Quote:
Originally Posted by hipster duck
The difference between Toronto and Manhattan is that in NYC, a developer would have transferred air rights from the historic buildings and built some kind of skinny supertall in the modern, lowrise box in the centre.
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Does any Canadian city have a system of heritage preservation that includes transferable development rights like NYC? They seem to align economic incentives in a way that preserves this public good, while just about every other policy I see doesn't do this. There is a Canadian tendency to either do nothing or implement some kind of rule or subsidy.
It's rare that I hear anybody in any planning situation talk about heritage preservation coherently (public good vs. private owner, aligning incentives, etc.). In Halifax the dominant views were "let's ban everything over 4 floors so nobody ever tears down an old building" and "old buildings must be torn down because they are not economical". Both depressing in their own way, and the result is what you'd expect from that, a mix of suppressed development and needless demolition through neglect designed to sidestep the debate so towers can be built.
One other little critique of the Toronto proposal which I see in so many of these is that instead of rebuilding historic facades to add to the integrity of the streetscape, they fill the space in between the heritage facades with nondescript modern boxes.
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