City Rises Above NINBYism

It is rare that I ever agree with Christopher Hume, a self-styled housing and architectural critic for the Toronto Star.  However, his critique of Toronto neighbourhood NINBYism in the Toronto Star on Tuesday, May 22, 2012 (http://bit.ly/Kul7RB) is spot on problems that the City and the development industry face time and time again.  A 6-8 storey mid-rise development on a major thoroughfare atQueen Street andKenworth Avenue in the Beaches is exactly the type of medium density housing that the City has been striving for many years to have built along major thoroughfares.  This is the type of housing that one sees all over Europe.   Unfortunately, given the cost of land, constructing a development of only 6-8 storeys is quite often not financially viable and high density is needed.  One would think that a imaginative and compact project at Queen Streetand Kenworth being developed by Reserve Properties would be welcomed by the residential community. This is exactly the infill type of mid-level density project that the City has been pushing developers to provide.  Sadly when a gusty developer finally does so, he is met with the vitriolic opposition by local residents.   Fortunately,  Toronto Community Council made a wise decision to approve the development and “ignore the ignorant, selfish, misguided and ultimately self-defeating protests by local residents” in the words of Christopher Hume.   Infill developments are springing up all over the place in new, hip areas such as the Beaches, King Street East, Dundas Street West, Woodbine and of course, Ossington.   The problem in Toronto has been that approval for local developments are generally dependent on the local counsellor, who in turn is heavily impacted by his or her constituants and it is rare that the community or city council will go against a local counsellor’s position.  In this case, a local counsellor Mary-Margaret McMahon was not as opposed to the project as her residents and so community council supported this well-deserving and well-thought out project designed by RAW Design.   But larger problems still remain in the City that local counsellors are given too much power to approve developments which may have broader value for the City.  Until the ward system changes, NINBYism will not go away.