ward10 said:
Between No Friills and Walmart - and Yorkdale a short subway ride away - feels like this is about as well-positioned for a car-free lifestyle as any greenfield neighbourhood in the burbs is likely to be

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The most commonly cited distance people are willing to walk before prefering to take a car is 400m. This is double that in a single direction. Plus you're carrying heavy groceries. They need a strong retail plan that's not reliant on leaving the neighbourhood to get groceries.
 
Ehh, I live car-free downtown and a 12min walk to the grocery store is my reality

As others have pointed out, this would just be the starting condition. A community built sufficiently dense and well-connected to the lands east of the barrie corridor would eventually develop robust retail of its own
 
ward10 said:
Ehh, I live car-free downtown and a 12min walk to the grocery store is my reality.
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In fairness, that's like an assertion that biking 20km to work is your reality........

It may well be.........

But it isn't the reality of many others, nor is their desired outcome.

You have to assume people will commute to work, and in a more suburban location, many of their destinations will also be suburban, but not on the subway or GO line.

Likewise, many people do not walk to grocery stores, even in areas where it's highly walkable. There is on-site parking for the Maple Leaf Gardens Loblaws, and for the City Market and Eataly at Manulife etc etc.

Even right next to the subway, a statistically significant portion of customers arrive by car.

***

To be clear, I am and remain very pro-pedestrian, pro-cycling and pro-transit.

I'm all for discussing ways we can better sculpt existing and new communities to promote that.

But I do think we need to temper expectations on what's feasible in the near to medium term.

ward10 said:
As others have pointed out, this would just be the starting condition. A community built sufficiently dense and well-connected to the lands east of the barrie corridor would eventually develop robust retail of its own
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Ah, but the bolded is key. People will not give up a second car, never mind a first...........for it will be convenient 5, 10, or 20 years from now. They want convenient on move-in day.
 
Exactly. I had a car up until last year. I am counting the days until I can get another car because the retail in the area is abysmal.
I live 800m from Wilson Station. It's useful for going downtown, but not useful for local trips, including Yorkdale which I almost never go to now unless I need to pick up a rental car.

If we want car free cities, we need to do better than just hoping retail shows up to make it happen for us.
 
ward10 said:
Surprised Alex is in favour. Seems like an underwhelming amount of density beside the subway station, run-of-the-mill, too-wide Ontario boulevards bisecting all over this district. Lots set aside for green space, but not used effectively to create community focal points

Bill 212 shows how hard it is to claw back space from car dependency. The city should be building using these large sites to build the first car-free or extremely car-light neighbourhoods
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There is in fact, a reasonable amount of density here, and the configuration of green space – basically linked courtyards – will be excellent.

The drawings don’t communicate the plan very well. The park designs are prominently featured. Those park designs and the architecture are all placeholders by USI, and they are pretty bad.

There’s no question some of these streets are too wide. Apparently you can thank city staff for that.

As for the role of cars here: They need to be marginalized from day one. neighbourhood-serving retail can and will be included in the early phases. And even for car owners, you don’t need to provide direct car access to every side of every single building. In this project, you see some steps toward limiting car access on site. I think those steps need to go much farther, but it’s a start.
 
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AlexBozikovic said:
There’s no question some of these streets are too wide. Apparently you can thank city staff for that.
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I think we need a bit more specificity on this.

I don't mean the name of a particular planner.

But what width (ie. sidewalk, landscape zone,curb to curb pavement, vehicle lanes etc.)

And what rationale is being provided for that width?

We can't change anything without understanding how those involved arrived at a certain conclusion.
 
picard102 said:
Exactly. I had a car up until last year. I am counting the days until I can get another car because the retail in the area is abysmal.
I live 800m from Wilson Station. It's useful for going downtown, but not useful for local trips, including Yorkdale which I almost never go to now unless I need to pick up a rental car.

If we want car free cities, we need to do better than just hoping retail shows up to make it happen for us.
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One wonders why you haven’t relocated to a place with better services?
 
AlexBozikovic said:
There is in fact, a reasonable amount of density here, and the configuration of green space – basically linked courtyards – will be excellent.

The drawings don’t communicate the plan very well. The park designs are prominently featured. Those park designs and the architecture are all placeholders by USI, and they are pretty bad.

There’s no question some of these streets are too wide. Apparently you can thank city staff for that.

As for the role of cars here: They need to be marginalized from day one. neighbourhood-serving retail can and will be included in the early phases. And even for car owners, you don’t need to provide direct car access to every side of every single building. In this project, you see some steps toward limiting car access on site. I think those steps need to go much farther, but it’s a start.
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That’s encouraging to hear your endorsement!

I feel like you can squint (at least at the docs on prev pages) and see a plan not that different than existing suburban condo neighbourhoods - which is fine, just not something to get excited about

Re: density, it seems reasonable to me for a subway station, but maybe not a regional rail/subway interchange, of which there’ll still only be ~a dozen in the gta in 10 years
 
AlexBozikovic said:
There is in fact, a reasonable amount of density here, and the configuration of green space – basically linked courtyards – will be excellent.

The drawings don’t communicate the plan very well. The park designs are prominently featured. Those park designs and the architecture are all placeholders by USI, and they are pretty bad.

There’s no question some of these streets are too wide. Apparently you can thank city staff for that.

As for the role of cars here: They need to be marginalized from day one. neighbourhood-serving retail can and will be included in the early phases. And even for car owners, you don’t need to provide direct car access to every side of every single building. In this project, you see some steps toward limiting car access on site. I think those steps need to go much farther, but it’s a start.
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Does this mean that the proponent wanted narrower streets and city staff pushed for bigger?
 
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