Quote:
Originally Posted by trueviking
Yeah. I'm tired of that attitude of desperation in Winnipeg. It's time to demand big picture thinking or we will never evolve. There's no neighbourhood and there never will be with a block long parkade. Sometimes bad development is worse than no development.
I don't believe townhouses are an economic deal breaker. I believe they were allowed to delete them so they did. Make it a requirement across the city and developers will find a way to make it work.
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It's not an attitude of desperation, it IS desperation. We have tons of lots in good locations, and the problem is an imbalanced relationship between cost and projected revenues.
We can't sit back and demand that other people spend their money our way. They'll go elsewhere. There's a reason I harp on this point every time. We're all in favour of a better design all the time... who isn't?
There are always two big pictures. First the neighbourhood and the integration of the new structure into it, and the residents/businesses integrating into the new structure.
The second big picture, and it must be respectfully acknowledged, is that this is someone else's land, building, money, dream, and most importantly, risk. Those are all infinitely more critical and potentially damaging factors that no armchair quarterbacks online can be hurt by. I want functional neighnourhoods, but the libertarian in me would be immensely offended if my ambitions on land that I own were constantly adjusted by others, greatly affecting my future livelihood.
Townhouses don't seem like an economic deal breaker, but they were dropped. Ergo, they were an economical burden or risk to some extent... that's how the market works. There could be other factors that [revented this, and hey, the developer also might not be the brightest, but that happens.
In regards to building a better neighbourhood... let me be cynical here... what neighbourhood? Winter club to the north, shitty housiong further north, and Donald to the west? It's a great location because it's walkable to key features, whether transitm the forks, or osborne, but there is no continuity of "neighbourhood" there.
I'm a firm believer that a B or B+ project still raises our GPA significantly, and if the project succeeds, helps raise the local base economic capacity of projects like these, leading to better ones in the future.
Quote:
Originally Posted by borkborkbork
Agreed. This will make Harkness Station feel even more like getting off in the middle of nowhere, since there will be no signs of life at street level.
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????
It currently is more in the middle of nowhere than anything possible. I get the ideal we're after here, but it's incorrect to state the above. Harkness was already segmented off, and now we're adding residents. Not a bad thing.