Quote:
Originally Posted by Hali87
The fallacy here is that if we truly needed more intense development around the commons to make them viable, then the commons would be dead NOW. This isn't the case at all.
I'm also not sure that this type of development is "common to pretty much every other major city in Canada". Out of cities of a size comparable to Halifax, which of the following are infilling more intensely and have less suburban growth than Halifax?
Victoria
London ON
K-W-C
Windsor
Oshawa
St. Catharine's-Niagara
Regina
Saskatoon
Winnipeg?
Hamilton?
Note that I would love to see these buildings go ahead (with some modifications)... I'm mostly playing devil's advocate here, as well as basically just saying what's in the staff report.
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I know you were being a (good) devil's advocate, Hali; I respect your take on things, as your views are often thoughtful and reasonable.
On that list of cities, I don't have all the data, but I can say that many of those cities are actually doing a better job than we are at curbing sprawl while far outstripping us in terms of downtown investment. Even much smaller cities are beating us on this count.
London, ON, for example, has launched a big re-think on urban planning (
http://rethinklondon.ca) and placed a moratorium on office development outside the downtown core and significantly invested downtown.
Winnipeg has similarly tackled suburban sprawl head on:
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/...rticle4247832/
The Canadian Urban Institute did a study on "downtown investment" for Canadian cities in 2012. Halifax does pretty darn dismal.
http://downtownhalifax.ca/index.php/...ian-downtowns/
Report:
https://www.ida-downtown.org/eweb/do...0DT%205-15.pdf
In terms of "Downtown Dwellings Percent Growth Between Census Periods", Halifax is bested by Edmonton massively, but also by London, Ottawa, Toronto, Vancouver. Only Saskatoon finished lower than us (p.16 of report).
In terms of "Downtown Office Space as a Percent of City Wide Inventory" (p. 17), we finished this time at the very bottom, bested by London (who led the way.. perhaps due to their tougher policy?), Winnipeg, Vancouver, Edmonton, Victoria, Toronto, Saskatoon, and Ottawa. Yes, we have a sprawl office problem in Halifax, maybe the worst in the country by comparable cities.
And don't even get me started on where we are compared to bigger and smaller cities in terms of downtown investment; we're bested by every city examined closely in that report-- London, Edmonton, Saskatoon, and Vancouver. Even Fredericton invested twice as much as we did downtown between 2006 and 2014! (84m vs our pathetic 34m!). We are likely doing better on this count now, with the Library / Convention Center, but we're playing catch up after decades of comparable neglect. We should not be investing at comparable levels now, but outstripping everyone else to catch up. We're not.
Back to the original question -- Commons does fine now, but I think to guarantee its future, we should have more people living nearby. Take it to new heights!