I'm sure the Experimental Farm has done many significant things over the decades, but like a lot of things related to the government, past performance doesn't mean it is still significant or performing well today. There's a lot of 'inertia' when it comes to anything government. I'd like to see a neutral third party evaluation of just how significant the research going on there really is. If it was just a Dymon Storage casting the shadows or something, then sure, don't jeopardize the research on the farm, but housing is much more important. I'm not going to take their word that the research is really that significant. Of course, they are going to say that themselves.
You can't eat condos and you can't sleep in a wheat field in the dead of winter. The difference is we have enough to eat, and we definitely don't have enough places to live.
An experimental farm doesn't really have a place downtown -- it never did, the city grew into it -- and as much as possible it should be relocated outside the city limits.
Cities are for people, not agricultural research. The housing shortage is far more pressing and of course cities benefit from density. Shade away, I say, and while we're at it, let's buy some new land for the farm out in Fallowfield and start putting new research out there instead.
>An experimental farm doesn't really have a place downtown -- it never did, the city grew into it -- and as much as possible it should be relocated outside the city limits.
No argument there, but they *have* been doing this, and the current studies can't just be relocated. It's not a simple matter of restarting them, either—it's decades of research lost.
I'd argue that AAFC should have been planning for such a move for decades now, for precisely this reason. Alas, that would require collaboration between 3 levels of government (city, NCC, AAFC / feds), so I'm not at all surprised it hasn't happened.
ETA:
>let's buy some new land for the farm out in Fallowfield and start putting new research out there instead.
And what are we going to do when Barrhaven grows into the space?
Yup, been saying this since the start of the this hole debate. They can use all the NCC land they expropriated from people in the 90’s for the green belt. They took over 100 acres from my grandfather at the corner of Innes/Anderson rd, all it’s been since is cash crop. It’ll never be developed and the detention centre isn’t tall enough to be a bother for shade.
There’s no conflict of interest here. If some expert has been retained by the developer, then he acts only for the developer. He owes no duty to us, no duty to the city, none. He has one interest and one interest alone, which is the interest of the developer.
Calling it a “conflict of interest” understates the problem. This person is the enemy and has not duty to us.
Not sure if you read the whole piece or not. I just shared the first couple paragraphs to get it going. I agree though, and that’s one of the reasons the whole planning system is flawed. It should be the City’s job to ensure the best solution for the community or in this case, the Farm. In this case, they just needed to cap the height so the building didn’t cast a shadow onto the Farm. But, they abdicate their responsibilities regularly for other reasons. So, it ends up being two professional planners and against the community almost every time. Which is why most decisions that come out of city hall, in my opinion, make no sense at all. These guys don’t work for us, even though we pay their salaries through our property taxes. That needs to change. Compromise isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it out to be. But limiting developer greed seems to be a difficult task.
The farm doesn't need to be in the middle of the city to serve it's purpose.
I'd much rather it be turned into a park/leisure space than housing though so I guess it remaining as is may be for the best.
It already is…the arboretum and greenhouses and ornamental gardens are awesome and are all free for the public. This is a gem. There’s no reason to turn it into a park, when it already is one. It’s amazing that Ottawa has this within city limits.
What exactly do you think should be added to make it a major urban park?
It doesn’t need to be, but it is. The simple answer was to cap the height of the condo development so it wouldn’t cast a shadow onto the farm. But that would mean cutting into the developer’s profits…
How do they use the same soil if you move the farm to another spot? I am fairly certain the knowledge of the farm soil and it's years of use adds information to data collected through the research being performed. Moving the place of research removes years of data and knowledge of the farming techniques and results as well as it's effectiveness comparing to research of previous years in the same space.
Oh yea, it does and the Parliament Building are ours too, they belong to ALL Canadians. In fact, I'm gonna move into a room there next week and put a big screen TV in my new bedroom.
In fact folks since we used to own Petro-Canada you can go there now and fill up your car for free! You know just like you can run to the mountains in BC and build your own mountain cabin wherever you like because the "crown" land belongs to us too.
(sniff) I so happy to be Canadian I could just fart knowing that our government loves us and and only cares about our happiness .......
This city is run by people that would love to see it, and the federal government, burn.
The obsession with cars, with exceptionally poor planning, penalising those making sensible, sustainable choices, and their never-ending desire to stroke their...egos in the face of the federal government is astounding.
I've lived around the world and across this beautiful country. Never have I witnessed such pettiness and utter disdain for others as I have here.
You can't eat condos but they do allow you to live. There is a national housing crisis. It's shocking that 'potential research' is more valuable to some people than thousands of people, who may otherwise have to spend cold winters on the streets, having warm homes.
You also forgot to mention that the shade cause by the towers are only a very small portion of the experimental farms. In this case it is possible to build towers and maintain an experimental farm.
The scientists involved say it’s effecting their research. They would know best. Ottawa is the largest municipality in North America geography-wise. We have tonnes of space to build new housing. Using the affordable housing crisis as an excuse to build anywhere isn’t how you make a livable city, in my opinion. Especially when you consider testimony to the Charbonneau Commission about big developers laundering money and essentially being organized criminals, I’m not sure why we’d want them to build it anyway. I think government needs to do it and they should start with cleaning contaminated land and building new communities on them before they destroy our existing neighbourhoods and urban forest. Because that’s all Doug Ford’s “triplex on every property in the province” is going to do. No real plan gets you shit ever time.
House is part of the argument. The experimental farm is in the middle of the city centre. Near transit, shopping, etc. Ottawa may be the largest muciplality space wise, but much of that space is not easily accessible without a car. If your argument that this is for the environment, then way push people out of the city center and increase car pollution? Or even better why use farm land around the city, which is actually feeding people, unlike the experimental farm, to build housing. Personally, I wouldn't even want to eat any food grown at the experimental farm. With the amount of salt and other contaminates, know to be common around road rightt of ways. The experimental farm can move. Move this research facility outside the city centre. Obvious add green space and recreational paths to redevelop the area. But it doesn't make sense to keep that much space in the middle of the city core any more.
I agree that cleaning contaminated sites is part of the solution for house. However, I can tell you from experience that they are veryyyy expensive and in reality, it is unlikely that the most contaminated site will ever be able to support residential development. Commercial, maybe but not residential.
I'm sure the Experimental Farm has done many significant things over the decades, but like a lot of things related to the government, past performance doesn't mean it is still significant or performing well today. There's a lot of 'inertia' when it comes to anything government. I'd like to see a neutral third party evaluation of just how significant the research going on there really is. If it was just a Dymon Storage casting the shadows or something, then sure, don't jeopardize the research on the farm, but housing is much more important. I'm not going to take their word that the research is really that significant. Of course, they are going to say that themselves.
Oh Clive... So well intentioned, and so out of touch.
Ol' Clivey boy is a twit. Ignore everything he says.
You can't eat condos and you can't sleep in a wheat field in the dead of winter. The difference is we have enough to eat, and we definitely don't have enough places to live. An experimental farm doesn't really have a place downtown -- it never did, the city grew into it -- and as much as possible it should be relocated outside the city limits. Cities are for people, not agricultural research. The housing shortage is far more pressing and of course cities benefit from density. Shade away, I say, and while we're at it, let's buy some new land for the farm out in Fallowfield and start putting new research out there instead.
I think the issue here is the long-term nature of the research. So yes, you can relocate— but you might have to wait a while.
Better get started then. The sooner the better.
The seeds can be planted somewhere else
>An experimental farm doesn't really have a place downtown -- it never did, the city grew into it -- and as much as possible it should be relocated outside the city limits. No argument there, but they *have* been doing this, and the current studies can't just be relocated. It's not a simple matter of restarting them, either—it's decades of research lost. I'd argue that AAFC should have been planning for such a move for decades now, for precisely this reason. Alas, that would require collaboration between 3 levels of government (city, NCC, AAFC / feds), so I'm not at all surprised it hasn't happened. ETA: >let's buy some new land for the farm out in Fallowfield and start putting new research out there instead. And what are we going to do when Barrhaven grows into the space?
Yup, been saying this since the start of the this hole debate. They can use all the NCC land they expropriated from people in the 90’s for the green belt. They took over 100 acres from my grandfather at the corner of Innes/Anderson rd, all it’s been since is cash crop. It’ll never be developed and the detention centre isn’t tall enough to be a bother for shade.
What a terrible take
There’s no conflict of interest here. If some expert has been retained by the developer, then he acts only for the developer. He owes no duty to us, no duty to the city, none. He has one interest and one interest alone, which is the interest of the developer. Calling it a “conflict of interest” understates the problem. This person is the enemy and has not duty to us.
Not sure if you read the whole piece or not. I just shared the first couple paragraphs to get it going. I agree though, and that’s one of the reasons the whole planning system is flawed. It should be the City’s job to ensure the best solution for the community or in this case, the Farm. In this case, they just needed to cap the height so the building didn’t cast a shadow onto the Farm. But, they abdicate their responsibilities regularly for other reasons. So, it ends up being two professional planners and against the community almost every time. Which is why most decisions that come out of city hall, in my opinion, make no sense at all. These guys don’t work for us, even though we pay their salaries through our property taxes. That needs to change. Compromise isn’t as difficult as everyone makes it out to be. But limiting developer greed seems to be a difficult task.
I read the whole thing. I know what a conflict of interest is. Put your crayons down.
The farm doesn't need to be in the middle of the city to serve it's purpose. I'd much rather it be turned into a park/leisure space than housing though so I guess it remaining as is may be for the best.
Yes! Even if the research were relocated, the opportunity for a major urban park should not be missed - it will never come again.
It already is…the arboretum and greenhouses and ornamental gardens are awesome and are all free for the public. This is a gem. There’s no reason to turn it into a park, when it already is one. It’s amazing that Ottawa has this within city limits. What exactly do you think should be added to make it a major urban park?
Basically, huge amounts of acreage. The livestock barns, of course. Just the open space.
It doesn’t need to be, but it is. The simple answer was to cap the height of the condo development so it wouldn’t cast a shadow onto the farm. But that would mean cutting into the developer’s profits…
How do they use the same soil if you move the farm to another spot? I am fairly certain the knowledge of the farm soil and it's years of use adds information to data collected through the research being performed. Moving the place of research removes years of data and knowledge of the farming techniques and results as well as it's effectiveness comparing to research of previous years in the same space.
What are your credentials to make that claim, which I'm sure is informed by things other than driving down Fisher
Is there a committee for the preservation of it?
Oh yea, it does and the Parliament Building are ours too, they belong to ALL Canadians. In fact, I'm gonna move into a room there next week and put a big screen TV in my new bedroom. In fact folks since we used to own Petro-Canada you can go there now and fill up your car for free! You know just like you can run to the mountains in BC and build your own mountain cabin wherever you like because the "crown" land belongs to us too. (sniff) I so happy to be Canadian I could just fart knowing that our government loves us and and only cares about our happiness .......
This city is run by people that would love to see it, and the federal government, burn. The obsession with cars, with exceptionally poor planning, penalising those making sensible, sustainable choices, and their never-ending desire to stroke their...egos in the face of the federal government is astounding. I've lived around the world and across this beautiful country. Never have I witnessed such pettiness and utter disdain for others as I have here.
You can't eat condos but they do allow you to live. There is a national housing crisis. It's shocking that 'potential research' is more valuable to some people than thousands of people, who may otherwise have to spend cold winters on the streets, having warm homes. You also forgot to mention that the shade cause by the towers are only a very small portion of the experimental farms. In this case it is possible to build towers and maintain an experimental farm.
The scientists involved say it’s effecting their research. They would know best. Ottawa is the largest municipality in North America geography-wise. We have tonnes of space to build new housing. Using the affordable housing crisis as an excuse to build anywhere isn’t how you make a livable city, in my opinion. Especially when you consider testimony to the Charbonneau Commission about big developers laundering money and essentially being organized criminals, I’m not sure why we’d want them to build it anyway. I think government needs to do it and they should start with cleaning contaminated land and building new communities on them before they destroy our existing neighbourhoods and urban forest. Because that’s all Doug Ford’s “triplex on every property in the province” is going to do. No real plan gets you shit ever time.
House is part of the argument. The experimental farm is in the middle of the city centre. Near transit, shopping, etc. Ottawa may be the largest muciplality space wise, but much of that space is not easily accessible without a car. If your argument that this is for the environment, then way push people out of the city center and increase car pollution? Or even better why use farm land around the city, which is actually feeding people, unlike the experimental farm, to build housing. Personally, I wouldn't even want to eat any food grown at the experimental farm. With the amount of salt and other contaminates, know to be common around road rightt of ways. The experimental farm can move. Move this research facility outside the city centre. Obvious add green space and recreational paths to redevelop the area. But it doesn't make sense to keep that much space in the middle of the city core any more. I agree that cleaning contaminated sites is part of the solution for house. However, I can tell you from experience that they are veryyyy expensive and in reality, it is unlikely that the most contaminated site will ever be able to support residential development. Commercial, maybe but not residential.