Quote:
Originally Posted by highwater
No. His conversion to the prevailing wisdom on economically sustainable city-building. It is no longer a secret in most quarters that sprawl is an economic drag on our cities. For some reason, you, "most people you know", and much of our current leadership haven't caught up yet. Fortunately Cooke seems to be catching on.
For the record, I'm neutral on Cooke at the moment, and looking for reasons to support him should he seek to revive his political career. I've spoken with him and he seems like a perfectly nice guy. He certainly is talking the talk these days, but I'm reserving my judgment til I see whether he walks the walk, which will include whether he tries to oust McHattie again. His latest column is a positive sign.
|
Unfortunately, you just don't understand simple economics. If you tell a developer, the people with the money, that they can't build something here, they will take their money and build it elsewhere. Thats why the brownfields have been a failure in this city. They are located in places where developers don't want to spend their money.
Thats why economic developement in this city has been almost nonexistant for the last 30 years. When a developer proposes to build something city council should be saying what can we do to help. Instead what happens in this city is council starts trying to tell them how to do things. Thats why developers move on to other cities like Burlington or Mississauga or any number of other places close by. It's their money, it's their risk, if you don't like what they are proposing then you better have a very good reason for saying no.
Urban sprawl is natural part of any cities growth. Cities have always sprawled then intensified, thats just the way it works. Living in a concrete box and using public transit isn't everyones idea of utopia.