Raise the Hammer

So if the developer had just built it a few hundred metres away on the parking lot at say Hughson and Wilson that would be OK for context? I find it neat as an observer watching the tension between an existing built form and pressures for the city to change and evolve...

Still my main thinking is we all agree that intensification is a good idea, but then go and make it hard to intensify. There's actually an argument in the City's documents that while the downtown should intensify to a level of 250 people and jobs per hectare, it doesn't have to happen on this particular site. Well then what is the point of the downtown UGC? That argument could theoretically be applied anywhere downtown!

Another reason why I like tall buildings is affordability - greenbelt has done a tremendous job limiting single-detached development, driving up the cost of those types of homes. To keep housing costs reasonable, infill needs to pick up the slack, which it has to a degree. But then restricting them too through zoning or other means (not just Hamilton but across the GTHA) just drives up their costs further, eroding affordability across the region.

I am all for mid-rise development and would gladly live in one for the rest of my life, but thanks to our zoning regulations we just make that housing product hard to construct. There's clearly a market for mid-rise in the age of the greenbelt. With cheaper and easily developable land and a real downtown, just think of the competitive advantage we would have for this market if we actually had a package of the most progressive mid-rise zoning/transit oriented development regulations in the GTHA (in tandem with rapid transit). So my take on the Tivoli is while I do agree with the above sentiments, bigger picture for me is that until we get our mid-rise act together it is a good way to ensure that 100+ units get built vertically as infill rather than up on the mountain as horizontal sprawl.

Comment edited by higgicd on 2015-03-30 08:37:14