Quote:
Originally Posted by Commentariat
Canada is good at getting suburban nodes built, but seems to be fairly terrible at making them attractive or interesting. I think it’s because they often choose a parking lot or a field next to an 8 lane highway as the starting point, instead of expanding upon an existing node with better bones. Building giant towers on large podiums doesn’t help either.
|
Building around existing nodes would mean dealing with hundreds of existing single family home owners in one of the most expensive detached housing markets on the continent. It's not really a viable strategy to pay 50% over market for an entire subdivision to create a new high-rise node.
The strategy has been more to add density where it's viable and connect transit afterwards. Vaughan is never going to have a prewar commercial strip, and we're probably never going to be able to develop highrises along an inner-city corridor like College or Dundas. Unfortunately Western civilization pretty much lost the ability to build good urban environments from the ground up after 1960. An optimist would say that Mississauga has a chance to fill in the gaps among the large block podiums as time goes on. I think it needs a stronger guiding hand to avoid disastrous street-level missteps like the Absolute Towers.