Canada's 'housing bubble' deemed close to bursting

[theman23]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

These are actually denser than our subdivisions. And many are either car free or restrict parking to side lots. Their form lends itself to placement along major avenues with more transit. One bus stop at entrance of that block might serve anywhere from 10 to 100 residences depending on how densely the block is developed.

As for walkability, dunno what could be more walkable than a car free block. Building gentle density does lend itself to supporting more businesses in a neighborhood.

Arent the parking garages just shifted to the periphery of the development? Unless you're walking to a neighbour's place, you're probably jumping into a car.

[Wigs]

Originally Posted by swimmer_spe

We kind of do. 2 different Green belts. One in the GTA and one in Ottawa.

I never realized that a good chunk of Niagara farmland was included in that! for some reason I thought it was just a ring around the GTA

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by theman23

Arent the parking garages just shifted to the periphery of the development? Unless you're walking to a neighbour's place, you're probably jumping into a car.

When many of these were originally built cars were just parked on the street out front because very few people had cars then. Today, you'd need a side lot probably. That said, overall, this style of neighborhood let's people still have detached housing in a manner that is still space efficient, and highly designed for community interaction. All without ending up with those ugly skinny houses that our developers build. Even with a side lot, there's still a lot less land being used for roads and parking.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I don't think it's fun for ANY person of colour to be the ONLY one representation in any town of North America. Being the "token" POC cannot possibly be fun. There's no one they can converse with or befriend that has the same experience in that community.

Remember that teenager will experience racism along with the possible attraction of teenage girls in the community being the "token" or "novelty" amongst a sea of white kids.

Being seen as the "cool Black or Brown guy" is not what it might seem to you on the surface.

Acajack, I'm aware you didn't intend to offend. But also don't be ignorant to the situation minorities face, particularly if they are the only visible minority in a small community.

You're right I am not trying to offend at all.

I just think that you (and even Truenorth, even though he has real life experience with this) are being too categorical that being the only minority kid or family in town is automatically going to be a shitty experience.

We all know people, talk to people, and have our own experiences.

I am actually descended from the "only X family" in a small, all-white French Acadian town in the Maritimes. There weren't even any anglos in the town.

I am a generation removed from these people who weren't even European. Different names, different languages (though they also knew French and English), different appearance, different food, different customs, you name it.

One entire side of my family still has the surname and some of them even have the classic look from our ancestors' homeland, even though they've intermarried with Acadians of French origin over the years. (I could point to the Facebook profile pictures of some of my cousins, but that would be TMI.)

Now I don't have anything in my appearance that points to obvious non-European origins but one of my kids does a bit, at least to the point where maybe once a year they get asked by an acquaintance "hey, you wouldn't be of X origin, would you?"

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Most immigrants moved to Canada for a better life. Not to be the token ethnic in a small town. If by chance, that happens, sure. But you won't find people saying, "I'll be the first xyz to plant my flag in Baie Comeau!"
.

You're assuming that it's small towns themselves (or their residents) that want to recruit "token ethnics" representing, in theory, every single group out there.

The only reason I brought up the idea of someone being a hypothetical pioneer for the Yazidi community in Flin Flon, Manitoba, is because you were subtly bemoaning the fact that people don't have anyone who looks like them in small towns across Canada.

Ultimately I don't really care if Flin Flon or even my own city have Yazidis or Zoroastrians, or whatever.

All I want are good people who want to be part of the community. Regardless of their origins or other characteristics.

[Truenorth00]

Originally Posted by Acajack

You're right I am not trying to offend at all.

I just think that you (and even Truenorth, even though he has real life experience with this) are being too categorical that being the only minority kid or family in town is automatically going to be a shitty experience.

It's really simple. It's hard enough being a kid. It's even harder if you stick out more. You can argue all you want about hypotheticals that you will personally never have to deal with. But for most of us, life is too short to waste on this bullshit. If I have options, why would I go out of my way to even risk that for my kids?

Originally Posted by Acajack

You're assuming that it's small towns themselves (or their residents) that want to recruit "token ethnics" representing, in theory, every single group out there.

The only reason I brought up the idea of someone being a hypothetical pioneer for the Yazidi community in Flin Flon, Manitoba, is because you were subtly bemoaning the fact that people don't have anyone who looks like them in small towns across Canada.

Ultimately I don't really care if Flin Flon or even my own city have Yazidis or Zoroastrians, or whatever.

All I want are good people who want to be part of the community. Regardless of their origins or other characteristics.

I have no clue what you're on about. Going from, "Dating options might suck if you're a minority," to, "You could be an ethnic pioneer!" is quite the fucking leap. But you do you.

My only point here was that quality of life is not solely defined by how much square footage can be acquired for a dollar. And it's way too simplistic to assume that what people value is the same across the board.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

I have no clue what you're on about. Going from, "Dating options might suck if you're a minority," to, "You could be an ethnic pioneer!" is quite the fucking leap. But you do you.

My only point here was that quality of life is not solely defined by how much square footage can be acquired for a dollar. And it's way too simplistic to assume that what people value is the same across the board.

And my point is that if it's (allegedly) a problem or a shortcoming that a town has no Yazidis, that at some point someone has to be the "first one" there.

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

It's really simple. It's hard enough being a kid. It's even harder if you stick out more. You can argue all you want about hypotheticals that you will personally never have to deal with. But for most of us, life is too short to waste on this bullshit. If I have options, why would I go out of my way to even risk that for my kids?

.

What do you think one of the reasons I moved to Quebec was?

I didn't grow up in that all-white Acadian town where my family were the local outliers. I grew up in anglo towns and cities and my problem was that I was "French" (sic).

In junior high I was bullied and even got the shit kicked out of me for being "French". The teachers and principals did nothing. The cops even got involved at one point.

Now that I think of it, our junior high had exactly one black kid. He was one of the popular kids, actually hanging out with the bullies though he wasn't one them. A pretty nice guy actually, though he'd get in trouble in school for being too rambunctious.

I am sure he heard some stupid even racist things on occasion but back then I would have traded places with him any time.

[Truenorth00]

Buddy. It's not always about you.

Moving on....

[Acajack]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

Buddy. It's not always about you.

Moving on....

Indeed it isn't.

Being the only visible minority in an all-white town is always gonna be a shitty life experience.

The Black Mayors of Québec’s Logging Country
https://angryfrenchguy.com/2009/02/16/the-black-mayors-of-quebecs-logging-country/

[goodgrowth]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I never realized that a good chunk of Niagara farmland was included in that! for some reason I thought it was just a ring around the GTA

Usually "environmental land reserves/parks" are sort of random shapes in the middle of nowhere with some sort of unique ecological properties. It's so obvious in Ontario's case that "greenbelts" that conveniently ring around urban areas are simply used to stop development. In most cases the sprawl is just extended further.

[Innsertnamehere]

The Ottawa Greenbelt has truly been jumped by development.

The Toronto Greenbelt smartly left lots of "white belt" lands within it to allow for continued growth of the urban area - it's the Places to Grow act that went with the Greenbelt which required higher intensification rates and artificially restricted the supply of SFD product that is causing the affordability issues and causing people to jump across the Greenbelt to Niagara Region and Simcoe County for housing.

[MolsonExport]

Originally Posted by Wigs

I never realized that a good chunk of Niagara farmland was included in that! for some reason I thought it was just a ring around the GTA

look no further than this map to understand why places like Guelph, KWC and Brantford are going to boom for many years to come.

I love the idea of a green belt in principle. But if there are highways passing through them (there always are), then developers will just leapfrog to outside of that permeable barrier.

Protecting valuable land for valuable agriculture should absolutely be a priority. But using a green belt to constrain GTA growth seems...like it would actually encourage sprawl and the further miltonization of the universe.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I love the idea of a green belt in principle. But if there are highways passing through them (there always are), then developers will just leapfrog to outside of that permeable barrier.

I think they're mostly a Boomer era initiative that was "green" and ensured that many suburbanites would continue to have access to bucolic areas nearby in the future. They're not necessarily good policies (is the farmland near Kitchener less sensitive than the stuff north of Richmond Hill? who knows?) and they're not compatible with all the other stuff this same group wants, like high immigration to allow for plentiful and affordable services. Not trying to trash this group but this is what it is, and the planning regime in place served their interests pretty well for a number of years after when it was implemented (Ontario Greenbelt began in 2005).

We also need to come to terms with some trade-offs like whether or not we really want Canada to have a much larger population and what that means for the environment and land use here. Although I think a lot of people are too pessimistic. The land use impact in many rural areas has been declining for years and is probably more important than the smaller urban footprint. Meanwhile we are in the middle of a shift away from fossil fuels. Even EVs aside, GHG emissions per km driven have dropped a lot.

[lio45]

Originally Posted by MolsonExport

I love the idea of a green belt in principle.

Same here at first sight, but then thinking about it a bit, the idea of a "belt" is actually a really bad one (it'll get leapfrogged and you'll have tons of Miltons on the other side). Why not instead have the agricultural lands of the entire province (or even country) protected? Let's just do infill instead for the foreseeable future.

Green "belt" kinda means "it's okay, and even encouraged, to destroy the greenery that, unfortunately for it, happens to be beyond the belt", and when viewed like that, it's not a good idea in principle at all.

If there's a silver lining to the Putin/Ukraine global food crisis, maybe it'll be that it will further raise the price of good agricultural land up to the point where building million-dollar Welland-style shitboxes on it finally stops making financial sense for developers.

[jamincan]

The Greenbelt is not specifically about constraining development, despite what it might look like. It's composed of two environmentally significant features: first, the Niagara Escarpment, which is a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, and the Oak Ridges Moraine, which is both ecologically important as home to a wide number of species at risk, but also a critically important ground water recharge area for Central Ontario.

Places to Grow is the primary instrument for controlling development in the GTA and surrounding areas and further restricts things beyond just the Greenbelt itself.

[goodgrowth]

Niagara Escarpment is a Unesco site? Not doubting it but a lot of places that are not Southern Ontario would just call that a hill...

Guess we need to nuke Hamilton.

[whatnext]

Gee, I wonder what effect stuff like this has on house prices? it boggles the mind that provinces aren't forced to have a beneficial owner registry for property.

Real estate fraudster is the beneficial owner of 65 properties, transparency registry shows
May 20, 2022

A Surrey man found by a judge to have committed real estate fraud is the beneficial owner of 65 properties, BC’s beneficial ownership registry shows.

The Land Owner Transparency Registry shows that an individual by name of Xiao Dong Liu is the beneficial owner of 65 properties.

64 of those titles are held by Carthew Registry Services, which itself had once been named as a defendant in a lawsuit alleging real estate fraud1.

BC Supreme Court documents show that Xiao Dong Liu a.k.a. Allen Liu – who is involved in various businesses in Richmond, BC and in China – has been involved in a long running lawsuit involving the sale of a Burnaby bowling alley that the presiding judge described as a “Festival of deceitfulness”...

https://openhousing.ca/2022/05/20/real-e...-properties-transparency-registry-shows/

[Mister F]

Originally Posted by Truenorth00

They also lack the transit and accessible retail of The old streetcar suburbs.

The biggest difference between old suburbs like Riverdale and more recent imitations is that in old suburbs the major roads are pedestrian oriented, traditional mixed use main streets. These streets are the core of the communities they pass through.

By contrast, new urbanist subdivisions in the 905 may look like Riverdale in the interior but they're ringed by pedestrian-hostile high speed stroads. These roads are the edges of communities, barriers that make each subdivision an island of walkability surrounded by hostility and danger. As long as this approach is taken these areas will always be car dependent no matter how walkable the internal streets are.

Outward growth wouldn't be such a big problem if we were willing to build suburbs the way we used to.

[rousseau]

Originally Posted by goodgrowth

Niagara Escarpment is a Unesco site? Not doubting it but a lot of places that are not Southern Ontario would just call that a hill...

Guess we need to nuke Hamilton.

There's a little waterfall there you may have heard of.