[getsmart-l] Places to Grow redesign

[M. Laplante]

The new site has a set of hypothetical before and after pictures to illustrate 
intensification.  Unfortunately, and I hope I'm not the only one who thinks this, 
the after picture often looks worse than the before.  See for instance this before:
http://www.placestogrow.ca/images/rsgallery/original/hypothetical_downtown_str
eetscapes__approx150.jpg
and this after:
http://www.placestogrow.ca/images/rsgallery/original/hypothetical_downtown_str
eetscapes__approx400.jpg

It goes from a lovely heritage neighbourhood, with lively street level retail and 3-4 
floors of walkup apartments and offices above, to one where the heritage 
buildings look dingy and the streetscape is interrupted with out-of-scale blank 
slabs that are completely out of context, where the sidewalk now looks cluttered 
and some of the retail businesses seem to have disappeared.  Ironically, they 
complete the picture by removing the child in a stroller and the elderly woman in 
a wheelchair and replacing them with two men in suits.  A couple of other 
before-and-after pictures also seem to involve razing or defacing heritage 
buildings, for instance look at their Underused Employment Area.

Someone over there needs to re-read the definition of intensification in the 
Provincial Policy Statement http://www.mah.gov.on.ca/Page1485.aspx
Nowhere does it say you should demolish multistorey buildings and replace them 
with much taller multistorey buildings.

> From: PlacestoGrow (PIR) [mailto:PlacestoGrow at ontario.ca] 
> Sent: January 17, 2008 1:05 PM
> To: PlacestoGrow (PIR)
> Subject: Places to Grow Web Site Redesign
> 
> 
> 
>  <http://www.placestogrow.ca/>  <http://www.placestogrow.ca/> Image of
> Places to Grow Web Site Redesign <http://www.placestogrow.ca/> We have
> redesigned the Places to Grow web site! 
> 
> 
> 
> Check out our one-stop resource for growth management in Ontario. Here you
> will find the latest news and information on Places to Grow, including the
> award-winning Growth Plan for the Greater Golden Horseshoe, and the
> developing Growth Plan for Northern Ontario.
> 
> 
> 
> The site features:
> 
> *	.  quick links to plans and technical studies
> *	.  implementation tools, including an image bank
> *	.  links to related Ontario government initiatives, such as Renew
> Ontario and the Greenbelt Plan
> *	.  research on growth management and urban planning 
> 
> 
> 
> Please visit  <http://www.placestogrow.ca/> www.placestogrow.ca and tell
> us what you think.
> 
> 
> 
>  <http://www.placestogrow.ca/> 
> 

===============================================
Martin Laplante      			laplante at res.ca
Vice-President, RES Policy Research   	URL: http://res.ca
phone:(613)241-1384   
direct:(613)864-7373