Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper
You don't see awesomeness looking at the built form from street view. South Riverdale doesn't need East Harbour at all. The point is East Harbour should be a self reliant development. That's the biggest problems with so many these large scaled transit oriented communities in low rise neighbourhoods. Developers take advantage of the surrounding offerings and provide the bare minimum. These desirable communities become the hand maidens for the new developments and are not designed for an influx of 5 to 15000 new people. I repeat this one serious example of many examples again. Schools are overcapacity in my neighbourhood and the neighbourhoods surrounding it. The school board erects white board at every single major development to inform buyers that the school are full. To summarize, Your children will be bussed to far off places.
I don't understand looking at East Harbour from a city wide level. The only thing of relevance to me at that level is housing growth and transit ridership quotas. Prioritizing housing growth is the province's strategy as well as getting every Torontonian on transit as much as possible and, in my humbliest opinion, It's killing New York run by the Swiss. East Harbour should prioritize how it impacts South Riverdale and consider solutions to minimize those effects even if it mean less buildable densities
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Well it's very rare for an existing, established neighbourhood to "need" any substantial new development. But a forest or farm field doesn't "need" a greenfield subdivision either since a forest was perfectly happy providing habitat for its plants and animals for thousands of years and a farm has its own productive function. So I honestly don't consider that relevant. If there was something substantial the existing area
needed, it would either have already been provided by now, or the area would be in serious decline which would make it undesirable for new development to begin with. But I disagree that there's nothing of value the new development could potentially add. At the city/metro level, yes the total amount of housing is a consideration. But for me, having a variety of housing locations, different types of housing available in different areas, and a higher proportion of people in the metro area within convenient reach of transit are also important. I don't see people having an option of using higher order transit as relating to a term like "quotas". I just consider that a dual quality of life issue and urban functionality issue. To me, quota implies numbers on a spreadsheet rather than people actually getting increased options. Maybe I'm too optimistic, you're too pessimistic, or both.
I do agree there are valid concerns of course. But a lot of it is down to outside factors like past or regional decisions (often mistakes). These tend to be beyond the scope of local planning that can't be solved solely by pairing down local development proposals. Like, with not planning sufficient school capacity in central areas to support population growth. Any significant growth in a metro area will require significant new infrastructure of various types. There may be a few schools in other areas that are currently under capacity, but that's not going to last very long with sustained growth, and those areas aren't necessarily going to have excesses of other types of capacity such as transportation, water/sanitation, etc. So if you say a central area like this can't accommodate the new residents, where do they go? No decision to exclude people from one area can be made without simultaneously providing a better alternative. And most options are going to involve building some type of new infrastructure. So I generally just advocate for adding new infrastructure along with the development. But that's just my preference as an inscrutable optimist of course.