Raise the Hammer

A golf course is green-space that most of the city will never visit or enjoy. If you want "green terrain 99% of Hamiltonians don't actually go to" we have the entire escarpment for that. We have the vast RBG preserved area in Dundas Valley and the like.

I get that Hamilton needs green space, but it needs a mosaic of parks throughout the city. We've got vast tracts of natural terrain thanks to the Escarpment, not to mention Cootes Paradise and the spectacularly massive Dundas Valley Conservation Area. We've got massive parks in the form of Confed park, Gage park, Dundas Driving park, and Churchill park. We could easily leave a park larger than the massive Churchill park at Chedoke and still have over 150 acres to develop. 130 if we wanted to go bigger and make it another Gage. Another park with a climber downtown would do far more for "green space" in Hamilton than the Beddoe and the Martin, at only 1% of the acreage.

Density is the way to help the environment, and growth here in Ward 1 is prettymuch flat. The alternative seems to be more low-density suburban sprawl out in Binbrook.

Chedoke is a prime location for high-density transit-oriented development. Imagine it - dense 3-story townhomes like they're building in Burlington in the interior, leave a the current "sledding park" established at the end of Beddoe Drive and add some benches and playgrounds - this would be the neighborhood's main park. Keep the trees that surround the permeter of the neighborhood to bracket it away from Kirkendall and keep natural terrain along the rail trails. Put a small park right at Aberdeen and Studholm at the entrance to the neighborhood. Then build mid-rise apartments with ground-level retail along Studholme.

Throughout this, you include low-income housing into the mix, creating spots for that as well.

There - a green neighborhood with a good transit connection, low-income spots, 2 rail-trail bikeways, and immediate access to MIP, McMaster University, and the Hospital, and oodles of greenspace. What more could you want?

Housing prices are going through the roof, and the basic rule of economics is that prices rise when supply isn't keeping up with demand. If we don't create supply in urban settings, then supply will be provided by suburbia, and that will destroy far more greenspace and produce far worse carbon-emissions than a transit/cycling high-density community here.

Comment edited by Pxtl on 2016-03-04 00:57:40