Quote:
Originally Posted by ILoveHalifax
Even with all our anti development tactics Halifax is a city of 650,000 all within an hour of downtown. Had we been a little more aggressive for the last few decades we could be pushing a million.
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But Halifax's metro area already encompasses nearly an hour drive in most directions, and to the northeast, almost a two-hour drive. Even with that ludicrously generous metro, it's only 420,000—not at all close to 650,000.
The only way Halifax could be pushing a million today is if the province and Atlantic region more overall had grown far more robustly in the last century (or even the end of the 19th century).
But sometimes I do hear that argument in Halifax—that removing development restrictions (which really aren't especially onerous in this city; the problem is more bureaucracy, not restrictions per se) will keep young people here and attract newcomers, therefore the Heritage Trust are destroying are future. It's all pretty hyperbolic and groundless. People don't move to cities for the highrises. (If the built environment is an attractor at all, I'd say more people move for heritage—that's part of what I loved about the city that inspired me to come here).
Look at San Francisco or Vancouver or Portland, OR—some of the most restrictive (in some ways overly restrictive) development environments in North America, and both insanely sought-after, for economic reasons in SF's case, and quality-of-life factor in Portland's.
In any case, the Trust are far too often blamed for broader economic malaise. They HAVE been an obstacle to some good developments, and they deserve a lot of criticism for that and for other reasons, but their power as obstructionists is vastly overestimated.