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Showing posts from September, 2015
On raising permitted density and building heights in the zoning of Montreal’s downtown – a grave error: Montreal’s municipal administration has announced that they will raise density and height zoning limitations in many areas of the downtown ‘to Encourage More New Building Projects’.   Montreal’s zoning restrictions are already too generous.   Moreover, for the past several years, stealthy increases to these limits in the Downtown Master Plan way beyond existing zoning limits have already signaled to the development industry, that almost any density and any height will be acceptable to their schemes.      Far too few restrictions to re-zoning are already apparent to the industry when any new project is presented to City Hall.   Much more important than any generous re-zonings to get projects off the ground are the guarantees, the subsidies in cash, the partnerships and other advantages that the city has been willing to award to developers who are having trouble raising mort