{"id":15787,"date":"2015-08-10T11:09:16","date_gmt":"2015-08-10T14:09:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/spacing.ca\/atlantic\/?p=15787"},"modified":"2015-08-10T11:09:16","modified_gmt":"2015-08-10T14:09:16","slug":"oppose-building-not-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/atlantic\/2015\/08\/10\/oppose-building-not-people\/","title":{"rendered":"Oppose the building, not the people"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>HALIFAX<\/strong> &#8211; Know what happens when too many rats live together? According to one influential\u00a0study, <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Behavioral_sink\">they become violent and cannibalistic<\/a>.\u00a0So we should fear density.<\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve often heard this argument used to oppose developments in Halifax.<\/p>\n<p>I live on Duncan street in one of the densest areas of Halifax and so I can attest that it&#8217;s true.\u00a0My neighbours&#8217; cannibalism is a real hassle. You never know when they will\u00a0see one too many humans and pounce.<\/p>\n<p>This logic is as phony as it is insulting and yet I&#8217;ve witnessed people respond with nods. From the evidence I\u2019ve gathered, density\u00a0mostly leads humans\u00a0to go for coffee and play frisbee together, and yet fear of it\u00a0remains\u00a0a major political force.<\/p>\n<p>There are legitimate reasons why people oppose many\u00a0developments in Halifax, such as bad design or wind and shadow impacts, and I am sometimes involved in that opposition. To oppose the people who may live in those buildings, however, is a tendency which I reject. We must unmask the words, \u201cI am against density,\u201d for what they mean: \u201cI am against more people living here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>For practical and moral reasons, I believe opposition to new neighbours is wrong.<\/p>\n<p>I will focus on the practical. Perversely, many problems ascribed to density are precisely the problems it solves. Let\u2019s look at a few I have heard from people at various public consultations:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><b><b>Danger: New\u00a0people on a street or in a park could lead to robberies or violence.<\/b> <\/b>Quite the opposite. The safest streets and parks are those with other people there to make robbers and rapists feel nervous. As Jane Jacbos puts it, the best safety comes from \u201ceyes on the street.\u201d The Commons in Halifax is dangerous at night for the lack of passers-by. We should take a lesson from Mont Royal station in Montreal, where they made a public space safe by creating a 24 hour, year-round market\u2014not by driving people away.<\/li>\n<li><b>Bad for the environment: Making concrete produces a lot of CO2.\u00a0<\/b>True, but living in a community where a car is needed for every daily task produces far more CO2. The biggest impact a building has on the environment isn\u2019t its insulation or materials, but <a href=\"http:\/\/www.statcan.gc.ca\/pub\/16-002-x\/2008004\/article\/10749-eng.htm\">where<\/a> <a href=\"http:\/\/www.co2list.org\/files\/carbon.htm#RANGE!A83\">it<\/a>\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nber.org\/papers\/w14238\">is<\/a>. If we don\u2019t allow reasonably tall buildings, we risk forcing potential residents to move to places where they cannot walk, bike or take transit.<\/li>\n<li><b>Affordability: Tall buildings will push up housing costs because they increase land value and, therefore, property taxes.\u00a0<\/b>A far greater problem for\u00a0affordability, however, is when just a few people control the housing supply and can force high prices on buyers. The best way to wrest this power from landowners is to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.economist.com\/news\/leaders\/21647614-poor-land-use-worlds-greatest-cities-carries-huge-cost-space-and-city\">increase the supply of housing<\/a> to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.citylab.com\/housing\/2015\/07\/whats-the-matter-with-san-francisco\/399506\/?utm_source=nl__link3_072415\">match the demand<\/a>.<\/li>\n<li><b>Traffic: There\u2019s not enough parking or road capacity to accommodate so many new people. <\/b>Actually, there is not enough parking or road capacity for these people to live elsewhere. Traffic does not result from\u00a0every human needing\u00a0to drive a set number of kilometres everyday, but from\u00a0how far people live from their destinations. The centre of Halifax and Dartmouth have the greatest variety of destinations within walking distance of anywhere in Nova Scotia. Consider that 25,000\u00a0more people lived on the peninsula in the 1970\u2019s yet we now have so much more traffic we need to expand roads. Many people, myself included, barely\u00a0contribute to traffic at all because we walk or bike everywhere.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And of course, the other benefits of density are well-known: successful local business; better\u00a0transit for less money; healthier active transportation options; lower\u00a0tax-payer costs for\u00a0servicing\u00a0homes;\u00a0better access to \u00a0food; vibrant mainstreets to attract youth and tourists, etc.\u00a0Recently, researchers are also recognizing that\u00a0chance encounters that happen when a diversity of people working\u00a0in proximity\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.newrepublic.com\/blog\/the-avenue\/the-landscape-innovation\">fosters the kind of innovation we need for economic growth<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>It is not by coincidence that density has multiple benefits: when people live closer to each other and their goals,\u00a0they can do more with less.<\/p>\n<p><b>So we should allow all development?<\/b><\/p>\n<p>In February, Council approved a development on Wellington Street that was opposed by local residents, regional residents, the area\u2019s Councillor, the Planning Advisory Committee, and city staff. A majority of Councillors dismissed this universal derision because they said Halifax\u00a0needs the density.<\/p>\n<p>In the same way we should not oppose buildings just because they bring density, we should not allow buildings just because they bring density. While it is important to have population, it is equally important to have an attractive, welcoming city that enhances why\u00a0people choose\u00a0to live here. In an economy where cities compete to attract talent based on quality of life, allowing every mediocre proposal is no formula for\u00a0success.<\/p>\n<p>What matters about buildings is their impact on public space\u2014their design. We can worry about population when we make plans and set height limits for the whole city. For specific developments, the number of people inside is at best a good thing and at worst irrelevant. Buildings must be judged in terms of their quality, not the people.<\/p>\n<p><b>Here comes growth<\/b><\/p>\n<p>What is complicating, and perhaps poisoning, the debate about growth in Halifax right now is that it is happening without a plan. We are promised the Centre Plan next year, but we are seeing more development proposals now than we have seen in decades.<\/p>\n<p>Without the plan, people are forced to debate issues that can\u2019t be decided on a specific site. What height strikes the right balance between population and impacts? \u00a0Where do tall buildings end and other communities begin? How much of our yearly growth should individual developments be able to capture? What kind of design character does a whole community want to achieve?<\/p>\n<p>All these site-specific proposals are, in fact, slowing down staff progress on starting the Centre Plan. With multiple buildings proposed between 20 and 30 stories, we may not have much development left to plan by the end of it.<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s call an end to amending plans and landuse by-laws until we have our Centre Plan, so we can focus staff energy on getting the design rules we need\u00a0to ensure\u00a0growth benefits us all.<\/p>\n<p>Until then, let\u2019s oppose buildings if they\u00a0don\u2019t match our vision of the city, but while welcoming all the new neighbours we can get.<\/p>\n<p><em><a href=\"https:\/\/flic.kr\/p\/88cReM\" target=\"_blank\">Cover image by Veinotte<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>HALIFAX &#8211; Know what happens when too many rats live together? According to one influential\u00a0study, they become violent and cannibalistic.\u00a0So we should fear density. I\u2019ve often heard this argument used to oppose developments in Halifax. I live on Duncan street in one of the densest areas of Halifax and so I can attest that it&#8217;s<a href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/atlantic\/2015\/08\/10\/oppose-building-not-people\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"sr-only\">&#8220;Oppose the building, not the people&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8221,"featured_media":15796,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"link","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[362,5860,5868,5870,335,341],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15787","post","type-post","status-publish","format-link","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-architecture","category-community","category-housing","category-neighbourhoods","category-streetscape","category-urban-design","post_format-post-format-link"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v26.5 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Oppose the building, not the people - Spacing Atlantic<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/spacing.ca\/atlantic\/2015\/08\/10\/oppose-building-not-people\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Oppose the building, not the people - Spacing Atlantic\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"HALIFAX &#8211; Know what happens when too many rats live together? According to one influential\u00a0study, they become violent and cannibalistic.\u00a0So we should fear density. I\u2019ve often heard this argument used to oppose developments in Halifax. 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He is the Events and Logistics Coordinator for Our HRM Alliance, the Ideas Competition Event Manager for the Ecology Action Centre, and a director of the Halifax Tool Library. He is an advocate of making cities more livable through coordinating development with active and sustainable transportation. 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