Quote:
Originally Posted by acottawa
I think more important than the age of the nieghbourhood layout (clearly many neighbourhoods built in the 50s were continuing projects halted by WWI or the Depression) is the age of the houses. Are the houses tightly-spaced with limited car infrastructure because it was expected most people would walk to the streetcar or the local shopping street (e.g. much of New Edinburgh) or are the houses loosely spaced with infrastructure set aside for cars because it was expected people would do their commuting and shopping by car (e.g. most of Overbrook). The former group seem to have had more luck with property values than the latter.
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Good assessment. I'd divide neighbourhoods into three classes:
- The New Edinburghs: logical street layouts, mixed-use, built on the expectation that people WOULD walk for most purposes.
- The Kanatas: street layouts that only make sense to drivers, mass-segregated uses, main drags, "power centres" and office "campuses", built on the expectation that people WOULD drive for most purposes.
- The Overbrooks: logical street layout for the most part, semi-segregated land uses but still with main streets, built on the expectation that people WOULD drive for most purposes, but still laid out on the old walking principle.
We need to start building more suburbs on that third model. The official plans essentially call for that model. But we don't. Our developers don't propose them. City Hall doesn't insist on them. NIMBY chapters freak out if you propose building or retrofitting neighbourhoods to be more like them. And so Kanatas are all that ever gets proposed, approved, and built.
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