This submission has as its core one very important idea - use of hydro corridors or right of ways for above ground rail transit. This single idea would give Mississauga what it needs and no other politician can see, a way to get transit into Mississauga without using roads that are clogged with cars "No matter how many buses we put on the road, they're going to have to fight with cars," said McCallion. " More the terrible transit problem Mississauga is in.
The rest of the letter does go on to note the kind of vision that the dear OLD Mayor of Mississauga has lost with age (if she ever had it).
Stacked industrial units or industrial apartments is something that must be developed to stop this one level sprawl of industry. In this case building over top of highway interchanges is used as the example. Highway interchanges being somewhat round work very well for this as there should be an outer ring of units and inner core for offices. The space between, would be a the large enclosed air space. One key element of this design is that trucks could drive around the outside of the units up to whatever level the deliver needs to be made to. To keep it all-weather some kind of transparent or semi-transparent skin would have to go up on the outer most side of the ramp. It need not be build over a highway interchange but imagine how much land can be saved by 10 stories of stacked industrial units and the cost savings by not having to service spread out units.
Imagine a stacked industrial units over two highway interchanges and the highway between them covered with the proposed apartments. An entirely new industrial area and people living so close to work they need not drive. Even if not built over highways, (maybe beside), the design has much promise. If this does not say 21 first century then what does? Most importantly imagine the long term building boom and jobs from these kinds of projects. The economy will grow and the government will have the funds for things like health care.
Building where there is a existing focal point of transportation, hopeful including near by rail and hydro corridors for more transit to be build, is the most common sense approach, that the public would embrace as finally the government is getting it right! We need to stop trying to make old methods work when we know they fall far short of what we need, we can and must do, not only for us but for future generations as well.
Lastly the recognition of green communities that are success stories for their protection. In Mississauga to the west of Hurontario St. and east of the Credit river is a treed community. If you look at it from near by apartment buildings, you will not see homes. If you look south along Hurontario St. from the QEW you can see trees and not the buildings on the sides of the road. Communities like this need to be protected and more communities like them encouraged. Homes with deep or large lots on which trees, hedges and shrubs are grown in density numbers should get tax breaks or somehow encouraged. We need more trees, hedges and shrubs in our cities and on private property makes the most logical sense as that is the largest part of a city.
Another example is how a low density community with its wide, deep lots has protected a forest which now is recognized as a Provincially Significant Wetlands Complex, an Urban Old-Growth forest with a Federally declared species the Jefferson Salamander. This is a success story and one that should be used in Planning across Ontario, that low density and large lots (hopefully with lots of trees, hedges and shrubs on them), can protect environmental significant and sensitive areas. Urban development and nature can exist together if we do it right. Paul F. Maycock's, Forest Ecologist, Erindale Collge, University of Toronto, has written a 3 page letter - Comments on the Cawthra Old Growth Forest.
The planting and maintaining of large numbers of trees, hedges and shrubs along highways should be done. Not only to act as air filters for air pollution but a sight and sound barriers. Something the local populations would support.
Due to many other projects I can not provide drawings or other details at this time to support these submissions but if the Ontario government is interested in a more complete presentation, it can be made.