Bringing the population to 1 million

[Citizen_Bane]

Halifax really is a great place to live and it seems more and more people are figuring this out and want to relocate here. It's also great to hear that this healthy growing city is holding the interest of and providing opportunity for our young people so that they no longer have to move on to establish their careers and lives elsewhere. Anyway, the consensus in this thread seems pretty strong on HRM not doing enough in regards to planning for future infrastructure needs. We all know that infrastructure costs $ so I suspect that the consensus would also be strong in terms of keeping our city fairly compact and economically serviceable. I suspect that it won't be too many more years in the future that the peninsula will be essentially full with little opportunity for new development...certainly much less opportunity than exists today. It's in the interest of minimizing infrastructure cost and in keeping our city's footprint reasonable in size that I want to toss out the idea of rezoning the lower portion of Burnside Industrial Park...above Windmill and well below Burnside Drive. I know that Burnside is a bit of a sacred cow and rightly so being that it is the largest employment centre east of Montreal and Boston. But ever since I first stood in the parking lot of the old Princess Auto some years back and took in the view of the basin, the bridges and the city's downtown beyond, I've thought it a shame that the area was not residential. There is perhaps an opportunity on the horizon with the completion of the Burnside Extension and the opening of new industrial lots to incent the relocation of just some of the existing businesses. The city did a good job of revamping Akerley Blvd. this past year but Wright Ave. is a right mess. Many of the older buildings in this area are little more than grossly inefficient tin builds of little substance and even less appeal. Perhaps rezoning is just not doable but in my mind it makes sense that the people should occupy the nice space and the industrial warehouses occupy the less desirable space. This area of Burnside, with some exceptions, seems to be mostly retail, restaurants and food stores along with innocuous small businesses already and would mix just fine with multi residential buildings. The street grid in this area may need to be tidied up but the road network is solid. The area is serviced.
Residential development in this area could also support LRT circling the basin and then crossing a twinned McKay or a newly built replacement for the existing McKay that would be built with LRT rails. And besides, I think it would look pretty awesome to see this hillside dotted with residential towers.