91 King Street East (Albany Club, 25s, WZMH Architects)

[k10ery]

OK, this is getting weird.

 

[brockm]

OK, this is getting weird.

It has all the trappings of an echo chamber. Where dissenting views are chased away through dismissal, mockery and ad hominem attacks, if necessary.

 

[RC8]

brockm, your argument is "supply will lower prices".

But you keep ignoring in every one of your posts what it is that's creating the demand in the first place.

If it was proximity to work then you'd see Regent Park, Church st. and St. Jamestown becoming prohibitively expensive. But this isn't the case, for it's the immense desirability of downtown neighbourhoods that is creating that demand in the first place - and by destroying heritage buildings you are destroying a very important part of these neighbourhoods.

I'm sorry but you are ignoring this part of the argument over and over.

The fact is there's plenty of space all over Toronto to build more condos, and there's no need to tear down heritage stuff. By not tearing down heritage buildings we are just telling developers to go a bit more into the outskirts of downtown, which in the end leads to a bigger more prosperous and beautiful city for all. There's no losers. Demand gets met without destruction, we keep our history, and desirability levels remain high for central neighbourhoods.

 

[brockm]

brockm, your argument is "supply will lower prices".

But you keep ignoring in every one of your posts what it is that's creating the demand in the first place.

I do not doubt that desirability of areas can be affected by the preservation of historical architecture. But I believe this is an orthogonal issue. In fact, I think it's quite like David Human's is-ought problem. In fact, so is the following:

If it was proximity to work then you'd see Regent Park, Church st. and St. Jamestown becoming prohibitively expensive. But this isn't the case, for it's the immense desirability of downtown neighbourhoods that is creating that demand in the first place - and by destroying heritage buildings you are destroying a very important part of these neighbourhoods.

I'm sorry but you are ignoring this part of the argument over and over.

The fact is there's plenty of space all over Toronto to build more condos, and there's no need to tear down heritage stuff. By not tearing down heritage buildings we are just telling developers to go a bit more into the outskirts of downtown, which in the end leads to a bigger more prosperous and beautiful city for all. There's no losers. Demand gets met without destruction, we keep our history, and desirability levels remain high for central neighbourhoods.

I do not take for granted in my worldview that because something is good, it therefore follows that laws should be in place to protect the good. Or conversely, that if something is bad, that laws should be in place to prevent it.

To wit, Hume explored this problem in the aforementioned is-ought problem.

Let us agree for a moment that the following statements are true:

1. Beautiful architecture is good; and
2. Historical architecture is good.

Now let's take this these "is" statements and translate them into "ought" statements:

1. We ought to have laws that promote and preserve beautiful architecture; and
2. We ought to have laws that protect historical architecture.

At face value, this all seems reasonable. But if this construct held any sort of validity, a whole bunch of other things would have to conform. For instance: helping your elderly neighbor is good, therefore there should be a law requiring you to help your elderly neighbor. Or, eating french fries is bad for your health, therefore there should be a law banning french fries.

This demonstrates that it is not good enough that something is good or bad in order to determine whether or not an action should be permissible or not.

Using the law to prevent someone from knocking down a house, that they own, because it is deemed to be under historical protection is the removal of property rights. As are zoning controls. We have these things, and I sense most people here agree with their existence -- the hostility directed towards me at the suggestion there be a free market in urban development demonstrates this.

But it is not me who is arguing to take away the rights of others. It is you. It is you demanding that the government remove the rights of property owners to dispose of property in a way they see fit.

Now, you may disagree with this, but from my worldview, it is incumbent upon the right-taker to justify their power. Not incumbent upon the right-holder to justify their liberty. Thus, I believe the whole topic of historical preservation cross-cuts on a serious moral question. And, as I've already said, you clearly have no problem with government retaining the rights to control the disposal of property for the purposes of zoning and historical preservation. That's a moral and political argument we will probably never resolve in this forum, so I'll just leave it at that and move on.

Your other point relates to the availability of places to develop vis-a-vis the historical sites in question, including the one this thread was originally discussing. But I think it is a broad statement which will require proofs; I'm sure you can pull up some satellite imagery, or we can walk through downtown and find some parking lots. But all of this would assume that these property owners were interested in selling. Which we don't know for certain.

What we do know is that these historical buildings are in disrepair. As are other historical buildings that have been redeveloped. Some in the horror of what you architecture-geeks refer to as façadism. These are buildings where there is little interest by market actors to use them in their current form. Is it is the opinion of those, that it would be preferable to allow these properties to sit in disuse and disrepair, rather then reclaim the space for productive use?

This is where I make accusations of romantic notions. And this is an appropriate term. Freedictionary.com characterizes the term romantic notion as being "imaginative but impractical". The pictures posted in this forum about how beautiful Toronto could have been, if only we still could look upon historic masonry of buildings razed in decades past, are testament to this. Not to say the city couldn't have retained the buildings. But that's not where we are today.

To be honest, I agree generally with the feeling that Toronto lost a great deal of amazing architecture as its urban fabric was challenged by the rise of the suburbs and the car. In fact, I consider this fact to be one of the great tragedies for North America in the twentieth century -- so does Edward Glaeser, by the way.

Comments have been made that without historical preservation and planning, that developers will ruin the desirability of the city, and nobody will want to live here. Which, I think straddles the threshold of being a hysterical position. In fact, I would wager a bet that most of the young professionals and young families who are choosing to live downtown and skip the suburban rite-of-passage would rank the historical nature of their neighborhoods as high on their reason for wanting to live in the city.

Which brings me full circle to my initial point. In fact, the people who are arguing against me have actually conceded my point. By accepting that high prices are tied to high desirability, and that by accepting that mass-market, high-density development will not have the price concentration effects of historical boutique neighborhoods, you have implicitly agreed with my initial argument.

The disagreement is thus not even on the outcomes of historical preservation. But it is on a matter of first principles. You're saying: it's good to have a neighborhood that is so beautiful and preserved that people will pay $800 sq.ft. for a condo, rather than letting market forces put a mass-market, high-density neighborhood that sells to people at $300 sq.ft. But understand in so doing, you're basically saying I'm right about affordability.

The difference is, your view of a city has different priorities. Affordability be damned.

 

[jje1000]

Wut?

Even if these buildings were torn down, the resultant condo units would hardly be affordable anyways in today's condo market.

 

[RC8]

You try and make the market sound democratic, but in reality it's far from it. What this is about is a miniscule group of rich corporate guys using wealth from the corporation they work for to give a small amount of other rich people what they want and get richer from it.

Once again, what you propose doesn't offer any long-term city-wide affordability - not unless what you build on top of what was destroyed is significantly worse, in which case affordability will ensue.

Markets work towards the short term production of wealth even if it means destroying people, lives, and places. I for one don't care much for wealth - I care for people, life, and places. I'll support whatever course of action benefits them most; when it's free market then that's that, and when it's government intervention there's no question that's that too.

Slightly off-topic, but if your objective was to shape a happier society how would you proceed?

 

[adma]

I guess in your world, questioning peoples integrity as a component of their argument is fair and reasonable. And people, like myself, who react negatively to it, are just fools.

Actually, I didn't even know who you were until others subsequently brought you up (and led you to "out" yourself). Though it's funny how blind you are to the nature of your negative reaction, the "F*ck off" and all.

And so, the batterer uttereth "she had it coming".

 

[Tewder]

At face value, this all seems reasonable. But if this construct held any sort of validity, a whole bunch of other things would have to conform. For instance: helping your elderly neighbor is good, therefore there should be a law requiring you to help your elderly neighbor. Or, eating french fries is bad for your health, therefore there should be a law banning french fries.

This demonstrates that it is not good enough that something is good or bad in order to determine whether or not an action should be permissible or not.

... but we wouldn't have any laws without this construct, i.e. killing people is bad so we (ought to) have a law banning murder. Now there's a pretty wide spectrum between murder and french fries but in the end this is why most societies have legislative and judicial structures in place. This is why the basic construct does indeed hold 'validity', right?

And the prevailing societal positions on these 'ought-to' things do not coalesce overnight, they sort of iron themselves out (dramatically, violently) over time through conflict, debate and discourse, and it may take multiple generations or centuries for any sort of position to coalesce (if ever)...

... all of which leads me to suspect the reason for the response to your position here: in the context of UT at least the prevailing collective position on the value of heritage has pretty much already coalesced over time, even if it hasn't yet in society at large where in fact the battle is still being waged (hence the emotion). In other words, in this context your position doesn't stand much of a chance here at this stage, no matter how much 'sense' it makes to you. You are in enemy territory!

And it's not that you don't raise some valid concerns. With respect to heritage conservation there are some powerful issues to deal with that are somewhat unique to Toronto, among which the relatively low-density nature of much of the heritage stock in the central city where the pressure for development is greatest. This has been a ticking bomb for heritage advocates, and all the more so given the tradition in Toronto of how this issue is handled (the Victorians destroyed the Georgian city before it, the 'mad men' destroyed the Victorian city before it). One thing for certain though is that the track record isn't good, and this is what we collectively acknowledge here at UT.

 

[cassius]

I just want to say that whoever outed brockm, whether in full or in part; that's a nasty, low move. That's all.

 

[DSC]

Can we stop this useless discussion now? We all know that some people like heritage buildings to be prerserved while others see them as an impediment to 'progress". I happen to fall into the first group but accept the others exist. We get your point, now let's all move on (or move this discussion to a totally new thread where only those who think they havea new arguement need go!)

 

[Tewder]

Yes, why waste time discussing heritage and development in the thread for a project that deals with, well heritage and development? The lunacy!

 

[neubilder]

It's true, this is detracting from the importance of bringing attention to the plight at hand, which is the potential demolition of 71 - 95 King East.
I wouldn't mind seeing this debate moved to a thread titled the 'philosophy of heritage preservation' or something like that. I think that interesting issues are being raised.

 

[neubilder]

Adam Vaughan is pushing right now to create a framework which will facilitate the retention of historic buildings in his ward (and throughout the city), by making the economics of it work through special tax adjustments, zoning etc. This will mean that (what's left of) the old king west warehouses won't be taxed out of existence. These warehouses are by no means 'Class A' office space, but architects and animation studios don't need or want and can't afford 'Triple A' space.

These creative and artificially constructed solutions will not only preserve heritage buildings, but they will also keep affordable office space downtown, where it's needed.

 

[neubilder]

brockm, how do you feel about laws of gravity etc? No, I'm serious. We build under certain assumptions, most of them unlikely, that buildings must be able to withstand certain eventualities, most of which will never occur. If we choose to design to hurricane or seismic standards, the specifications vary drastically from those built to normal standards. These events may never happen, but we build to them anyways. It is a value judgement; given certain risk factors we deem to be important enough, we impose certain standards. Some have argued that in the even of such a powerful force of nature, "let it take me".
Others decide the need for housing is worth the risk of building a home on a riverbed, even though they know it will be washed away.

If one gets too relativist (or whatever) the world becomes vacuous and the floor falls out. And then you have Atlantic City or Houston.

 

[brockm]

You try and make the market sound democratic, but in reality it's far from it.

I assure you that I'm making no attempts to colour my arguments as such.

What this is about is a miniscule group of rich corporate guys using wealth from the corporation they work for to give a small amount of other rich people what they want and get richer from it.

I don't want to dismiss this statement out of hand. So I'll attempt to reply to it. And I'll only reply to this topic exactly once for the purposes of this discussion.

Your comment strikes me as nothing more than populist class warfare notions. It is, in fact, a broad based ad hominem attack on those who invest in, well, anything. It paints with the widest of brushes, a group of people with allusions of mal-intent, and reduces these people to profit-sucking monsters who are detached from their actions and have no pride in their work.

There are, in our world, many people like this. Some of them are CEOs, and some of them are unionized workers. But it is such a gross oversimplification of the nature of economic incentives to believe these things.

For instance: many people along this line of reasoning attest that without laws around building codes, buildings would all be put up on the cheap and they'd be collapsing left and right. But this assumes that construction companies and architects would risk their entire future reputation on such a calamity. Look at the negative reaction Lanterra has attracted from the falling glass problem. Do you think they're scrambling to fix it because of building codes? Or because of fear people won't buy condos they build in the future?

Thus, this comment is petty in the truest sense of the world. It demonizes people who are not demons. And generalizes people who are not all the same.

And with that, this is the last time I'll respond to this class warfare nonsense.

Once again, what you propose doesn't offer any long-term city-wide affordability - not unless what you build on top of what was destroyed is significantly worse, in which case affordability will ensue.

This is a statement which is almost impossible to reply to because it states the desirability of an area and the affordability of an area as an immutable relationship. I could spend the next week proving this assumption wrong. But I won't, because you haven't really even given an argument. You've stated this as a fact. It's not a fact. You cannot defend it as such. It is supposition and premise on which you build a spurious argument.

Markets work towards the short term production of wealth even if it means destroying people, lives, and places. I for one don't care much for wealth - I care for people, life, and places. I'll support whatever course of action benefits them most; when it's free market then that's that, and when it's government intervention there's no question that's that too.

Nothing you say here is truly defensible. Governments work towards broad and lofty goals even if means destroying peoples lives -- the war on drugs, foreign interventions, etc. Your one-sided attack on free markets as the source of all evil, filled with men with top hats and monocles, laughing as their wage slaves sick children die from some imminently curable disease that they could afford to treat -- if ONLY they weren't so greedy -- is a caricature of markets that I've grown far to tired of debating with people who find it all too comfortable to frog march out the boogey-man of "market speculators", "profit-driven businesses" and the "upper one percent".

Slightly off-topic, but if your objective was to shape a happier society how would you proceed?

I wrote about what I'd do in my National Post article: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2011/10/04/mike-brock-the-hidden-canadian-housing-bubble/

I also wrote about what I'd do here: http://www.thevolunteer.ca/2011/10/to-the-would-be-occupiers-of-bay-street/

You may find my arguments... SURPRISINGLY NUANCED!