As Councillor Kate Marsh expressed last week at a North Cowichan council meeting, it’s encouraging to see a number of applications coming to the municipality to increase density in core town areas.
Having more people living in the core areas of our towns and villages increases their chances of maintaining small business centres, rather than having everything shut down and move out of the community, leaving, essentially suburbs behind where people sleep, but increasingly don’t work or actually live much of their lives.
Having a customer base living nearby who is going to patronize the local coffee shop and grocery store, gift shop and hardware store is essential to the long-term viability of our many communities, from Chemainus to Duncan.
It’s a self-perpetuating cycle: having these services makes communities more vibrant and alive, which in turn attracts more people to live there.
It also encourages people to get out in their community and meet their neighbours. It has a huge effect on quality of life.
Further, it helps to get people out of their cars if they have services they can walk to, which in turn improves the environment.
Affordable housing is a growing problem in the region, and the availability of more, different kinds of housing, including multi-family developments, enables people of different financial means to live and work in our communities. It’s also key to allowing seniors to age in place.
Infilling is almost always more desirable than increasing urban sprawl, so we think the locations of the proposed projects are spot on.
We, as communities, certainly want to be careful that new housing maintains the character we want for our towns and villages. But infilling can reinvigorate the places we live and bring new opportunities.