ZEBuilder said:
I'm not going to go into the more complicated details but Kitchener is also planning on making 25% of the land within the downtown core zoned for unlimited height, 25% zoned for a max of 25 floors, 25% zoned for a max of 8 floors and the remaining 25% a max of 4 floors. Parking will no longer be required anywhere in the MTSAs, certain locations (priority streets) will require a minimum of 50% of the street line to be commercial or community uses, in those locations no parking podium is allowed on the street line of the first two floors of a building and no more than 50% of a facade can be parking. It's certainly a more progressive set of zoning laws compared to what currently exists and what exists in Waterloo and Cambridge and really any NA city of similar size.

Waterloo and Cambridge are still behind Kitchener in terms of going against NA norms, but with Waterloo approving their first 30 floor building a few months ago hopefully they continue on that trend. For context Kitchener's first 30+ building was proposed roughly 6.5 years ago and now we're getting 30+ regularly.
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It seems to me that, with Kitchener being at the centre of the KWC region, it will look and feel like the local downtown with Waterloo and Cambridge will assume the role of inner suburbs. I guess if we could use a Metropolitan Toronto metaphor, Kitchener would be the "Old York".
 
Undead said:
KWC also seems to be much more open to roundabouts in new build areas which is very refreshing.
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We certainly have a lot of them and on most road reconstruction projects they build even more, a few major intersections are planned to be converted in the coming years, however the regional engineers can't design them to be safe for pedestrians or cyclists.
 
Thanks! Great reply. Like I side the estimate was rough so glad it is more. Just for context it seems that KW is building about as much in the central area as cities three times it's size. Btw you might know this but what is the status of Waterloo University expanding the Architecture building in G
 
Takes more than height for me. I can't say I'm too impressed by all the proposed towers in downtown Kitchener including this one. The designs for these overpriced Airbnb units are mediocre. The cumulative effect of all the proposals and the proposals still to come if all built is an overbearing dense environment than a fine grained urbanism for a medium sized downtown. It makes sense in downtown Toronto although I would be surprised if these developing enviornments in Toronto would rank favourably among the residents of them. I can't help but to look back at the conversations when urbantoronto and international forums were in its infancy and the residential tower boom was still on the horizon. The CBDs across North America were not considered nice environments. Much of the conversation was over inactive streetlevels and populations present only during work hours in efforts to make them more attractive. The conversations usually concluded that the sheer density of all the towers is completely devoid of any human scale.. Today, we have even denser clusters of purely residential towers being built and planned.
 
mininamib said:
It seems to me that, with Kitchener being at the centre of the KWC region, it will look and feel like the local downtown with Waterloo and Cambridge will assume the role of inner suburbs. I guess if we could use a Metropolitan Toronto metaphor, Kitchener would be the "Old York".
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No; Old Toronto. York was an inner suburb.
 
Undead said:
KWC also seems to be much more open to roundabouts in new build areas which is very refreshing.
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*Franklin Blvd has entered the chat*

I used to work in the traffic signals dept at a GTA municipality and I now swear by roundabouts 😆
 
ZEBuilder said:
Kitchener doesn't even have 300k people yet within its downtown has 4 towers proposed over 50 floors, 8 towers between 40 and 50 floors, one is under construction, one is proposed (at OLT) and the remaining 6 are approved, and 12 towers between 30 and 40 floors, one is under construction, the remaining 11 are approved. Plus there are two over 30 that are completed. That is certainly unique for a NA city of less than 300k. Waterloo and Cambridge combined only have 2 building approved over 30 floors in their cores.
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Sounds like a massing model of this is in order...
 
Matt.R.WR said:
Sounds like a massing model of this is in order...
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There's an Instagram account called pancanadianskylines that has some massing models of Canadian cities including KW, I wouldn't be surprised if someone on here is the person behind it. I did message them awhile ago with a list of a bunch of buildings that were missing from their KW model and they said that they were taking a break from it for a bit so an update might be coming in the future.

I have been messing around with massing models in my spare time and so far I've gotten a few models done of buildings in Kitchener. I just haven't gotten around to the vast majority of the projects. I know there was someone over on WRConnected who was making some a few years ago but I have no idea if they kept up with it.
 
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