Comment 38856

By More roads (anonymous) | Posted March 18, 2010 at 16:42:53

Where would people rather live? In an area dominated by

1) Acres of unbroken, privately owned commercial/industrial land.

2) Large amounts of public assets like sidewalks, roads, parks and trails?

Just to be clear, Barton St and most of the entire lower city, including the downtown, is in the shadow of the former.

What if, instead of tying our economic hitch to big industrial sites, we followed the Toronto model, which utilizes a balance of public and private assets to bring people and jobs into an area?

In time, Barton St could become like Queen St with lots of commercial activity, just on a more human scale. The trick is to stop believing that we need to allow private industry to completely dominate a geographic area to do this. The most prosperous areas of Toronto and Hamilton are in fact filled with government assets, things like parks, universities and lots of sidewalks and roads.

In contrast, in areas where there are large plots of private land, WITHOUT accompanying public assets, these areas tend to create the conditions for low property values and limited development. In other words, if the goal is to produce a high amount of economic value per acre of land, you need lots of public assets in the area. If you would rather produce low economic output per acre of land, make sure you don't invest public money in that area, because that is what will happen.

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