Quote:
Originally Posted by Wyku
Going back to the increased densisty downtown, I'm just curious how many of you guys that are adimant about this idea would like to live in a 20th floor condo rather than a house with a yard? Or, spend $500,000-$1,000,000 on a loft in a sketchy warehouse district, rather than a nice sized home with a yard or quiet street your kids can play in? I
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I would and did all of the above in Vancouver, which is exactly my point. To be honest, I am sick of house maintenance and yard care, my kids rarely use the yard, and I hate having to travel even the short distance I do to work downtown. I would gratefully move to a condo downtown, if there were amenities (i.e. community centre, school, grocery store, full range of shopping), and other kids for mine to play with there. BTW, I am considering the ecovillage to be built across form RIver Landing
My childcare provider in Vancouver lived in a 600 square foot aoparment with two kids and cared for 6 more all day. She was constantly in the park, at the library, at the commubity centre etc, with the kids and I think the kids had a much richer experience than they would have had in someone's suburban basement and yard. This doesn't exist in Saskatoon, because people have a whole bunch of misperceptions and unexamined biases toward suburban versus urban living. Until someone challenges those biases, they will not change. Millions of European and Asian (and more recently Vancouver) children grow up to be healthy, happy and successful in apartments. Somehow, bringing up children in an apartment is be considered nearly akin to child neglect here.
WRT to "a quiet stret your kids can play in", if you look at the stats, I would guess (I am open to correction) you would find more kids are killed or injured on those quiet suburban streets where people are lulled into complacency than on busy downtown streets where people are realistically cautious. An example from my own experience (living in a core neighborhood) would be cycling. I taught my kids form an early age to ride on (relatively busy) streets in an appropriate way. When I take them and their friends on a bike ride, I do not fear for my kids safety, but I fear for their friends, who ride all over the road, switch from sidewalk to road without looking and ride their bikes across cross walks, because they learned to ride on "quiet [suburban] streets. The same goes for strangers. Living in an inner city neighborhood, my kids are learning to be able to judge social interactions for safety, whereas their suburban friends don't. My kids can identify a situation to stay away from, becasue they have seen a few. At third example is traffic safety. My kids don't run onto the road without stopping and looking. Their friends who grew up on cul de sacs do. This difference would likely be even greater if we lived right downtown. I would argue that while this takes a lot more work as a parent, it is beneficial for the kids in the long run. Living in a (relatively) crowded downtown can be a huge advantage to kids.
My argument is that a "vision" should see beyond what is to what might (and should) be. If we don't want sprawl, we can't all have our own yard.
As for the cost of apartments being 500,000 to 1,000,000, that is only because they cater to wealthy folks without kids, which is exactly what the city is encouraging. If the city wanted to encourage family oriented and more reasonably priced condos, that could be acheived in many ways.
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, curved sounds interesting as well. However, I have doubts on whether they'll be included in the final design...
, though I might be wrong.
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