I just discovered a new alliance of non-partisan, non-profit resident and ratepayer groups in the Greater Toronto Area that have come together in opposition of what they see as “unregulated overdevelopment and the lack of sensible growth vision for the GTA.” If you’d like to read through their public letter to the Premier of Ontario, Doug Ford, you can do that over here.
In it you will learn that the Toronto region is vying desperately for the title of the most densely populated place on earth by trying to compete with already established locales like the slums of Mumbai and Monk Kok in Hong Kong. One has to admire ambition.
But what is not clear to me is what exactly “sensible, balanced, affordable, and livable developments” should look like. Should we quash our low-rise “Neighbourhood” designations (the majority of our land area) and instead blanket the region with mid-rise buildings similar to Paris? This is one option and, by the way, Paris is far denser than Toronto (relevant reading here and here).
Or should we maintain our low-rise “Neighbourhoods” exactly as they are and simply reduce overall housing supply by limiting height and/or density at our transit stations? Is this the ask? I’m not sure. But this is a good question for city builders: What should sensible, balanced, affordable, and livable development look like? Is the 33-storey building that I live in sensible?
BRANDON DONNELLY 
Bozokovic is a completely biased person and very polarized and closed minded – just look at this articles and tweet. If you use him as your idol you are then in the same boat.
Not everyone who opposes attributes of developments is a nimby. The world isnt so black and white. As well communities have rights and its an equal world for all.
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Questions not rhetorical here. What’s kind of development is appropriate?
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That’s the problem here, sensible development means different things to different people. I can tell with one cursory look a the website you linked that they’re nimbys pretending to not be, and use fearmongering (because it sells) to make… what point exactly?
I suspect if you picked them one by one, their arguments would not stand any kind of scrutiny, but in all fairness, I haven’t done that.
I’m waiting to see an advocacy group advocating for affordable housing for all the future residents (many of whom will be immigrants) who don’t yet live here but will be productive, tax-paying members of society at some point. They’re the ones who will be cleaning the houses, cooking the food and delivering amazon purchases of all the existing residents who don’t want to do these jobs. It’s always the lower rungs of society who suffer from the decisions of the people with power and money.
I can’t wait to see them having to clean their own homes once it’s become so expensive that low-income people have all moved to Calgary or Regina. Wealthy Canadians really live in a bubble…
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