Quote:
Originally Posted by IanWatson
Yeah, but HRM can't win. If they get strict and specific people yell at them for "not being flexible and pretending they know better than developers who do this day in and day out". If they don't get strict they get blamed for allowing crappy buildings.
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That's all well and good, but at the end of the day HRM is responsible to its citizens as a whole and not to individuals, such as the development community. Therefore they need to take leadership and define how the city will grow, and building quality should be part of that.
It seems like HRM is afraid to take a stand and take control of the process, in the apparent fear that the developers will "take their ball and go home". What they don't seem to get is that the developers still want to make money, and if that involves making less money in order to abide by a strong set of rules and regulations, they will still do it as it's better than not doing business at all.
If they decide that they don't want to abide by the rules, then other developers will step in and take their place - it's a free market after all. I'm hearing that it is done that way in other places, so there's no reason to believe it won't work here.
As far as I'm concerned, if HRM stepped up and demanded higher quality developments then it would be considered a 'win', even if the developers whined about it.