New York planning chief offers tips

[Tewder]

Tewder,

I agree completely - this is starting to be done in some areas (e.g. Bloor Vision Study), but unfortunately the City Planning Department has been a victim of many staffing & budget cuts and they don't have the organizational capacity to do a lot of the 'visioning' work that needs to be completed to allocate sec 37 funds or infrastructure funding in a cohesive and comprehensive manner that would stitch together communities and enhance the streetscape.

Such a shame, and all the more so given the levels of development that have been happening over the past five or ten years. Bay Street north of Queen should be a beautiful urban residential thoroughfare by now, given all the development funds that could have been harnassed to this end.

 

[junctionist]

It's really sad when developers and building owners spend so much on improvements, only to create an unsatisfying patchwork of a street. That's good money spent that doesn't make the impact it should. I don't know why MisterF keeps thinking that this means that developers should rebuild a street. They already do in part, in pieces, and their work should be coordinated towards a single plan. It's time to expand the planning office can't handle that, then there's something wrong with the City's investment in planning.