Monster home, townhouses in Brampton, neighbours not amused

[RC8]

Downtown is chock full of examples of residents complaining about 100% legal activities. The Annex and frat houses? Parkdale and new restaurants? The Junction and that GE nuclear facility? Harborfront and YTZ? The Beaches and out of the cold programs? I don't think it's related to built form so much as an oversaturation of the over-entitled sort, which probably explains why areas like the Annex, the Beaches and Guildwood see lots of NIMBYish protests while Regent Park, St. James Town or Malvern don't.

But those concerns are for the most part genuine understandable concerns whereby people feel that their quality of life or personal safety is being threatened. I don't think there is any community that wouldn't complain about a hidden nuclear facility, or about the proliferation of frat houses, or about becoming the new 'entertainment district'. Those are all objectively very undesirable things (as are, by the way, supertalls and casinos).

The reasoning behind opposing townhomes and a new park and library branch because the units are unsuitable for sikhs is far-fetched beyond belief, on the other hand. I don't think you would see anything like it in a functional urban setting.

I'm not disagreeing that the Beaches could be seen as suburban, but that's a bit of a slippery slope since most 'downtown' neighbourhoods have exactly the same builtform (moderate density homes surrounding commercial main street). For whatever reason I think it's standard practice nowadays to term this kind of inner-city suburbs or streetcar suburbs as 'downtown.'

To summarize, the sense entitlement you talk about is usually a byproduct of specific socioeconomic privileges and not built form. Maybe Torontonians don't usually consider these Sikh communities in Brampton privileged, but they seem very important to the local political dynamic which people like Dhillon benefit from. They certainly feel privileged enough to speek definitively for 'the Sikh community' even though I'm sure tons of Sikhs would probably like the idea of townhomes.

While the socioeconomic privileges definitely play a role, I really don't think they are the most important thing in this case. Wealthy owners are more likely to complain than poor renters, sure, but when you compare wealthy urban owners with wealthy suburban owners, and urban poor with suburban poor, you'll see a strong pattern where urban populations are less likely to be mindlessly paranoid to the extent that these Bramptonians are.

Think of Mississauga Road, where homeowners opposed the construction of a sidewalk... a sidewalk! And contrast that with the much more expensive and desirable homes in Summerhill, which welcome pedestrian activity.

Another suburban story of mine:

When I was about 13 years old I once stepped into a suburban driveway to admire this big pine tree someone had. I was visiting my uncle, and having grown up in the city I had no idea that driveways were considered private property. I looked at the car that was sitting there, a buick - which reminded me of a car my family used to have - before making my way back to my uncle's house. I got back to the house and out of nowhere came a police car with an officer ready to arrest me. Thankfully my uncle saw me and came out! Turns out a woman from the other house called in, said I tried to break into her car, and that I ran away when she talked to me. All of this was a complete fabrication, she didn't talk to me, but obviously she was so terrified that she lied to make sure police would make their way and arrest me.

My friend who lived in Mississauga Rd. and also didn't know you weren't supposed to step on driveways got the cops called on him as well. In order to get to the house where he lived he would 'cut corners' through his neighbours driveway and of course, the neighbour felt he should call the cops to address this.

Once again, I lived 90% of my life in the city and I NEVER had an experience like this one in an urban environment. There is something about the built form of suburbia that makes people very frightened of their surroundings, and simultaneously creates this entitlement to emotionally approve or disapprove of things regardless of any logic. It is probably much more obvious to me than to people who grew up in suburbia, much like the dysfunctions of dense urban areas are probably more obvious to others.

 

[Lenser]

Once again, I lived 90% of my life in the city and I NEVER had an experience like this one in an urban environment. There is something about the built form of suburbia that makes people very frightened of their surroundings, and simultaneously creates this entitlement to emotionally approve or disapprove of things regardless of any logic. It is probably much more obvious to me than to people who grew up in suburbia, much like the dysfunctions of dense urban areas are probably more obvious to others.

I think there is something to this. As someone who spent his teens in suburban Ottawa and then Mississauga, I have some of the same recollections. One of my cousins in Misssissauga still give hints of the same attitude; neighbours are fine, but property lines are sacrosanct.

It's all too easy to generalize and stereotype, of course, and observations about suburban vs. urban culture are no exception. I have seen some of the same types of battles in neighbourhoods very close to the core. Sometimes you just don't get along very well with your neighbours, period. And within the same families you can have very different reactions to one's surroundings; one of my brothers never left the suburbs, much preferring them to life downtown - whereas I couldn't wait to get out of the 'burbs and begin my life. Where I saw opportunity, he saw fear - crime, confinement, crowds, noise. And where he saw safety and comfort, I saw blandness, homogeneity and suffocation - those, in turn, were my fears. So it goes.

 

[Memph]

I don't know... I grew up in the suburbs and never had an experience like that. My friends and I played tag across driveways and front yards of the nearby townhouses all the time. We often walked our dog off leash in certain ravines that were mostly used by other dog owners and no-one seemed to mind even though you were supposed to keep them on leash. People trusted that you would only let your dog off leash if it was friendly. There was a creek that ran through back-yards with the area around it not fenced in and most neighbours were tolerant when kids walked around there, there was one who didn't like that but she still didn't call the cops.

 

[James]

I've grew up in both the city and the suburbs and I have to say it really depends on the people themselves, not the location. That said, if you think about the reason most people move to the suburbs, it may partially explain why there are these attitudes of NIMBYism and this deep-rooted allegiance to the almighty property line. People move to the suburbs to have "their own space." People always talk about how they don't want to look out the window and see the neighbor's bathroom window or how they want to have more personal surrounding space or a backyard where you don't see everyone else's backyard for miles on end. This notion of "your own space" likely rings more true in the suburbs than in the city where people move to neighborhoods specifically for the connectivity of the neighborhood and not the proximity of your neighbor's exterior wall.

 

[diminutive]

I've grew up in both the city and the suburbs and I have to say it really depends on the people themselves, not the location. That said, if you think about the reason most people move to the suburbs, it may partially explain why there are these attitudes of NIMBYism and this deep-rooted allegiance to the almighty property line. People move to the suburbs to have "their own space." People always talk about how they don't want to look out the window and see the neighbor's bathroom window or how they want to have more personal surrounding space or a backyard where you don't see everyone else's backyard for miles on end. This notion of "your own space" likely rings more true in the suburbs than in the city where people move to neighborhoods specifically for the connectivity of the neighborhood and not the proximity of your neighbor's exterior wall.

Perversly, I think this also explains a lot of downtown's NIMBYism.
It's true that people move to neighbourhoods for the 'connectivity of the neighborhood.' The flipside of that though is, I think, a heightened sensitivity to what they perceive as their neighbourhood. People move to Ossington for instance expecting certain neighbourhood characteristics and become offended when 'their' neighbourhood evolves into something the didn't neccesarily buy into.
Whereas I think suburbanites are, usually, much more focused on their own house. There's definitely less of a sense of neighborhood, so NIMBY complaints usually target things which can impact individual properties rather than 'the neighborhood.'

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

dimunitive:

I would disagree - you try putting an "undesirable" land use in a suburb (particularly those pressing race/class/socioeconomic or road use buttons) and you'd see just how monocultural subdivisions work against you, the lack of neighbourhood identity notwithstanding. For all the downtown NIMBYism, there is always some element willing to counterbalance a certain stance given the usual diversity of residents. You don't really get that in the burbs when the residents get riled up.

Lenser:

I live in Mississauga and it's interesting to observe what gets people worked up - it's less about race/ethnicity per se (there are exceptions) but socioeconomic class, unspoken codes of behaviour and the maintenance of stasis - there is an expectation that, other than trees growing taller - that no change of any kind will happen in the neigbhourhood subdivision. People might not like buildings of a certain height, but there is the understanding (expectation?) that things are constantly changing in downtown - no such concept exist in most suburban neighbourhoods.

AoD

 

[urbandreamer]

Solution: build giant townhomes 4000SF THs?

 

[Lenser]

Lenser:

I live in Mississauga and it's interesting to observe what gets people worked up - it's less about race/ethnicity per se (there are exceptions) but socioeconomic class, unspoken codes of behaviour and the maintenance of stasis - there is an expectation that, other than trees growing taller - that no change of any kind will happen in the neigbhourhood subdivision. People might not like buildings of a certain height, but there is the understanding (expectation?) that things are constantly changing in downtown - no such concept exist in most suburban neighbourhoods.

AoD

Yep, agreed. The only profound changes I note when coming back to Winston Churchill and Dundas are that the neighbourhood looks greener, more mature - and there are far more fast food joints and big box stores perched on every major intersection. As ever, the growth vector is generally outward, rather than upward... the exception being Hurontario, of course. I do think change is threatening in the 'burbs. It's also threatening in the core, but there's perhaps less resistance to it nowadays simply because the change has been so strong and seemingly unstoppable in recent years. People see it as inevitable.

 

[adma]

Well, in practice, anyway, planned single-family subdivisions are too "inert"-by-design for the upward growth vector--where that'd happen is more likely where the fast food or big boxes now stand; maybe at most, the redevelopment of townhouse clusters here and there...

 

[Lenser]

Absolutely. It's designed from the get-go to favour sprawl and personal autonomous motorized transport. Mass transit, as we've seen in Mississauga, often amounts to a late afterthought. Now Mississaga is slowly moving in the right direction. Still, finding the political will among the citizenry to pay for a comprehensive expanded transit infrastructure is a huge challenge, GTA-wide.

All of which makes it a challenge to retrofit such low-density neighbourhoods for densification. So instead you get those town home clusters and the odd residential tower. And people still driving practically everywhere.

One of the things about sprawl is the tax base required to pay for its very expensive, dreadfully inefficient infrastructure - I'm referring to roads, power, sewage. In good times it's not a big drag on the pocketbook and the economy can shoulder it and move forward. In lean times it's a different story; it makes less sense to favour the sprawl model, especially when energy costs are moving upward - after all, plentiful cheap gasoline helped fuel sprawl too. Should that factor go away, such sprawlopolis settlements will need to reinvent themselves. Of course, if people can find jobs close to where they live, then that too helps immensely. But in my experience if you live in suburbia your commute tends to be longer and involve greater distances.

 

[W. K. Lis]

Absolutely. It's designed from the get-go to favour sprawl and personal autonomous motorized transport. Mass transit, as we've seen in Mississauga, often amounts to a late afterthought. Now Mississaga is slowly moving in the right direction. Still, finding the political will among the citizenry to pay for a comprehensive expanded transit infrastructure is a huge challenge, GTA-wide.

All of which makes it a challenge to retrofit such low-density neighbourhoods for densification. So instead you get those town home clusters and the odd residential tower. And people still driving practically everywhere.

One of the things about sprawl is the tax base required to pay for its very expensive, dreadfully inefficient infrastructure - I'm referring to roads, power, sewage. In good times it's not a big drag on the pocketbook and the economy can shoulder it and move forward. In lean times it's a different story; it makes less sense to favour the sprawl model, especially when energy costs are moving upward - after all, plentiful cheap gasoline helped fuel sprawl too. Should that factor go away, such sprawlopolis settlements will need to reinvent themselves. Of course, if people can find jobs close to where they live, then that too helps immensely. But in my experience if you live in suburbia your commute tends to be longer and involve greater distances.

Too many politicians are thinking short-term. Short-term as in their next election in four years time.

I am constantly hearing about the increase in demand in oil because of increases in automobile sales in China and India. Those increases in demand against no increase in the supply mean only one thing. Increases in the prices of fuel for motor vehicles here. Slowly now, but large increases later.

The politicians should be thinking about long term. This means more compact housing, or more people being housed in the current properties. If people want to increase the size of their homes to house more people, politicians should be aware of those future needs. We do not live in the 1950's anymore.

 

[Transportfan]

The only profound changes I note when coming back to Winston Churchill and Dundas are that the neighbourhood looks greener, more mature -

It may look greener and more mature, but the method of tree and shrub planting in the last 25 years and the ending of most grass cutting in landscaped areas in more recent years has left the modern suburbs more overgrown and unkempt looking, and not as attractive as the older suburbs or places like the Beaches, Annex, etc., which look nicer because of the size of the trees, not the density of them.

 

[Lenser]

Maybe so Transportfan, but I vastly prefer messy green over no green at all. That's a given.

I took a drive into my old neighbourhood earlier this year with a friend whom I met when we were both teens. We both felt that the streets looked much better because the neighbourhood was no longer quite so new and naked. Trees that had been planted thirty years ago as saplings now giving the various winding streets much more of a genteel and sheltering presence than was the case back in the day. Many homes have been bought and purchased, sometimes several times over, and there's more variety than ever, thanks to renos and additions. It used to be more of a bland, depressingly cookie-cutter look; I applaud the greater variety now.

Give it time (and a sufficient reverence for a leafy canopy) and those streets will one day look as nice - and as wonderfully mature - as some of the nicer streets in the Beaches or Annex.

 

[SP!RE]

TOcondogarden:

I am making these statements as someone who disagree with Councillor Dhillon's stance.

Thank you for providing a post with rational explanations and well-considered opinions. I wanted to respond to the thread, but I didn't even know where to begin on Peepers' (and TOCondoGarden).

 

[Dandy Horse]

...which look nicer because of the size of the trees, not the density of them...

I'd have to disagree on that. most residential streets in nice neighbourhoods with good canopy have a tree spacing of about eleven paces. A friend of mine bought a house up in Aurora on Woodroof Cresecent, where all the houses were built in 2000. the way they planted the trees, which was densely, made it so that now, only 13 years later, it looks amazing, and the branches will be touching over the street in less than 10 yrs.

All a tree canopy requires is a developer who can spare about $100/ house. It does not require 100 yrs like how most developers will tell you. places like the annex and beaches did not leave tree planting up to the home owner, it was done all at once and in about 11 paces of each other, and very close to the road. thats why it looks good.

also they didnt have a legion of cranks who put costco pavers and chain link around their houses. Or like the deep suburbs who have their ONE precious tree in the middle of their chem-lawn with a petunia garden around it. even worse when its a miniature tree.