Density in MY neighbourhood

When does what we feel become detached from what we know is right?

This is a huge issue in planning and other fields. Our choices are always influenced by emotion regardless of how much we try to distance ourselves from them. Increased density has many benefits yet when faced with it in our immediate environs people are denfensive and NIMBY becomes the slogan of choice.

My Nana lives a block from Ocean Park- a small community node, shopping centre type area and has been approached lately by developers buying up her block of detached, single family residences hoping to turn them into condos.

She doesn't want to move and my family had been encouraging her to hold onto the property. She has an ocean view and the real estate market is still booming. In the long run though our family would love to own the property-but it should be denser, that's all there is to it. To have even some semblance of efficient public transit we need concentrations of people, shops and services. This means that the neighbourhood is going to change shape a little- I'm not going to like how it looks- I've lived here all of my short and sheltered life but I will tolerate it because I know there is reason behind the madness that most fail to see.

Education is a very convincing tool, one that we often forget to use. People protest for mostly aesthetic reasons but if we gave them a chance and told them why....who knows, maybe for once we'd be able to see past the ends of our driveways.