A recent letter (“Increased density not the answer for Oak Bay”) decries Oak Bay being painted “as old fashioned and anti-change” and goes on to say that many questions are unanswered about how more densified communities are faring, post-densification.
This is an argument for more evidence-based dialogue, which is rational. How strange, then, that the letter concludes with the evidence-free, apocalyptic guarantee that “if population increase estimates come close to predictions… all of our cities and districts will be over-densified and uninhabitable.”
By contrast, ample evidence already exists for Oak Bay being anti-change – see the feverish opposition to: The Clive in its near-identical-to-former-size, the Bowker development on my own block, and the United Church’s proposal; the latter opposed so fiercely they simply gave up.
Samuel Mercer
Oak Bay
