Quote:
Originally Posted by Vin
What if you work hard and finally save up enough to buy a piece of land. You start working even harder in the hopes of building that dream house of yours on the land. Then due to "free speech", the neighbours come in and say, "We want an empty lot: no buildings!". The City Council listens to them and bars you from building anything. Will you go happy?
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What you are missing Vin is how things work. And the answer to that is somewhat implicit in CanSpice's response. What you describe is not possible. "Free speech," as you say, does not have the influence to prevent an owner from building, nor even the design an owner might want to pursue.
This is how it works: Municipal Government has the delegated authority (from the Province) to zone land under its jurisdiction. By that legal delegation, the Provinces define what municipalities can do with zoning: let's just limit it to use and density. So, virtually every property in a city has a zoning specification. If you work hard and buy a piece of land, that land will come with zoning 'attached.' If you work even harder, you can build whatever you want on your land, so long as it satisfies two things: the zoning, and that it does not require a development permit. If that is the case (and for a house it should be, given that you are responsible for buying land that will allow you to do what you want), the municipality cannot refuse you a building permit. In such cases, government's only real role is through the City Building Department, governing the building code, work safety, etc.
The troubles and trickiness arise when an owner wishes to build something that does not fit the zoning, or requires a development permit. Once an owner asks the city for a zoning change or DP, then the gates are open, and the city will rush through them and try to push the owner to do whatever they can get away with. Public consultation has also been triggered, because the municipal government is supposed to act upon the public good - as they see it, or as they try to define it.
Cities have built public consultation into their process because it is a tool that a) provides them cover as a definer of the public good, and b) can be manipulated to justify their actions. The last point is why they never try to develop sophisticated tools to actually gauge public opinion across the full spectrum. Anonymity allows me to say that all of this has evolved such that municipalities exercise more power over more things than was ever intended; and, as the layers of political and bureaucratic process have accumulated over many decades, it has all become more than a little crooked. Within the industry, no one is willing to challenge this state of affairs, leaving a crooked system in the hands of, too often, dimwit city councils.
Ahhh. I always like getting that off my chest. I can't count the number of times I have been in such sessions of complaint with other architects, engineers, and developers.
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