Quote:
Originally Posted by mr.John
from this perspective I count over 6 towers that are taller than mount royal, which illustrates the sheer stupidity of Montreal's height restriction laws  |
Either go with a hard cap of 80-100m to ensure the mountain's prominence over the entire cityscape (and a hyper-dense, expanded city centre) or let it go. Capping the height at the mountain's height almost ensures that more views of the mountain (or of the river viewed from the mountain) are obstructed.
Developers have multiple 120m+ towers, some of them phases of the same project, underway or built. Many of them are up against the limit. Hard to believe that they wouldn't have gone taller seeing as how the market (pre-covid) could support it.
All of the 120-200m towers that have been built in the past 5 years obscure views of the mountain, unless viewed in absolute elevation from kilometers away. A few 250m towers would also obscure the views but take up relatively less ground area. You could argue that the visual impact is the same.
In fairness though, when the zoning was written, it would have been hard to conceive of multiple towers going up to the limit
simultaneously. It's also worth noting that several of Montreal's previous height limits were loosened over the decades. There doesn't seem to be any interest in revisiting this for now - but I think as development pressures continue to mount and empty surface lots run out, it will only be a matter of time before the municipal administration has to decide between allowing greater heights and densities in select locations or allowing the demolition of the existing built form (already in progress). Time will tell.
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