Quote:
Originally Posted by -Harlington-
I like the idea of seeing more retail and such around the waterfront, it has a good bit of potential as a tourist destination (more so than now)
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This stuff sort of feeds off of itself. The tourists are a bit of a captive audience but if you're choosing where to go shopping you want to go where there are a number of stores. If you are looking at a neighbourhood to live in you want to live near a grocery store, maybe a pharmacy, and some other shops and services, but those things will only operate in an area with a certain level of population density.
A lot of urban areas in Halifax don't really have the population density to make them work properly, and the desire for small-scale development really exacerbates the problem. You're not going to build a successful "urban village" type of environment with 1-2 small lowrise condo buildings.
I'd argue that Spring Garden Road is the one area that has a (real but arguably borderline) level of urban convenience and vitality in Halifax, and it's not 1-2 little condo buildings plus some quaint little heritage buildings and lots of surface parking. It's got multiple large highrises and mixed use developments.
Bishop's Landing is nice but remove tourists from the picture and there's very little down there. If it were a 6 block area with 4 or 5 new apartment/condos though it would be a different story. If something goes in on Cunard, Salter, the brewery lot, and maybe the NSP lot we'd have a real neighbourhood. It would be a convenient place to live and the residents there would have a big positive impact on adjacent parts of the downtown and seawall area.