Richmond Hill High Tech Transit Oriented Community | ?m | 80s | Metrus | BDP Quadrangle

Lenser said:
This is a polarizing and extreme response to "sprawl." It fails to acknowledge the mediating influence of infill, laneway housing, mid-rise and so-called "missing middle" urban designs. There's an entire pantheon of sensible responses to the housing crisis; we are ill-served if all we are presented is the "wisdom" of several 60+ stories of skyscraper condos huddled together on the same tight patch of land.
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Fair enough. I think the lack of vision is seeing the middle ground.
 
Lenser said:
This is a polarizing and extreme response to "sprawl." It fails to acknowledge the mediating influence of infill, laneway housing, mid-rise and so-called "missing middle" urban designs. There's an entire pantheon of sensible responses to the housing crisis; we are ill-served if all we are presented is the "wisdom" of several 60+ stories of skyscraper condos huddled together on the same tight patch of land.
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Case and point, look to most of Europe. Insane density, few skyscrapers.

I'm a height fanboy but every building being a supertall is not the answer to our crisis.
 
Question I have - is there actually the demand for this? Developers own large chunks of land by Vaughan Metro Centre subway - and you're not seeing a forest of towers immediately being built...
Some, sure - but not 20+ at once or something.
 
turini2 said:
Question I have - is there actually the demand for this? Developers own large chunks of land by Vaughan Metro Centre subway - and you're not seeing a forest of towers immediately being built...
Some, sure - but not 20+ at once or something.
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Vaughan’s growth is roughly 3x the original expected rate iirc - and this site will likely be built out over decades. It’s not like 40,000 unit will go up in 5 years.
 
innsertnamehere said:
Vaughan’s growth is roughly 3x the original expected rate iirc - and this site will likely be built out over decades. It’s not like 40,000 unit will go up in 5 years.
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Yeah, this exactly. VMC probably has more towers than you realize and it's substantially ahead of schedule. North York Centre has been under development since the late 80s and it's still not fully built out. These are the timeframes we're talking about. Longer, actually since aside from some initial phases, a good chunk of this probably can't even start until the subway is done, 8 or 9 years from now.
 
The fact remains it's a curious template for density advocates to embrace. The similarity of heights and tight clustering seems woefully inhuman to me. I could easier embrace it if the number of towers were cut in half and we had more 7-10 story multi-unit buildings to replace those towers.
 
turini2 said:
Question I have - is there actually the demand for this? Developers own large chunks of land by Vaughan Metro Centre subway - and you're not seeing a forest of towers immediately being built...
Some, sure - but not 20+ at once or something.
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It's a 25 year plan per the community meeting.
 
Lenser said:
The fact remains it's a curious template for density advocates to embrace. The similarity of heights and tight clustering seems woefully inhuman to me. I could easier embrace it if the number of towers were cut in half and we had more 7-10 story multi-unit buildings to replace those towers.
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I made this point in the Yonge subway thread more clearly but, in short:
-These areas were always planned for significant density and were inextricably linked to the subway extension
-RH's policy framework was still in development and Markham's locked in and while both envisioned major density here, the MZOs are siginficantly more
-Both munis also sought to have substantially more jobs than are now in the MZOs
-So while it's good there will be density here, it doesn't look like it will be the right kind of density or the right mix of uses because the Province didn't require those things. It will just be a forest of condos and will likely fail to achieve good or healthy communities and will likely overwhelm Line 1, which was not the intent.

So, they took a good idea and ran it into the ground. So it seems today, anyway.
 
You really have to wonder what drove them to make this decision. I don't think many activists were looking for more density, so I think this must solely be at the behest of the developers.
 
Well, you don't have to wonder.
What happened is the Province's Transit-Oriented Communities program which basically amounts to, "work with us on the subway and we'll get you faster approvals and more density." Can't blame the developers for taking that deal and, on paper it's a good program for coordinating and maximizing the investment of public $.
But it would have been nice if the Province - you know, the democratically elected government - also said, "...but we'll try to stay generally within the framework of the municipal policies," but instead they appear to have largely thrown them out the window. The "good news" is that the sheer size of this does mean there's a lot of money coming back into the provincial coffers to off-set the project costs but who knows how all that math breaks down.
 
Northern Light said:
Story on the EMZO's from CBC:


From the above, one of the opponents of this offers the following:

View attachment 393232
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There's a million things wrong with this EMZO, but the breathless, hyperbolic, claims from some fly-by-night, 'For a Better X / Say No To Y', yahoo contingent, claiming "The Densest Place on Earth" with no methodology and citing "kickassfacts.com" as their *single* source, should lead most to roll their eyes so far back it hurts.

At the end of the day, it's just not remotely true.
 
ProjectEnd said:
There's a million things wrong with this EMZO, but the breathless, hyperbolic, claims from some fly-by-night, 'For a Better X / Say No To Y', yahoo contingent, claiming "The Densest Place on Earth" with no methodology and citing "kickassfacts.com" as their *single* source, should lead most to roll their eyes so far back it hurts.

At the end of the day, it's just not remotely true.
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Yeah, you can't zoom in on a tiny area and then argue the density is equivalent to an area of a different size. It's just a math error. They are very, very dense areas. There's no reason to get into this kind of hyperbole and plenty of other aspects to take issue with.
 
Bjays92 said:
Case and point, look to most of Europe. Insane density, few skyscrapers.

I'm a height fanboy but every building being a supertall is not the answer to our crisis.
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Europe has the "Missing Middle" that we don't have in North America which is the main source of their density. 4-10 storey buildings line most of their streets, especially in their city centres. We have large swaths of single family homes that in those cities would be this type. Mind you, this is how we grew up as a country, lots of land to expand so why cram ourselves like "back home" in Europe.
I believe and agree that this is what we need to build our cities to more walkable and efficient, but a tough sell when profits are involved with the ability to go to 40+ over the lower across the avenues. That and NIMBYism along with retail that is geared towards major companies and hard for the old street retail of the little guy.

Many issues to address in short.

(But I also love supertalls ;p)
 
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