Quote:
Originally Posted by GlassCity
All those new amenities are awesome (except for the Walmart, that was ridiculous). But I don't think there's a direct connection between the new condo buildings and those amenities, which largely serve the new buildings anyway. The oval is the one exception, and would've been built regardless.
I know that over-inflated housing is a region-wide problem, and I'm complaining about it in a region-wide sense. Just that the topic happened to come up here, so I responded here. In no way do I think is Richmond distinct in this problem from Vancouver, Burnaby, Surrey or anywhere else.
My beef is both with rich people from abroad AND government, to be perfectly clear. Although my issue with government is that they're lax with these rich people, not that they're not allowing more stuff to be built for these rich people to buy.
I appreciate that the city centre looks a lot nicer now, and as I said, I do like watching these things get built. Just in the back of my mind, I know that for all the good they bring, they're emblematic of a huge issue we have in the city too, which diminishes my full appreciation of them. I lived/worked in Richmond from 2002-2017. The city changed extraordinarily in that time. Can I say that my quality of life was in any way improved with these changes? Not really. I still ate at the same places, took a bus that came with the same frequency but now was more crowded, etc. I think it's great what's happening to Richmond's city centre from an urban fanatic's point of view, but because very few people already living in the region seem to be buying into those projects, it doesn't really give me the sense that it's contributing anything good except to those rich people from abroad that are moving into them, except that they're nicer to look at I guess.
If I could choose an alternative timeline where Richmond sees drastically less development but housing remains more affordable, I'll choose it 100% of the time. And I'm not blaming these developments for creating this situation, I'm just saying it's hard for me to see all these nice condo buildings go up and not think about how no one I know would be able to take advantage of them by moving in. They're essentially long-term hotels for people not from here, with little intention of ever getting involved in the community. Just not something I can get all that excited about.
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Without the increase in property taxes paid by new owners, property transfer taxes, and contributions from developers, do you think Richmond and the province would have the ability to come up with funds for City projects?
To be fair, where in the world which is at least half decent is really affordable these days? Human population is increasing, and the planet Earth isn't really making new land, so huge price increases is expected, especially for cities and countries that want huge population increases. You can mitigate the situation, but you can't turn back the clock on that.