The Tribune article about Council’s public consultation on the proposed 18-storey downtown condo tower (“Majority favours condo tower”, March 8) reads like a hack job bought and paid for by the project’s proponents. The article magically transmogrifies the greater number of favourable voices at the meeting into “majority” support for the project. The burying of counterarguments at the end of the article is also classic.
Increasing density downtown is a great idea. However, the claim that such tall buildings are needed to create density is completely bogus. A visit to my adoptive home of Paris, France will show you how extremely high density can be achieved without resorting to such tall buildings (and, in other neighbourhoods, how ugly it can be when they do get built). Importantly, contrary to the arguments of the magical “majority,” there’s plenty of space around downtown that could be used to create that density while keeping building heights at a relatively human scale. Could the main problem be that building in this way won’t make as much money for developers? PR