Infill Housing # 23

It's just a short walk from Kenora St. to my childhood neighbourhood of Champlain Park. Infill housing is very much evident there, especially on Cowley Avenue this summer. The street is only three blocks long. Here are the stages of infill:

1. Here in the middle block, at # 210, sits one of the original houses, now empty, with an uncut lawn. It is probably next on the chopping bock.

2. At the corner of Cowley and Clearview sits a house that has been there since my childhood. The construction fence has been erected and the trees cut down, so its days are surely numbered.

3. At the top of the street a little house was demolished yesterday.

4. Back near Clearview,  a single house is being replaced by these doubles.

That is just the current situation. These four projects are in addition to the many already completed infill projects on Cowley.

I took Carleton Avenue home. It's the next street over. Carleton is probably one of the most re-built streets in the city. There may be more new, than original homes there now.

This hole for a new place, probably doubles, was recently dug.

Meanwhile, at the corner of Carleton and Amanda (formerly Premier),  crews were busy taking down a sizeable tree. The doubles there were built a while ago. Sometimes the trees survive the building of new homes but are irreparably damaged during construction. After a year or two, they deteriorate and have to be removed. Of course if Ottawa insisted on proper tree protection zones during construction, we wouldn't be losing our urban canopy.

It feels like this re-building will never end. How many of our original homes will survive and for how long? Does the city and province's policy of intensification totally trump preservation of traditional neighbourhoods? Will the whole city look like the suburbs? Actually, there are suburbs that look a whole lot better than some of these re-built streets. Some suburbs show evidence of thoughtful planning. There is no vision here. It's the wild west, as far as these developers go.

City hall is pleased to be generating increased taxes and developers are ecstatic that the city has given them free reign to re-shape our neighbourhoods. They're laughing all the way to the bank. For us longtime residents, in established neighbourhoods, this is just depressing.