I just read this article in The Star by Christopher Hume called “Impose minimum height on big boxes.”
It is a problem, but one that can be fixed.
We’re talking about the growing suburbanization of the city. In recent years, a whole new layer of suburban-scale development – highway-like roads, malls and subdivisions – has been added to Toronto.
It represents planning at its worse, a failure to take advantage of the urban conditions.
The most egregious example is an ill-conceived proposal to build a big-box outlet on Eastern Ave. at Leslie St. But they are everywhere one turns – the LCBO on Yonge north of Davisville, the Canadian Tire at Lake Shore Blvd. E. and Leslie, the Shoppers Drug Mart at Queen and Parliament and, worst of all, the Shoppers Drug Mart under construction on Danforth east of Broadview.
None of these buildings deserves to exist. They are an affront to the city, painful demonstrations of what can happen once the corporate agenda is disengaged from the community in which it operates.
These large, bland, thoughtless, single-storey structures are conceived by corporate myrmidons who see no farther than the bottom line.
Read the whole thing (You have to; he used the word “myrmidons.")
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