mininamib
Active Member
Recently, the City of Hamilton was discussing extending its urban boundaries in order to accommodate future growth and this was met with some controversy for several obvious reasons. With the implementation of the Greenbelt in southwestern Ontario, the "inner-ring" of land between the Greenbelt and Lake Ontario contains the GTHA with one of the intentions being to optimise the usage of those designated lands and keep (sub)urban sprawl in check. At the same time, there are still entire new subdivisions being built on rural lands on the outskirts of GTHA regional municipalities such as in Halton, Durham, and possibly Hamilton - albeit with a greater mix of housing types and with smaller front yards and spacing between homes. In the case of Hamilton, those against this expansion argue that there are many under-utilised sites within the current urban landscape such which could (and should) be developed first before large tracts of green space are torn up permanently for new suburban communities.
What I would like to highlight here in this discussion are developments, both big and small, which involve reutilising land currently being occupied by fields of weeds and grass, half-empty carparks and strip malls and industrial sites. There are some big ones which have there own dedicated discussions such as Mississauga's Lakeview Village and Exchange District, but there are several others which don't haven't garnered much attention. One example being "The Way" at Ridgeway and the Collegcway in Mississauga by Sorbara which is a substantial stacked townhouse development being built where a dead strip mall once stood. This development doesn't seem to have a page nor point on the map on Urban Toronto, even though its been in the works for several years now.
There are also numerous sites in Oakville that I can think of such as around the GO station and uptown core which are earmarked for dense re-development in city (or, in Oakville's case, "town") documents, yet there isn't any discussion about them and additional information is vague. Perhaps these can be addressed also and we can pool bits of information we've found.
I get real excited thinking about the endless unwalkable spaces in the GTHA, the endless unused fields in industrial parks or random plots in subdivisions which were left alone which could be actually developed to make the existing urban space more dense and used effectively.
What I would like to highlight here in this discussion are developments, both big and small, which involve reutilising land currently being occupied by fields of weeds and grass, half-empty carparks and strip malls and industrial sites. There are some big ones which have there own dedicated discussions such as Mississauga's Lakeview Village and Exchange District, but there are several others which don't haven't garnered much attention. One example being "The Way" at Ridgeway and the Collegcway in Mississauga by Sorbara which is a substantial stacked townhouse development being built where a dead strip mall once stood. This development doesn't seem to have a page nor point on the map on Urban Toronto, even though its been in the works for several years now.
There are also numerous sites in Oakville that I can think of such as around the GO station and uptown core which are earmarked for dense re-development in city (or, in Oakville's case, "town") documents, yet there isn't any discussion about them and additional information is vague. Perhaps these can be addressed also and we can pool bits of information we've found.
I get real excited thinking about the endless unwalkable spaces in the GTHA, the endless unused fields in industrial parks or random plots in subdivisions which were left alone which could be actually developed to make the existing urban space more dense and used effectively.
