Quote:
Originally Posted by Keith P.
I'm sure the planners must have seen "gymnasium" on the submission and immediately approved it thinking it was street-level retail, their holy grail.
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Do you think that it's bad to mandate storefront type retail, or do you just dislike the planning dogma?
I agree that it is a bit of a dogma. However, I've also noticed that there seems to be a big payoff to having a lot of modern commercial spaces, and I've been surprised by how many of these spaces end up being filled by novel businesses. This article touches on it a bit:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfo...ifax-1.5033256
Having low commercial rents really seems to increase the economic vibrancy and diversity of an area. This is part of the reason why I'm not so keen on how readily the old 1950's-70's office buildings are getting torn down in downtown Halifax.
There is a cost to forcing developers to build in a certain kind of space instead of letting them do whatever they want but it seems to be pretty minimal. Ground floor condos and apartments are not very desirable. For downtown Dartmouth, I think the ideal situation is one where there's always a good variety of commercial spaces available that small businesses can afford.
I think low housing costs are similar but we have lost sight of this because of the temptation of using regulation to turn real estate into a ponzi type investment and source of retirement funding. We would be much much better off in Canada if you could buy a decent place to live for $100,000.