Perhaps you are the one that has lost perspective. Your posts seem to equate urban planning with altruism. Urban planners take their direction from city managers, who take their direction from politicians. Hence, biases/agendas/visions invariably enter the fray.
No. My posts equate urban planning as an omnipresent aspect of municipal responsibility, the existence of which being a constant in shaping our lives over the last century. The theories have changed, and will change. The biases/agendas/visions have changed, and will change. But the act of municipal planning has been constant. It's continued evolution is not some right infringing boogeyman.
There are other examples too, New York, etc.
The left and the centrists infringe as well.
You said that people in a municipality should accept that their choices for how they live in the municipality are determined by the manner in which the electorate votes the politicians, and if they doubt like that, to vote differently next time. The plural vote of an electorate should not be taken as justification to restrict personal choice, where such choice remains legally protected by charter rights. Not a hard concept to understand.
What personal choice is being restricted?
An oft forgotten benefit to less dense population…and particularly relevant in the case of Toronto (and arguably Ottawa) is the important place that green space contributes to reduced environmental strain of the city on its surroundings. Toronto has one of the greatest ratios of green-to-concrete in N.America, which is important for reducing CO2 impact on the environment, as the greenery converts CO2 to O2.
I too could laugh or cry at the dichotomy, but chose to be positive and go with
is that figure for the city of Toronto, or for Toronto and its environs?
Greatest ratio of concrete to greenery means nothing when it is taking up substantially more land with concrete/roadways to accomplish what can be done in a much smaller area thereby leaving the other land green.
Unsure, that is the results of population density for Toronto.
He's not saying that urban greenspace doesn't have a positive impact. He's saying that you're comparing apples to fish when you try to imply that the only alternative to suburbs and sprawl is taking up the same amount of space but covering it in concrete and highrises.
Written for politicians in tiny vision environment (a city as opposed to a province or country) trying to highlight a environmental policy to pretend they are doing something well refusing to calculate the other costs to their ‘policy’.
Taken to extremes, including the trend line you proposed where the municipality represents the will of the people to acceptably enforce structure to the lives of those in its jurisdiction, can reasonable to some (obviously not your state-focused ‘best for the people, by (enough of) the people, Section 6 of the Charter, Rights of Mobility.
