Comment 100725

By grahamm (registered) | Posted April 29, 2014 at 23:57:00 in reply to Comment 100720

Joshua - Density does not equal high rise. For example:

Hamilton - 465.4 people/sqkm. Montreal - 4,517.6 people/sqkm. (2011 census data, links below)

Perhaps a more fair comparison:

A Durand example - L8P 2G2 (census tract 5370038.00) - 10,919.7 people/sqkm.

A Plateau example - H2J 2Z2 (census tract 4620141.00) - 13,396.2 people/sqkm.

A Kirkendall example - L8P 4B2(census tract 5370040.00) - 5,810.9 people/sqkm.

If you go look at the Plateau example, you'll see that while there are some high rise towers in that postal code, the dominate built form is more commonly 3 to 6 storey buildings with 3 to 12 units per building. That is a scale of building that is not very common in Hamilton. It provides an incredibly high density of population for its scale. We are seeing some start to get built (2 projects on Young St, one on James in the North End), but Hamilton is dominated by single family detached houses that don't get the densities possible with other building forms.

(You'll also note the streets are narrower. Montreal has a lot of one way streets, but they're often residential streets which has the effect of reducing traffic and people can get to their houses from the two way streets that form the larger city blocks.)

I think that before these types of projects can take off, we need to give serious thought to the parking requirements in our zoning bylaws. Currently, the bylaw, written in the mid-20th century, doesn't consider the changes that are happening in society. This has to change for the 3-6 storey projects to work. A small scale, 12 unit development typically isn't on a site that can accommodate the 12+ cars required by zoning. We end up with projects like the one at Young and Walnut where an attractive street facade is spoiled by 5 driveway/parking pads. Back at Young and Caroline, the parking is in behind the building and, it appears, down a level. The requirement that every unit gets more than 1 space is out of date and need to be changed.

// Montreal - http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recens...

Hamilton - http://www12.statcan.gc.ca/census-recens...

Comment edited by grahamm on 2014-04-29 23:57:39

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