Pretty remarkable meeting today. People are very passionate about their "park", even though none of the slide decks showed the actual strip of land in question in their presentation deck. Other notable takeaways are that 14th and 90th are now animal corridors and that reservoir views are directly correlated to transit usage.

Glad this one passed, the area needs more of these projects.
 
LocalLoafer said:
Pretty remarkable meeting today. People are very passionate about their "park", even though none of the slide decks showed the actual strip of land in question in their presentation deck. Other notable takeaways are that 14th and 90th are now animal corridors and that reservoir views are directly correlated to transit usage.

Glad this one passed, the area needs more of these projects.
Click to expand...

Unacceptable behaviour from Cllr. Chabot today, IMO - yelling at a University student for using the term "NIMBY."
 
I wonder what people would say if the city had two options:
  1. The city proposed selling a few strips of remnant non-natural grass next to a strip mall for future homes for a growing population.
  2. the city proposed to flood the natural river valley with a giant lake 4 square-km in size and displace all the wildlife and ecosystem with a drinking water reservoir indefinitely to build an artificial park around it.

Because it sounds like 95% of people love the second idea as an unarguable good scheme, but the first one is unconscionable.
 
Chinese_T said:
Unacceptable behaviour from Cllr. Chabot today, IMO - yelling at a University student for using the term "NIMBY."
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Mr Chabot's own words in a Calgary Herald questionnaire a couple of years ago. lol. Also, I'm not sure why he's so passionately against this, it's not even his ward.

What are the three most important issues in your ward, and how would you address them?

Underutilized green spaces that should be repurposed and or redeveloped to provide additional amenities.
 
CBBarnett said:
I wonder what people would say if the city had two options:
  1. The city proposed selling a few strips of remnant non-natural grass next to a strip mall for future homes for a growing population.
  2. the city proposed to flood the natural river valley with a giant lake 4 square-km in size and displace all the wildlife and ecosystem with a drinking water reservoir indefinitely to build an artificial park around it.

Because it sounds like 95% of people love the second idea as an unarguable good scheme, but the first one is unconscionable.
Click to expand...
NIMBYs are afraid of development with density, who knew.

I can’t wait for NIMBYsm to die in North America. It’s long overdue.
 
A friend lives in Haysboro and is against this because "they're going to build six sky scrapers and block out the sun,". They also, of course mentioned traffic in the area, forgetting the city and province just spent billions (granted not on this specific section) opening 90th up to Stoney. They had no idea what was actually in question (turning a boulevard into housing) and two no where has there been six of anything proposed. I also told them how great it would be to have a smaller "town centre" type place right across the pedestrian overpass from their place. Needless to stay people shouldn't read their community facebook pages.
 
I grew up in various neighborhoods in the area, this development makes so much sense regardless of the community sentiment. I have never used that strip of grass for anything, nor can I see why anyone else would as the reservoir is ~300M away. This area does have a very strong opposition to development which I witnessed, I know more than one family who moved to Chinook Park/Kelvin Grove on the "promise" of there never being any multi-family built in the area.

It is ironic how majority of people agree that we need housing, but on majority or proposals it's a "no, not like that" consistently.
 
CalgaryTiger said:
A friend lives in Haysboro and is against this because "they're going to build six sky scrapers and block out the sun,". They also, of course mentioned traffic in the area, forgetting the city and province just spent billions (granted not on this specific section) opening 90th up to Stoney. They had no idea what was actually in question (turning a boulevard into housing) and two no where has there been six of anything proposed. I also told them how great it would be to have a smaller "town centre" type place right across the pedestrian overpass from their place. Needless to stay people shouldn't read their community facebook pages.
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Totally a victim of the spin about this development. Haysboro has only upside from this project to add better and more amenities within walking distance. The entire community has zero connections by road directly to 14th Street so any real or imagined traffic will have zero impact on their lives.
LocalLoafer said:
I grew up in various neighborhoods in the area, this development makes so much sense regardless of the community sentiment. I have never used that strip of grass for anything, nor can I see why anyone else would as the reservoir is ~300M away. This area does have a very strong opposition to development which I witnessed, I know more than one family who moved to Chinook Park/Kelvin Grove on the "promise" of there never being any multi-family built in the area.

It is ironic how majority of people agree that we need housing, but on majority or proposals it's a "no, not like that" consistently.
Click to expand...
This anti-multi-family thing has been around since the early days of Canadian planning in the early 1900s and earlier. I really have never understood why it's such a strong and enduring perspective by some, particularly in the modern age of luxury condos and everything being expensive. Apartments aren't just for the "poor" as some seem to be stuck on.

The "issues" with apartments and renters some people are afraid of are imaginary or have no correlation to the type of development. But even if there are real issues in some situations (i.e. noise issues, crowding, crime) they are far better addressed via other processes than blanket restrictions on land rights, including restriction on the rights of those that are complaining! The housing form has nothing to do with the issues people are afraid of.

Many people seem to miss the benefits of density all the time too. They love to visit Kensington for dinner and complain their neighbourhood lacks retail places to go to, forgetting the reason their neighbourhood can't support a restaurant it's population is too low to have any amenities. People love to take transit in European cities and complain about Calgary's, but miss that transit is good because the density is sufficient to make it all sustainable. Even in Calgary transit is far better in some areas than others because of this fact.

Lastly - and appropriate for the Kelvin Grove example - people with anti-multifamily opinions repeatedly seem to have zero ability to know where actual multi-family buildings are. Kelvin Grove is over half apartments so not a good place to move to if avoiding this type of development is a goal.
 
CBBarnett said:
This anti-multi-family thing has been around since the early days of Canadian planning in the early 1900s and earlier. I really have never understood why it's such a strong and enduring perspective by some, particularly in the modern age of luxury condos and everything being expensive. Apartments aren't just for the "poor" as some seem to be stuck on.

The "issues" with apartments and renters some people are afraid of are imaginary or have no correlation to the type of development. But even if there are real issues in some situations (i.e. noise issues, crowding, crime) they are far better addressed via other processes than blanket restrictions on land rights, including restriction on the rights of those that are complaining! The housing form has nothing to do with the issues people are afraid of.
Click to expand...
From what I've seen anecdotally, the two main factors for the opposition are:
1) perception that multifamily/renters will bring bad elements and reduce the value of neighborhood houses.
Because we've had affordable SFHs for decades we've had a low ratio of renters, and a stigma has formed towards renters, though I do feel like the stigma is going away, as the number of renters increase.
2) Many people who have moved here for the purpose of having a SFH.
I know a few people who have moved from places like Toronto or the UK, Hong Kong, etc.. where owning a SFH was a factor in their move to Calgary. Their mentality is anti-multifamily to start with, and because we've had affordable SFHs here for decades, we've attracted a lot of people with this mindset.

From what I've seen on social media, people, especially young people are understanding the benefits of higher density. It's just going to take a bit of time tom get over the hump.
 
Who wants to get angry this morning? Haven't seen this one:

https://www.stopthetowers.ca/

Complete with imaginary traffic chaos and fake renders!
1704991582166.png
 
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