Quote:
Originally Posted by GeoNerd
I wouldn’t be too envious of Kitchener-Waterloo building any tall buildings for a number of reasons.
• Tall buildings don’t make cities great. Just look at Mississauga and Calgary. They’ve focused on creating tall buildings their identity, yet there isn’t much else to them as a city.
• Kitchener has built out to their urban boundary. They only have small small pockets of land left to develop. They have no other options for growth except upwards. Waterloo has even less developable land remaining. If Ottawa had strong leadership that wasn’t compromised by developers, that keep pushing the urban boundary further and further out, we too could build upwards more.
• KW is a boring little backwater town. A sleepy exurb where nothing much happens. It can contribute almost all of its growth to people getting priced out of the GTA. Trust me, you wouldn’t want to live there.
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I agree with some of your comments on Kitchener-Waterloo, but this is the first time that I have ever heard it called a sleepy exurb that owes its growth to out-migration from the GTA. None of that is remotely true. It's growth is largely based on the fact that it has a world-class research university and what is probably the most entreprenurial tech scene in the country. Plus, a very small proportion of the workforce commutes to Toronto.
That said, you are right that tall buildings don't make a great urban environment of their own accord. The pattern in K-W has been to approve tall buildings with little street presence or transition to adjacent neighbourhoods. The result is a bunch of high-rise islands that are not walkable and have residents who are every bit as car-dependent as the majority of K-W people. There is a tonne of construction, but apart from a few exceptions downtown, it appears to be a huge missed opportunity. The changes are not fundamentally altering the suburban nature of the cities. I see K-W is more of a cautionary tale than a place to emulate.
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