{"id":30667,"date":"2022-01-20T19:38:48","date_gmt":"2022-01-21T00:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/?p=30667"},"modified":"2022-01-20T19:46:50","modified_gmt":"2022-01-21T00:46:50","slug":"changing-the-way-housing-can-work-to-spark-discussion-on-housing-crisis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/changing-the-way-housing-can-work-to-spark-discussion-on-housing-crisis\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cChanging the Way Housing Can Work\u201d to spark discussion on housing crisis"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

As Aurora considers ways to improve access to affordable housing through the Town\u2019s Official Plan, a virtual talk hosted by the Aurora Public Library next week will spark a discussion on the options.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cChanging the Way Housing Can Work\u201d brings former Aurora resident Alex Bozikovic, now architecture critic for The Globe and Mail, back home to \u201cunpack the housing affordability crisis,\u201d an area explored in his latest book \u201cHouse Divided.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt has become clear to me in the last few years is what has become clear to a lot of other folks, is the way our cities are growing right now has some significant problems in that people of the next generation are going to be left out,\u201d Bozikovic says. \u201cHouse prices have been rising dramatically, not just in Toronto and not just in the most prosperous cities in Canada, but everywhere.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe ideas are in the air,\u201d he adds, referencing the movement \u2013 YIMBYS (Yes In My Back Yard) out of California \u2013 towards more housing varieties. \u201cThe central idea being that we need to look hard at the policies that shape our built form. We need to look hard at the policies that shape our cities and really ask some hard questions about why we have the rules that we do and what they are accomplishing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Bozikovic\u2019s family first moved to Aurora in 1980s to find a \u201creasonably-sized house and a reasonably-sized yard.\u201d This was an easier objective back then and they landed near the Orchard Heights community. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At that point, he says the nearest corner store was at least one kilometer away and one of his first jobs as a teen was at a grocery store a 45-minute walk away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cJust surviving in that environment and trying to do anything independently as a teenager was very difficult as the options were very few, they were far apart, and the assumption was everyone would be getting around by car,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAs I was 15 and not driving a car, that kind of assumption and the perceived freedom that comes from driving everywhere has another side: if you don\u2019t have a car, you\u2019re stuck\u2026 and the daily life is not as rich as it might be. It\u2019s not just children who aren\u2019t able to drive; the opportunities for anybody who can\u2019t or doesn\u2019t want to drive are very limited in a place like that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cSome folks in the YIMBY movement have a catchphrase I like, which applies to cities: \u2018We should make it possible to legalize four floors and corner stores.\u2019 It doesn\u2019t apply directly to the four corners of Aurora, but the idea that you can create small apartment buildings and also allow for some modest neighbourhood-serving retail I think is an idea that just about everyone can get behind, at least in theory.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Having higher densities in neighbourhoods makes things more interesting, he argues, and paves the way for businesses to connect with customers and the community.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThe more people you have, the more stuff you\u2019re able to deliver and the better it is for business,\u201d he says. \u201cThere is a cultural norm that apartments, even modest collections of apartments, don\u2019t belong in \u2018house\u2019 neighbourhoods and somehow they are going to make things worse, or in some way allow the wrong sort of people to live in the neighbourhood. I think that sort of ethos is often not closely examined by people.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think it is an idea that has been inherited because, if you think about it, having opportunities for family members to live near you, whatever their stage of life, or whatever their living situation, it is valuable to everyone at some point. Everybody benefits from living in a place where there are opportunities to live in different ways and to move to different places. The oldest parts of Aurora, even the parts that were built up in the 1960s, have a mix of different stuff: a mix of different activities and a mix of different dwellings. To me, those are fundamentally good things that we should be trying to pursue and trying to achieve in our communities.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To weigh in on the subject, register for Changing the Way Housing Can Work, a presentation followed by a Q&A, by visiting aurorapl.ca. The forum takes place over Zoom Thursday, January 27, from 7 \u2013 8.30 p.m.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By Brock Weir
Editor
Local Journalism Initiative Reporter<\/strong><\/p>\n\r\n\"Facebook\"<\/a>\"twitter\"<\/a>\"mail\"<\/a>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

As Aurora considers ways to improve access to affordable housing through the Town\u2019s Official Plan, a virtual talk hosted by the Aurora Public Library next week will spark a discussion on the options. \u201cChanging the Way Housing Can Work\u201d brings former Aurora resident Alex Bozikovic, now architecture critic for The Globe and Mail, back home […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":30652,"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-30667","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general_news","category-news"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/2022-01-20-03.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3D2k4-7YD","publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-05-21 06:54:29","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\/30667","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=30667"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30667\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/30652"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30667"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30667"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newspapers-online.com\/auroran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30667"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}