The whole area is becoming a sad high rise block with no character. West of Parliament there's are a few Brad Lamb developments that look absolutely atrocious.
Would you genuinely describe Toronto's heritage registry as 'drowning'? A city in the midst of a housing crisis with a heritage department so zealous they're protecting swaths of two-storey single family homes in the densest, most walkable, transit-serviced parts of town? I'd say our housing market is drowning, and many of the heritage registry's additions are the proverbial Rose sitting on flotsam large enough for both Jack and herself to survive on...
i have no idea what your talking about. directly to the north you have three point towers in a 'park' circa the 60's, and directly to the south you have some older factory loft buildings that have been somewhat replicated in density by newer developments that you are quoting. and directly to the west at moss park you will have a new subway station that requires and merits density to support that new infrastructure. any vestige of the 'victorian low rise' historic neighborhood your referring to died in the 60's. this development fits right in.
I'm genuinely dismayed at the number of heritage properties we've lost over the decades, particularly in the downtown core. The list is too long to include in this response so I won't begin. I'm also genuinely dismayed by toothless heritage preservation laws that require only the facade of structures to be preserved. That is not true preservation, IMO, rather, it amounts to little more than a caricature of what was lost. The standard argument in favour of this practice seems to be that the city is experiencing unprecedented growth and that any preservation, no matter how superficial, is preferable to none. I counter that the two are not mutually exclusive and that we can have growth alongside genuine heritage preservation....it is done quite well in most European cities. For some strange reason, much like the case against making our city centres more pedestrian and cyclist-friendly, less car-centric places like their European counterparts, we seem to apply the same nonsensical counter-argument to preservation, that it just won't work in our North American cities. As for designating entire neighbourhoods as heritage preservation districts, I'm less comfortable with this, but it all depends on the neighbourhood. I'm certainly less in favour of designating entire residential neighbourhoods and would much rather see precision designation done on a structure-by-structure basis. This would ensure the very finest specimens in every neighbourhood are saved while preserving something of that neighbourhood's character yet still allowing for new, height-appropriate densification to take place. I agree we are facing a housing crisis of unprecedented scope in this city, but I reject any implication that we can only solve it at the expense of preserving our past.