Quote:
Originally Posted by Nouvellecosse
The thing is, it's just so damn hard to expand the urban (as opposed to suburban) footprint of cities in NA. You can develop brown/grey fields like Cityplace, add density to areas that are already urban like existing downtowns/inner cities (plus certain major thoroughfares and nodes) and that's it. Utae Lee raises the issue in his discussion about the missing middle. Often we hear the phenomenon explained as just being a result of market forces or rational planning practices in that developers are just buildings where there's demand, or that density is directed where there are strong transportation connections and services. But in reality, the primary factors are political. The people living in certain areas don't want to accept their fair share of urban change. They know their cities are growing but they demand that all growth happen in other areas and to not affect them.
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While there are always any number of factors going on at once, I do wonder if these things are related. When people see new highrise developments or even a midrise take out an entire block of streetfront retail it's not hard to understand why they may be apprehensive of development in their area. Misguided as it may be. This applies more to central areas of Toronto (and other cities) where densities are already quite high but there are still opportunities for infill.
It would help if we were still constructing multifamily buildings like these in our neighbourhoods:
https://goo.gl/maps/mqHbNVyuUAZWZrvy8
https://goo.gl/maps/wBAFjA2XMjEXPQGc8
https://goo.gl/maps/BG79vWQHiMwmwRoZ8
https://goo.gl/maps/5sxnzKrR4MyhGtCr5
Just a few examples of buildings that were intended to blend in with the existing area precisely due to an aversion to large scale apartments.