communities on the periphery is getting access to water and sewer services and in some cases high speed internet. Schools can also be an issue.


In the case of London will they agree to extend access to water and sewers to communities outside the city? And at what cost to the county municipalities. Will the province step in to mediate in cases of disagreement? The pressure to develop lands around Arva could increase in the coming years I expect. County development fees could be substantially less then in London and developers will pressure them to allow low density sub divisions.



London has a number of brown field and under developed areas that are great opportunities for much higher density. LPH lands, McCormicks, Byron gravel pit, SoHo hospital lands and the Horton and Wellington rd corridors, Springbank Dr between Wharncliffe and Wonderland. Wharncliffe Rd south of the Thames river all the way to Lambeth, Adelaide st and Hamilton rd.


The downtown area should do away with any density or height restrictions entirely. The city should focus on insuring that the core has substantial water, sewer and power capacity to add 10,000 plus showers and TV's easily. Development fees for green field new subdivisions can be dramatically increased to discourage sprawl and extending city services to external municipalities declined as a matter of policy except in the rarest of cases. Build up not out is a keystone in the London Plan.

Pimpmasterdac
Jan 3, 2022, 2:37 AM
End of the day the only way this gets resolved is if the province makes a drastic changes to municipal structure is in the name of sustainable housing & development management. When there was debate about London's annexation of Lambeth/Westminster in the early 1990s, one of the proposed solutions was to combine London, Lambeth, Strathroy and all areas in Middlesex country into the super "City of Middlesex" akin to how Chatham-Kent was eventually set. Even this was considered an extreme step in the early 1990s as London and its population would dominate the new city, and history has shown Lambeth and Westminster are ignored when absorbed into London. There's the additional issue of St Thomas being in a different county and no reason to coordinate with London.

I do agree having a County or Regional government to management development makes sense, but it would be a tough sell to the power hungry & self-important politicians and NIMBY neighborhoods to give up their "vetos" to another authority. That's why it would have to be the province doing some serious municipal restructuring, and the fact that London isn't apart of the GTA means won't happen anytime soon.

The problem with trying to contain sprawl is that it requires not just the city to try to contain it. If the city decides to greatly increase density requirements, people will simply move outside of it's borders. We see this in London as Komoka, Kilworth, St.Thomas, and Strathroy are booming in both population and development and there is not a damn thing the city can do about it.

If London wants to really control urban sprawl it must also convince the districts right outside it's borders to do the same and chances are poor that they will as all those new people and developments bring a lot of new tax revenue.

In the case of London will they agree to extend access to water and sewers to communities outside the city? And at what cost to the county municipalities. Will the province step in to mediate in cases of disagreement? The pressure to develop lands around Arva could increase in the coming years I expect. County development fees could be substantially less then in London and developers will pressure them to allow low density sub divisions.

Doady
Jan 3, 2022, 3:08 AM
I think a lot of people, including those quoted in that article, think of "sprawl" too simplistically. We can't label all outward growth as "sprawl", and we can't label any upward growth as the "anti-thesis of sprawl" either. It's the outward growth outpacing the upward growth, the amount of land area growing faster than the population that really defines sprawl. In other words, "sprawl" is a verb, not a noun. It is the process, not the product.

Mississauga could have thought further ahead and done more to promote intensification, redevelopment, preserve undeveloped land for future high density, and get people using transit, cycling, and walking, but it's not like it didn't do those things at all. The problem is, Mississauga didn't do enough of that, and London shouldn't have much problem doing better.

I think probably the biggest thing that suburbs all over fail to do is build corridors for transit, to reduce the gaps between routes, and so reduce the walking distances to the bus stops. You can see this in the south part of Mississauga, which is almost devoid of bus routes for this reason. There are just no roads or bridges for the buses to use! South of Dundas Street, the only other local road that crosses the Credit River is Lakeshore Road, and that's 4km away, meaning a 4km gap in bus service. You can see this same problem in Vaughan, with Langstaff Road broken up into multiple pieces, and the York Region not providing their own bus service along the Steeles corridor, resulting huge gaps in the York Region Transit network, and it kills their transit ridership.

Permeability. That is the number one thing that separates the inner city from the outer suburb. Mississauga and Vaughan are not lacking in density. What they are really lacking is permeability, to allow for a complete transit network, and reduce the distances required for walking and cycling, including to the bus stops. I think it is the lack of permeability more than lack of density that makes Mississauga and Vaughan car-oriented and it is the lack of permeability rather than lack of density that will hamper their efforts to become transit-oriented. The newer subdivisions are much MUCH more permeable than the older subdivisions, with much more thoroughfares and many TOD measures, but maybe too little too late.

Even from just a cursory glance at a map, I can see the problem of lack of permeability in outer parts of London, like Westmount and Byron that are lacking thoroughfares. Probably not easy to take transit from Westmount to Oakridge even though the two neighbourhoods are next to each other. And on the north side of the city, there are the Gainsborough/Windermere/Killaly Road and the Sarnia St/Huron Rd corridors both broken into multiple pieces, so no chance to build transit corridors there. That's a four kilometre gap the Oxford Street corridor and the Fanshawe Park Road corridor - these are the only two major corridors north of downtown for London Transit Commission to use, and this will have a significant impact on how car-dependent or how transit-oriented London becomes as it continues to grow outward. Hopefully, London will do better with new subdivisions, as Mississauga has done with Churchill Meadows, but as I said, maybe too little too late, major permanent damage has already been done to the transit network in London as it has in Mississauga.

Thinking ahead, the long term instead of the short term, that's the most important thing. And maybe that's what really defines "sprawl". It is just about the present, it's not about the future.

haljackey
Jan 3, 2022, 4:18 PM
If growth continues outside of London's boundaries at a ever-increasing pace, then we need a regional government. That way these communities are kept in check with a broad-range of planning policies and they pay taxes that benefit the whole metro area.

It's either that or expand London's city limits once again to absorb these places. Hamilton and Ottawa have huge city limits for this reason- for example.

Djeffery
Jan 3, 2022, 5:37 PM
I can just imagine what Glanworth would look like today if 30 years ago, London took more to the north and west and less to the south lol.

jammer139
Jan 3, 2022, 7:48 PM
I suspect Glanworth would have changed little because it is downwind of the London dump, Toronto dump and the "diaper" burning plant. Nobody wants to live downwind of these facilities. These facilities are a very significant impediment to future developments in the south end of the City's land area.


Hence why you see all the development to the west, north and east.



I can just imagine what Glanworth would look like today if 30 years ago, London took more to the north and west and less to the south lol.

jammer139
Feb 2, 2022, 6:25 PM
Report on Inclusionary Zoning being discussed at Planning committee. Consultant report has alot to digest for City Hall planners and politicians.



https://pub-london.escribemeetings.com/filestream.ashx?DocumentId=89583

Ryeguy01
Feb 2, 2022, 10:50 PM
Today when I was driving back from work I noticed a sign south of Regina Mundi. The sign read land for sale at 87 acres for Future development and it’s by CBRE.

Djeffery
Feb 2, 2022, 11:01 PM
Wonder if that's the same land Joe Swan made an election announcement about back in 2014 for a Leamington greenhouse company that was going to build a large greenhouse and food processing plant in that area.

jammer139
Feb 2, 2022, 11:56 PM
That would be outside London's urban growth boundary. So likely zoned agricultural or industrial. Little chance of any residential future being downwind of the waste dump.

jammer139
Feb 4, 2022, 4:12 PM
LFP article on the IZ debate.


https://lfpress.com/news/local-news/new-provincial-building-rules-will-put-brakes-on-affordable-housing-city