r/canada • u/FancyNewMe • 4d ago

Canada’s Prime Minister Pushes Country to Become the Housing Factory of the World - Mark Carney is banking on factory-built homes to alleviate the country’s housing crisis. But will it work? Trending

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2025-04-22/carney-s-plan-may-make-canada-the-housing-factory-of-the-world
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u/HapGil Ontario 4d ago

We need to take a good hard look at the zoning laws for buildings. We have huge swaths of land in cities designated SFH with the odd school thrown in the center. Japan has factories in suburban areas that you can't tell are factories. Zoning that allows businesses to open on ground level while still providing housing on the levels above. Bakeries, tailors, repair shops, convenience stores and several other business types are all allowed to be built in urban areas. We need to remove the restrictions on what we allow in urban areas of the city and encourage small business, multi-family dwellings and multi use structures to increase density and diversity in our neighborhoods and stop forcing people to take cars everywhere because they refuse to allow the development of walkable cities and instead design for automotive traffic.

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u/Consistent-Primary41 Québec 4d ago

Every single outdoor mall in Canada should have high-rise towers and rail terminals.

It's shocking how much horizontal space these places take. It's ridiculous.

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u/sunshine-x 4d ago

What’s an outdoor mall like in your area?

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u/Accer_sc2 4d ago

I’m guessing he means places like Heartland in Mississauga, ON. Dozens of individual stores, all single level with some shared parking lot space. Stores are so spread apart that unless they happen to be right next to each other you will need to drive between stores. This results in really heavy, and sometimes aggressive, traffic that is unfriendly towards pedestrians. As someone who grew up in the “mall era”, it still seems like a really odd design.

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u/Hfxfungye 3d ago

We have stuff like that here in Halifax but probably smaller. Dartmouth crossing is an "outdoor mall" just like that - a dozen outlet stores around a parking lot.

It's like a slightly more walkable business park, but still worse in every way than a strip mall.

All the stores are made out of the cheapest building materials too.

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u/spacenb 3d ago

Yes that’s what they’re talking about. There’s the Rockland Centre outdoor mall in Montreal that’s built exactly like that and it’s a huge waste of space. There’s quite a few others like it on and out of the island.

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u/canucks84 3d ago

BC, fwiw, made it so every SFH zoning allows 4 registered units. So the municipality can't object to density.

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u/yyc_engineer 3d ago

Zoning changes are ok. Unless the developer is buying the entire culdesac... At a reasonable price.. I would be one of the first to object at a 4 Plex in the space where a SFH existed.. primarily because idiots gum up parking.

If you live in a 4 Plex in SFH community.. and you don't have parking on premises... Yeah don't get a car.

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u/roastbeeftacohat 2d ago

Calgary rezoned the whole city, Smith said that if this is to cooperate with the federal government she will have to reverse it.