Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanPlannerr
truviking, as for the hateful comments, the reason i live in suburbia is because it was what was affordable at the time. I do not live in a cul de sac, and fail to see your good intentions with these comments.
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hateful comments?!...yikes thin skin.
my coments were made in humour to emphasize the point that i could not care less how long you have to sit in traffic to get from your suburban house to wherever you work...if it is a problem for you, move closer to where you work....dont ask the rest of us to pay for a larger road to solve your problem....the costs of sprawl on the city, in urban quality, civic finances and service construction / maintenance are not sustainable and i for one do not want to subsidize your wish to live in the far flung edges of the city....
the longer it takes you and other suburbanites to get to work the better it is for the city....maybe next time you buy a house you will make proximity to the centre a priority....building a bigger road so people can live farther and farther way is not the solution....enabling sprawl is short sighted and in the long run causes far more problems than it solves....i can think of much better ways of spending civic money than building you more roads, schools, water/waste services, snow clearing etc.
freeways do not create better cities...in fact, its generally an inverse relationship...the worst cities on earth in respect to urban form are in the united states....coincidentally the nation with the most freeways.
canadian cities in general are more compact, higher density (twice as dense) and more sustainable because they have fewer freeways than their american counterparts.....it is an absolute fact that freeways cause sprawl....there is a direct relationship to a city's footprint and its freeway system....i will let you research on your own why sprawl is bad for cities.
vancouver is very often touted as one of the best examples of urban form in north america....because it has no freeways...compare it to seattle and you will see the difference.
Quote:
Originally Posted by UrbanPlannerr
I'm guessing you are against the city expanding in size?, thus where would the more proper place to put the new ikea be, downtown?
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you guessed right....i dont think ikea should be downtown, but the 1.5 million square feet of retail that will accompany it and the 8000 surface parking stalls, is nothing but damaging to the city...it only serves to decentralize it further....it is a snowball effect...you build the underpass, and waverly west is more viable, then millions of square feet of retail are built to service it, then we need an underpass at waverly, which causes yet more development even further out...
as the city grows in area, disproportionatly to its growth in population, tax dollars are stretched even thinner to provide all the services the suburbs expect....it is not sustainable, financially, urbanistically or environmentally.
simply put, if one of my tax dollars paid to service 10 square feet of city area (roads, snow clearing, schools, garbage collection etc), but as the city expands and becomes less dense with fewer people to pay for a larger area, that one dollar now has to pay to service 15 square feet, either my taxes are going to go up or my services will decrease....if we can get more people to live in the same area, splitting the cost between more taxpayers, then that dollar might need to pay for only 7 square feet and services will improve or taxes can go down.
are you trying to make the argument that big box retail development is good for the city too?
next time you are at mcnally buy this book:
http://www.amazon.ca/Death-Life-Grea.../dp/067974195X