HRM Planning Should Be Ashamed

[Keith P.]

This article sparked this post: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/missing-middle-housing-9.7203836

In HRMs rush to claim their share of a pot of Federal Govt gold, any and all planning discipline has gone out the window. The supposed "missing middle" buzzword cannot possibly justify permitting ugliness and blockbusting such as this:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/missing-middle-housing-9.7203836

Apparently, our rules for new development are essentially limited to building within the perimeter of the lot being developed (barely) and that's about it. I would not be at all opposed to the Province intervening and replacing the entire HRM planning regime and those working in the dept. This insanity needs to be stopped.

[Offshore1]

Wow - looks like stacked shipping containers with a Gable roof.
How charming.

[IanWatson]

I've seen plenty of single unit homes that are that ugly too. You can't regulate taste.

This city needs to decide if it actually wants missing middle housing or not, because the provisions they're considering in the survey are sure going to make it much less viable.

[eastcoastal]

In the article, the developer says they'd have preferred to make that example of what might be objectively ugly look nicer... ... with materials such as fake stone and vinyl board and batten... Like, that's the reach goal? Vinyl board and batten? For fire and life safety reasons, they had to make the exterior non-combustible, and that's what the developer blames the ugliness on.

[ArchAficionado]

Developer is a shmuck. His comment in that article is being deliberately obtuse when he knows full well he's built an ugly box for the sake of making top dollar off of students.

That being said, it does highlight the issue that developers build what's profitable, not what's "nice" or "fits the neighborhood character". I think design review is important, but must also be efficient. The problem in many cities is that design review committees are notoriously slow, bureaucratic, unaccomodating, and meaningfully contribute to the overall issue of unaffordability.

[Antigonish]

What's infuriating is that Halifax's current built form already is "missing middle" i.e., dense row houses and large old homes easily convertible to apartments if need be. Unless I missed it mentioned in the article I'm going to assume the 2024 changes might be related to the Liberals' Housing Accelerator Fund nonsense.

We currently have the same problem happening in here in Saskatoon. On top of that the Liberals forced the city to upgrade its transit network to receive any of the funds so they were forced to approve a shoddy rushed version of a "BRT" system that isn't BRT. So now the city is spending $300m on an "upgraded" transit system that in some cases is actually worse than the already crappy transit system we currently have which really just needs better routes/schedules/frequency and maybe 20-25 more busses to meet those demands which would be 10% of the cost.

I talked with some of the planners here at an open house a few years ago and explained what I meant and they dismissed me. Next open house I brought a ton of maps I developed with network analysis results for walkability and coverage old vs new/proposed (holy autism!) and they got all worked up about it and refused to accept any of it. No wonder they won't hire me there

[Drybrain]

Originally Posted by Antigonish

What's infuriating is that Halifax's current built form already is "missing middle" i.e., dense row houses and large old homes easily convertible to apartments if need be.

I think that's a matter of opinion. I'd describe typical inner-Halifax residential streets as dense suburbia. I don't think this can be called "missing middle"; it's mostly single-occupancy detached houses. This is missing middle.

That said, this is a terrible building, and the problem is aesthetics, not scale. One problem I have with the YIMBY movement is an almost hostile disregard for aesthetics. But A: most people want to live in an attractive place, and B: When new developments look like bomb shelters, they spark a lot more backlash than if they were beautiful. I don't for one second believe the developer's comment that he had to build it this way to conform with code. That's ridiculous. There are better looking buildings of similar scale going up elsewhere. In fact, there's an 11-metre building going up right now here, Creighton and Buddy Daye, enabled by the Housing Accelerator Fund, which IS being clad in cedar siding. It looks simple but attractive, not at all like this shelving unit for humans in the story.

[JET]

I have definitely seen worse (student housing on North between Windsor and Oxford with six cars where there used to be a lawn out front, comes to mind), but the monochromatic is quite boring. Bigger windows, that were not horizontal sliders, would have also helped.

[connect2source]

Just drove past this abomination! Let it serve as a glaring symbol of what never to do again.

[eastcoastal]

Originally Posted by Drybrain

...This is missing middle...

Oh, look... non-combustible brick cladding...

[OldDartmouthMark]

Originally Posted by eastcoastal

Oh, look... non-combustible brick cladding...

Who knew!?

[LikesBikes]

I think this could have been attractive enough if it just had balconies and larger windows. As a fan of simplicity, one of my favourites buildings in the city is the apartment building at Allan/Monastery which is quite similar to Jubilee building, but it is much better integrated into the street - https://www.google.ca/maps/@44.6476379,-..._ep=EgoyMDI2MDUyNy4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D

[someone123]

Yeah, I don't agree that basic liveable and aesthetically acceptable buildings are cost prohibitive in Halifax or that it's just a matter of taste and so nothing can be said or done about it. That building will broadly be perceived as ugly, and the fix would have been modest. It will be rented out for a lot of money, so I don't believe that slightly bigger windows were impossible.

I wonder if the comment about needing to have metal siding is true.

I think Jubilee should be considered a heritage area with design standards. It doesn't mean that every building must be the Taj Mahal. It means things like having some kind of sane entrance and fenestration and using at least mid-quality materials instead of stuff that is used for industrial shacks. HRM has had design guidelines like this published in some documents going back many years.

[Summerville]

I would bet that the steel cladding and small windows are the result of side-yard set back and fire code bylaws. The building appears to take up most of the lot.

I just don’t know why the front of the building is so fugly

[IanWatson]

Fire Code and appropriate fire ratings as you get closer to property lines is a very real thing, and this metal siding is one solution. It's not the only solution. They didn't "have" to use this specific siding, it was likely just a cheap way to meet the fire requirements.

The bigger problem here is that the kneejerk reaction is now going to be to try to regulate building materials. Some might say, "well just don't allow metal siding". But there is lots of nice metal siding that's available. Here is a very nice example of metal siding. Heck, there are nice and ugly examples of every type of building materials.

Keith, you're one of the forum members who complains the loudest about the bureaucracy of HRM, but then out the other side of your mouth you're saying HRM should be "ashamed" for allowing an ugly development.

Properly regulating taste takes A LOT of bureaucracy. We should not go down that route.

[Arrdeeharharharbour]

There'd be a whole lot less of the metal siding if they'd put proper sized windows in the building. Heck, I don't even mind the metal siding. But the windows and doors are obviously meeting the most minimum requirement. I suggest that this development illustrates well that this developer is good at meeting minimum requirements. All we need to do is just up those minimum requirements. I did the survey (which for some reason does not appear on the Halifax.ca home page under 'Engagement Hub' 'Surveys' heading) and it does appear that there's plenty of opportunity for over regulation. I do think that ugly is definable in terms of architecture and that ugly leads to negative consequences.

[Drybrain]

I don't think we ought to go too far down the route of regulating building aesthetics (though I would support vinyl-siding ban, unpopular though it would be). But there must be ways to incentivize builders not to use the cheapest siding, the cheapest doors, the cheapest windows, all tacked onto a featureless grey box. This building looks like temporary housing for victims of a natural disaster or a war, or maybe a dormitory at an Arctic research station. It should not be occupy a prominent location in a majorish city.

[OldDartmouthMark]

It doesn’t seem to be a stretch to create some kind of requirement for the new building to blend in with the existing buildings in the neighborhood, though.

Perhaps a scoring system could be devised whereby design elements are graded, not unlike how heritage buildings are determined to be ‘heritagy’ enough to be saved…

One would think that this might help circumstances whereby a building like this pops up which, while being functionally fine, stands out like a sore thumb in a very negative way.

For example, this building as built might work just fine in an industrial environment but perhaps if there were requirements for different siding types that would not look out of place in an older higher end neighbourhood in the heart of the city, like brick for example, combined with some other decorative elements similar to the surrounding houses, this would never have made the headlines.

Seems like when government gets involved we have a choice between totally thoughtless regulations that are pushed through too quickly, or over-complicated regulations that try to keep everyone happy but result in nothing getting done… but the sweet spot in the middle never seems to be reached. Kinda why I was questioning replacing the cap system in that other thread… because I don’t have much confidence in the government to not screw things up.

[someone123]

I'm not sure exactly what block this is but there's a good argument for creating a heritage district around Jubilee Road specifically. If the city wants to get missing middle housing right, getting these district right too is all the more important because development pressure in previously "stable residential areas" will increase.

Such districts are very common in other cities around the world and HRM seems to have done dozens of studies about this kind of thing. The implementation of the Barrington conservation district seems pretty poor.

I wonder about Halifax also having a lower tier of "character districts" that aren't so much about exact preservation but add some simple requirements like wood siding/shingles or hardiboard and interesting colours. They'd allow for easy as-of-right development of medium-sized buildings roughly fitting some prescribed styles (like the "box style" 3-4 floor, or dormers, bay windows, etc.).

[Keith P.]

Originally Posted by IanWatson

Keith, you're one of the forum members who complains the loudest about the bureaucracy of HRM, but then out the other side of your mouth you're saying HRM should be "ashamed" for allowing an ugly development.

Properly regulating taste takes A LOT of bureaucracy. We should not go down that route.

It's not a matter of regulating taste. HRM Planning used to review designs and not automatically approve anything that meets just functional/dimensional requirements. There once were subjective statements of things like finishes and materials and compatibility with the neighborhood that had to be satisfied. Those are now all out the window apparently.