Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
To me a big part of the problem is that it's so common for large parts of a city to be zoned exclusively for single family homes to the point that the only way to satisfy demand for new housing is either greenfield sprawl on the outskirts or highrise projects on the limited sites where they're permitted. I honestly don't believe that the type of zoning which excludes anything but low density housing should even be permitted. I don't have a problem with hight limits in certain neighbourhoods, but it should be possible to at least build lowrise apartment and condo buildings in any residential area if there's demand for them. If that were possible (and had been possible for awhile) then it would be less necessary to even have larger residential highrises in a setting such as HRM.
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I agree with this but I don't actually think lowrise infill is that desirable in a city like Halifax.
Highrises get vilified but if you want to add 200 units to a neighbourhood you can do that in one narrow point tower or you can do it by demolishing 25 different houses and turning them into small apartment buildings. The lowrises are actually more disruptive for a given density level.
People tend not to think of it that way, probably because they are coming from the perspective of opposing construction, not trying to figure out how to accommodate growth. The question of how to accommodate growth is the important one for the city.
It has an impact on housing affordability too. Here in Vancouver it's a big issue. The city might approve a 40 unit building on a $10M lot, so that's $250,000 in land costs per unit before you've even demolished the old structures. The numbers just don't work out and so we have a humanitarian crisis with people living in tents while some homeowners are happy they got a boutique 4 storey affordable housing project next to their house instead of a tower. Halifax land prices are less extreme but I'm sure the costs could still work out to the tens of thousands or low 100,000's per unit depending on how low the density goes.