[someone123]

Interesting article. It is great that there are more voices now and a lot of them are articulating a different vision beyond the usual anti-development angle.

I disagree with a couple of small points and the conclusions though. I don't think the city should stop allowing plan amendments until the Centre Plan is done. We don't really know how long the plan will take to develop or how successful it will be, and once that's done there will be other plans and other calls to put things on hold. The city needs to keep moving forward and part of that involves making sure that planning applications go through. The amendments and development agreements are just a normal part of the process.

Similarly I think the argument about how buildings need to be the "right" buildings at the right quality level is deeply problematic. For any given building there will be a percentage of people who don't like it, and there will always be ways that new buildings can be improved. The cities with the best quality buildings have lots of development and support industries where developers and architects can thrive. Coming at this from the negative perspective of wanting to "weed out" bad buildings is not going to be effective. The city needs to say yes to developers while nudging them in the right direction.