{"id":20046,"date":"2018-03-10T09:54:38","date_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:54:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=20046"},"modified":"2018-03-10T09:54:38","modified_gmt":"2018-03-10T14:54:38","slug":"protecting-stable-neighbourhoods-is-about-the-future-not-the-past-residents","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/protecting-stable-neighbourhoods-is-about-the-future-not-the-past-residents\/","title":{"rendered":"Protecting stable neighbourhoods is about the future, not the past: residents"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Brock Weir<\/strong><\/p>\n

It might be a bid to protect Aurora communities that have stood the test of time, but protecting local stable neighbourhoods is about the future as much as it is about the past.
\nThis was a message brought to Council members and municipal staff alike as nearly 200 residents filled Town Hall for a public Open House on Aurora\u2019s Stable Neighbourhoods study.
\nFor many neighbours, protecting the look and feel of decades-old Aurora enclaves presents opportunities for all stakeholders, but, in order to fully realise the potential, there has to be a \u201cpolitical will\u201d to make the change.
\n\u201cI believe that development is essential within stable neighbourhoods, as it is in any part of Town\u201d said Neil Asselin, a resident of Royal Road. \u201cThat said, development within stable neighbourhoods must be carried out in a way that is more sympathetic to what makes these areas stable and desirable in the first place. Changes to the current bylaws must ensure that the stability of the neighbourhood and the wellbeing of all the neighbours that occupy it are favoured over incompatible infill. It builds on our great community, making it better in the long run.
\n\u201cTo start, we must agree that stable neighbourhoods are just that: they\u2019re stable, they\u2019re not decaying, and they\u2019re not in decline. They don\u2019t need rebuilding or redefining. They are an integral part of the Town\u2019s legacy and their inherent desirability is a vital feature to the areas around the core and to the Town\u2019s identity as a whole. Some are trying to change the channel on this and make this about property values, but I disagree. I see that there is value in the neighbourhood that brought me here to purchase a home two years ago and that is worth protecting.\u201d
\nDevelopment, he continued, is both a necessity and an inevitability if neighbourhoods are to remain vital and relevant, but he said he believes new builds should be carried out in the context of what already exists to \u201cfurther evolve the interrelationship of the built environment and, in doing so, reinforce, reinvigorate and revitalize\u201d the neighbourhood.
\n\u201cI know it sounds lofty, but it is a basic concept of always having life in our neighbourhood, but always remembering what the neighbourhood means to us,\u201d he said, suggesting a steering group to ensure Aurora keeps focus on stable communities.
\nA similar view was offered by Wells Street resident Carol Fairclough who said she and her family chose to move to Aurora for its character.
\n\u201cWe love the old neighbourhood,\u201d she said. \u201cWe loved it so much that when we had twins and needed a bigger house, we moved from one century house to another, slightly larger, across the street. There are 11 other families in a three block radius who have done that very same thing because they don\u2019t want to leave the neighbourhood.\u201d
\nSpeaking to the packed house, she addressed an earlier comment made by resident Peter Curtis, and said she hoped whatever he was building was in keeping with his neighbourhood.
\nMr. Curtis said he had lived in Aurora for the past eight years. A former Cardinal Carter student, he moved back with his wife and are currently in the process of demolishing their Holman Crescent home for something new.
\n\u201cWe have exhausted a lot of effort to actually see if we can keep our wartime house,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had an engineer come in and check it out. Unfortunately, the cost \u2013 asbestos, no garage, no insulation \u2013 those things add up and play a factor on us. I understand your perspectives. We\u2019re in our mid-30s and we\u2019re looking forward to 50-plus years in Aurora, just like all of you guys. This seems to be more of an issue of size, two-storey versus one-storey.
\n\u201cTo put it into context, we\u2019re putting something together to put to the Town. It is within the bylaws of 35 per cent. Everyone is talking about infill development, but this is not so much infill development for us; it is transitional development. I wanted to put that out there because this perspective hasn\u2019t been communicated yet.\u201d
\nLong-time Aurora resident Claude Arcand, however, also took issue with the word \u201cinfill,\u201d but approached it from another direction.
\n\u201cThe use of the word offends me,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is destruction and replacement. We\u2019re not filling in something that wasn\u2019t there before.\u201d<\/p>\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It might be a bid to protect Aurora communities that have stood the test of time, but protecting local stable neighbourhoods is about the future as much as it is about the past.
\nThis was a message brought to Council members and municipal staff alike as nearly 200 residents filled Town Hall for a public Open House on Aurora\u2019s Stable Neighbourhoods study.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-5dk","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-20 17:42:03","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20046","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20046\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}