In Thursday’s Toronto Star, Christopher Hume writes an excellent piece about the efforts of community group Active 18 to create a high-quality, integrated development plan for the area south of Queen Street West, in the area bounded by train tracks, Dovercourt and Dufferin. It’s an issue that has also been discussed by Spacing’s own Dale Duncan.
The community is attempting to head off the kind of random, thoughtless high-rise development that is currently taking place all over the city — and is also trying to avoid the trap of being cornered into simply opposing the developments (which is inevitably followed by accusations of “NiIMBYism”) — by offering a positive alternative. In theory, of course, that’s supposed to be why we have a planning department, but Hume points to some of the reasons why it cannot seem to cope with the current situation.
