Yesterday, City Council has passed a bylaw prohibiting the idling of automobiles. At the same time, the NPA set the stage for a huge intake of car traffic by green-lighting big box retail on Marine Drive.
That car traffic will more than likely be idling, since the selfish unethical mouthbreathers who shop at Wal-Mart will be waiting for other selfish unethical mouthbreathers to pull out of the parking spots closer to the store so they don't have to (gawd furbid) walk across the super-sized parking lot.
Isn't it great how easy it is to completely run over the concerns of the neighbourhood when your party gets donations from Wal-Mart's PR firm and the Mayor fires the Variance Board? This page never ceases to be amazed that for a guy in a wheelchair, Sam Sullivan is still able to get his head so far up his ass.
1 comment:
That's a good point you make about the anti-car idling by-law. I suppose we can look forward to meter readers, or whoever would be in charge of enforcing the by-law, to hang around in parking lots giving people tickets for idling their cars now? Even in the brand-spanking new Wal-Mart?
In any case it will be interesting to watch how the application plays out. I wonder if Wal-Mart will come up with a better proposal than their last one, or a worse one? I suppose it's possible that some of the NPA councillors who like to play up their image as 'green friendly', like councillor Ladner, will push for them to build a store that's at least as 'green', if not more so than their original proposal. But still, this council is very pro-development, including the opposition vision councillors (whom I suppose I should note include the non-rookies who did vote against Wal-Mart last time). So I suspect the application, regardless of grassroots opposition, will go through rather easily. And perhaps they'll just stick the same proposal in as they did before. I remember hearing something a while back along the lines of how Wal-Mart thinks that BC is a market that's isn't very 'penetrated' or 'utilized'. So I suppose other communities can look forward to more locations as well. Maybe, we'll even have a second Wal-Mart within the next few years?
It's too bad too, because if Sullivan really wanted to follow through on his 'eco-density' plan, this land could be used as a more diversified commercial services area. This way the city could transform the more suburban qualities of the southern portion of the city into a more urban, and pedestrian friendly area, like much of the northern half of the city. Maybe a North Fraser neighbourhood, with more commercial development, along the lines of the South East False Creek development.
Not to mention the fact that the wages that Wal-Mart pays are so pathetically bad that I can’t imagine anyone living on their own in Vancouver actually being able to afford to do so while working their. And if they had to commute from more ‘affordable areas’, then they’ll still be paying a significant chunk of their measly salary to work there. All in all building more big-box retailers aren’t the best way to go for development purposes. And Wal-Mart is the perfect symbol as to why.
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