Lachine: Fate of post-industrial land in the balance
Whether having residents speak up on the redevelopment of old industrial land in Lachine will actually affect planning I don’t know, but they’re being invited to express their thoughts later this month.
I find it interesting that the general idea is “quartier mixte” because I’m afraid we’ve forgotten how to create those. Think about the fundamental core of this city where commercial streets are interspersed with residential ones. That all grew up before the dominance of the car. Now neither politicians nor developers expect people to walk to get their groceries, eat out, shop for clothes, get their hair cut – even though thousands of Montrealers do this every day (even in January weather). Nobody would put up stores and services without lots of parking, and masses of parking distort the pattern. As a pedestrian I flinch from going to the Marché Central or even to Ikea, where getting to the front door of any store means traversing acres of asphalt and dodging vehicles whose drivers are not looking out for people on foot. It’s hostile. It’s not “mixte.”
Daniel 14:25 on 2019-02-01 Permalink
It’s nice to read I’m not the only one who finds Ikea Hostile when going there without a car.
Patrick 18:13 on 2019-02-01 Permalink
It’s not only about the car. In the old days, I believe, lots could at least sometimes be developed individually, leading to a mish-mash of buildings of different styles and purposes. Now, big areas seem to be developed only as homogeneous wholes. Of course, raw land was cheaper decades ago, so the cost of entry was lower. If you want mixed development, why not divide the property into lots of various sizes and prevent one company from snapping them all up. Or is this a utopian idea?