Yes Worldy - you are probably right. But you never know...
I think if you pair high rise development forms with a system similar to HbD (that leverages private money for public benefit) you could probably change some minds. Also, if you set some objective standards in an area that says here is what you could end up with; you can actually change some minds as well.
Personally - it makes me think about Plan It Calgary again and the workshop we did called 'Design it'. I may have mentioned it in this thread, but if you don't know what I mean here is what happened: The demographics people determined how many people and jobs were being created over the life of the new regional plan. They selected 14 different areas of the city; blew up a huge aerial photo and then got groups of people around each image. They were given the breakdown of how many new people and jobs were going to be going into their area (in 2 cases, they actually saw loss of people - I was working one of those groups).
The challenge was how do you fit all those jobs and people into that area. They were given thread to mean bus routes or improved traffic patterns, although they couldn't change the spinal road network too much. You would be surprised what they came up with. People understood that if you stacked the blocks for people - it meant highrise development. Some people put in farmers markets, wind turbines, they went all out.
Now you may not realize it; but many people in Calgary are anti-building height. It's a very common concern, especially in the densifying inner city communities. So we're fighting the same fights here...but this workshop really worked well in getting people to think,
really think about the future.
So maybe something like that would be needed for doing a densification of Agricola or Quinpool? I'd certainly like to see what would come of it. I think if you engage the people and start getting them to think, they really feel a part of the process and take ownership of the fact it's 'their plan' and will actually be more willing to compromise than people might think. We certainly saw that during Plan It. But like we saw in plan it - people did allow areas for tall buildings - sometimes clustered in one or two spots, or spread out. But they did think about it...
Here are some images from the Build it workshop to show you some of the work they did!
Here is the link to the full slate of images taken that day, but I've included a few selected ones from the 'design it' exercise.