What happened to smart growth?

[andrewpmk]

Meadowvale may not be in the area that is worst affected by Pearson airport noise, but it is still under the flight path, aircraft noise is definitely noticeable in that area, and large numbers of aircraft are visible taking off and landing there. Finch/Bathurst is not in that noise exposure forecast contour either but that area can also definitely be badly affected by aircraft noise at times, it is also under the flight path on the opposite site of the airport. I would take those NEF 25 contours with a grain of salt.

The east end of Meadowvale (around the Mavis/Derry area) is severely affected by airport noise and there are ugly "Aircraft Warning Noise" signs everywhere. There are other subdivisions in Mississauga and Brampton that are within the NEF 25 contour but these are clearly less desirable areas to live with lower property values.

Many of the office parks in Meadowvale (e.g. the RBC call centre) have highly visible aircraft warning lights on the roof.

The residential area in Meadowvale is one of the less desirable parts of Mississauga in my opinion. People do not want to live under airport flight paths.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

andrewpmk:

Which is exactly what I am saying - the issue isn't noise, because areas where there is noise has seen residential developments even after the fact. And the indesirability of Meadowvale can be attributed to other reasons - it was built more with the working/blue collar class in mind at the time, and the residential split is more mixed - there are more apartment and social housing types of units - more in common with the older parts of Mississauga than the new subdivisions. That, and it's relatively far and inconvenient even by Mississauga standards.

AoD

 

[Hipster Duck]

There is also the (growing?) habit of putting front office and warehouse spaces within the same building in industrial lands as well.

True, but from a company's perspective this kind of arrangement only makes sense. From a regional travel perspective this arrangement makes sense, too. There would be a lot of unnecessary trips from the offices to the warehouses in two separate locations and most of these would be made during the midday by car.

 

[scarberiankhatru]

Unlike pretty much every other city in the world, Toronto is doing almost everything in its power to avoid building rapid transit to concentrations of employment, so it's no wonder it's so difficult for most people to reach jobs by transit unless they're on the YUS loop (and even then, the subway's overflowing).

We're also doing very little to support employment growth along existing or proposed transit lines. Shading in parts of an urban structure/land use map in an official plan as 'this is where jobs should be' is not nearly enough to achieve transit-oriented employment.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Hipster:

True, but from a company's perspective this kind of arrangement only makes sense. From a regional travel perspective this arrangement makes sense, too. There would be a lot of unnecessary trips from the offices to the warehouses in two separate locations and most of these would be made during the midday by car.

Yes and no I guess - it does cut down on potential travel between warehouses and offices, but at the expense of reducing the effectiveness of public transit in serving these hybrid areas given the inevitable lowering of density by moving to a warehouse office format. In any case, there isn't much that one can do about those areas.

AoD

 

[andrewpmk]

Hipster:



Yes and no I guess - it does cut down on potential travel between warehouses and offices, but at the expense of reducing the effectiveness of public transit in serving these hybrid areas given the inevitable lowering of density by moving to a warehouse office format. In any case, there isn't much that one can do about those areas.

AoD

This type of arrangement hardly makes sense for most industries though. Why are so many high tech companies like HP, Intuit, Microsoft, RIM in office parks in the 905? Co-locating the administrative offices of a factory with the factory may make sense, but many of these jobs in the 905 are not industrial jobs. Software companies should be putting their offices near transit, and the fact that so many high tech companies are in office parks spread out in various suburbs (like Mississauga, Markham, North York and Oakville) often forces people into long commutes in heavy traffic when workers get laid off and switch jobs (high tech is a notoriously unstable industry).

 

[W. K. Lis]

With the Spadina Subway reaching Highway 7 (Vaughan Metropolitan Centre Station, still don't like that name), they city of Vaughan has an advantage over Scarborough. The area is mostly parking lots, and the NIMBYism would not be there. As we saw with parking lots in downtown Toronto, they are place holders, which get replaced with high-rise buildings (office, condos, or hopefully mixed-use). NIMBYism will not be there, since they is currently no one living there to object to having a high-rise building going up next to the station.

 

[Woodbridge_Heights]

I get, and agree with, the sentiment of your statement....but the specific project which has been criticised here (the Loblaws H.O. at 407/Mississauga Road) could hardly be described as a "sprawling 1 storey campus".

I guess, however the discussion has long grown from a discussion about the Loblaws project to an overall discussion of "smart growth" in fact the topic is "What happened to smart growth".

Also specifically wrt to the Loblaws project and my previous comment. Brampton may have a designated growth are for office development, however all they can really say to Loblaws is "we'd prefer if you built your office in these specific areas" and highlight them on a map. Loblaws has the power to say "nope we build where we want to or we build somewhere else" and Brampton has to accept the less than ideal (preferable) location if they want the employment base.

The point still is. In a multi nodal planned region, each node is in competition with the other and so loses some of it's control over growth planning due to the power of individual companies to relocate elsewhere in the region.