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Originally Posted by Antigonish
I think we've come to the point where zoning needs to be mandated by the province. Japan does not have an affordability problem to the level we do, and it's partly due to their zoning laws (federal). If there is a provincial body set up to speed up the process of rezoning that circumvents a lot of municipal red tape and NIMBYism then it can only help.
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God, no. Municipal govt is closest to the ground, so to speak, and should be better-positioned to understand the issues and make good decisions on things like this, certainly more so than the ponderous, unproductive, and underperforming provincial bureaucracy. But as you say, HRM has some very poor and excruciatingly slow processes of their own, which is a problem they need to fix. There is no way these things should be so slow. The HRM bureaucracy is overly large and far too expensive to support, the planning dept is staffed with the wrong people in many cases, focusing on the wrong things much of the time, and they have zero sense of urgency. That all needs to change.
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The other issue is transit. Halifax simply cannot grow much further without metro LRT. Are there anyone in-the-know about the LRT situation? Is it still at best at feasibility stage of deadlock? The federal government has their whole sights set on infrastructure spending yet I have not seen much about provincial and municipal lobbying for upcoming funds to get it under full swing. 
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LRT is not going to happen in our lifetimes.