Report should motivate city improvements
There's one paragraph in Royson James' column in Tuesday's Vital Signs section that particularly caught my attention: "Every person that moves to a low-density subdivision puts enormous pressure on the transportation system, adds to global warming and increases the cost of providing infrastructure, which is already lurching along in a deficit position."
It's too bad city politicians and policy-makers lack the vision to see the forest for the trees. Right in front of them, there are already vast swaths of space with infrastructure already in place, from interior roadways, sewerage and cabling – namely the space-eating parking aprons that surround all major shopping malls.
With the right planning and incentives, those parking lots, which sit empty half of the time, could be developed into housing, from seniors' lifestyle housing and hotels closer to the mall entrances to highrise and mid-density stacked townhouses, interspersed with parks, convenience stores and green grocers, toward the edges. Parking would be underground or in creatively camouflaged parking decks, for both mall and residences.
It would be win-win for both the city in terms of tax revenue and the mall owners in terms of a captive audience.
Bruce Gates, Toronto
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