Rural land is for farms -- the southern Ontario bread basket
By Mark Schadenberg
With Ontario's master plan
for municipal 'intensification' (Provincial Policy Statement of 2005
and 2014), I would say the residents of one London neighbourhood
should be content that the apartment complex proposed for their
backyard is not going to be 12 or more storeys tall.
In some areas in urban
centres around Ontario, 'medium density' zonings are going to be
applauded and not frowned upon in the future. Everyone would love to
live in a 'low density' area of detached homes with a sparse array of
townhouses, but the PPS wants developers, builders and cities to
build up and not out. The reasons are many, but mostly due to saving
farmland and maintaining the costs for servicing hundreds of
residential acres and creating roads and infrastructure for a vast
area when a 4-storey apartment can satisfy the population growth and fill an economic need for same.
Cities would prefer to purchase fewer buses, snow plows and garbage
trucks.
Read the Free Press link
below where neighbouring citizens are pulling out their hair due to a
total of 147 units (apartments) projected for six separate 4-storey
buildings. I can see greenspace, need for an on-site playground and
certainly parking as issues, but the builder should receive an
ovation for their density suggestion. Compromise.
In Woodstock, low and
medium density won the day when proposals and debates occurred on the
former hospital site at Riddell and Brant streets.
The same battle was won by
residents when a vision for a tall condo building was suggested for
the former Beckett Farm Market block, which interestingly is also on
Riddell. In the Beckett property case, houses on Melbourne Street
would permanently be in the shadow, so that was a good compromise as
townhouses are now on the drawing board at that particular locale.
In London, meanwhile,
where I'm always surprised to see a sign posting a population figure
at the entrance as under 400,000, in my opinion anyway, the
sprawling must be slowed. London is a lava of southern Ontario as it
slowly flows along (mostly at) ground level. I remember about 30
years ago when Masonville mall was practically in a cornfield and now
London – through annexation and growth has expanded north to the
doorsteps of Arva and south-westward to Delaware and Komoka, and west through Byron. I'm
actually surprised there has been near zero residential growth in the
east end near the airport. When I attended Fanshawe College
(1985-87), I rented a house from a family living on the north end of
Highbury. I know that 25 years have passed, but that area of Highbury
is now subdivisions and no longer large country-like lots.
I also scratch my chin
when I see farmland still existing in the middle of the city, like at Wonderland and
Oxford, but that crop will soon apparently reap a large grocery store
and office complex (See second link). My point is that intensification or
dense development must take place within the prescribed municipal
boundaries before those boundaries are stretched into actual rural
well-producing fertile crop lands.
I know . . . I know, I
don't reside in London, but we saw the identical idea in Woodstock
get smartly swept aside by both the city and county levels of
government and its planners. For example, an (clown) outside developer
(416 area code) wanted to create a subdivision of more than 100 large
1-acre lots along County Road 17, but there are three problems – the defined land is NOT in the city limits and Woodstock still has quite a
significant inventory of residential lots within the current lines .
. . lines not blurred (Deemed residential in the Official Plan), by
the way. Second problem is that this developer would have expected
city services. Also, the lot sizes would not comply with Ontario's
PPS. Maybe and probably 10 percent of the land space could have been
allocated for luxury homes on large lots, but the rest would most
certainly be ear-marked for intensification.
Just some thoughts
My opinion.
And, no I haven't
announced that I'm running for city / county council in Woodstock / Oxford.
LINKS:
http://www.lfpress.com/2014/08/29/new-northwest-london-sobeys-store-will-appeal-to-baby-boomer-and-foodies-says-marketing-expert
Mark
Schadenberg, Sales
Representative
Senior
Real Estate Specialist (SRES designation)
Royal
LePage Triland Realty
757
Dundas St, Woodstock
www.wesellwoodstock.com
(519)
537-1553, cell or text
Email:
mschadenberg@rogers.com
Twitter:
markroyallepage
Facebook:
Mark Schadenberg, Royal LePage Triland
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