Quote:
Originally Posted by eman
I think the entire Osbourne Village Neighbourhood Plan should be trashed. Rezone every square inch for mixed use high density except parks. Same goes for much of Corydon St. B, the West end and around every rapid transit station. Stop approving mid/high density housing near the perimeter for a while.
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I think the reason the city isn't seeing lots of high density development is because there is little to no demand for $2000 high rise apartments and zero demand for $300-400K condos. I'm skeptical that if we just opened everything up zoning wise we'd see tower cranes shooting up all over the place. None of the people you listed can snap their fingers and suddenly have a bunch of university educated people with good incomes (or students whose parents have good incomes) who want to live in higher density buildings.
Maybe as the cost of single family housing increases in Winnipeg and wages stay flat we might see an increase in demand for high rises, mid rises, and town houses. Its not like Osborne Village is Toronto's West End.
I think we both want a similar result, I'd love to see higher density development in Osborne Village around the 4 towers. But to be honest, I just want to see higher quality buildings built in the area, even if they're just 3-6 floors. From a walking perspective, I absolutely hate walking in Toronto's tower neighbourhoods. They look nice in the background and in pictures, but don't make very nice neighbourhoods.
Also, for what its worth, the higher density development in Bridgewater is awful urban design. It is almost always surrounded by surface parking. I'll never understand it, living in a city building without the city around you. I'd understand it if living close to the city was just too expensive and people were driven to terrible buildings because of cost limitations, but I'm almost certain that isn't the case here.
Edit: I just realized the demand/economics argument is already made in one of the Twitter threads posted above.