Dec.11, 2024

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This is a meditation on accessibility. It starts with corner stores

295 Brock (in the 1950s?): corner store

295 Brock today, multiple rental units

Which one do you prefer? I want the corner store. The attractiveness of small local stores, well-stocked with good and useful things, may increase now that the Big Bad Thing has begun: the aging-in of the "baby boom." I'm speaking as part of the thin edge of the wedge (born in 1947, with the baby boom not officially over until birth year 1964). 

The issue about allowing small local corner stores back into neighbourhoods is coming up before City Council Dec.17: PH17.2 - Expanding Housing Options in Neighbourhoods - Neighbourhood Retail and Services.

As Randy from randy@beaconsfieldvillagera.com notes, "The proposal is being sold as just adding a few corner stores to the landscape, but it's much, much bigger than that. We've studied the by-law and it allows any residential property on a Major street (like Dovercourt) to be converted into a business without needing to go through the Committee of Adjustment." Plus it allows "any property inside an inner neighborhood (e.g. like Havelock) that is on a corner or next to a park or a school or in a bend to also be retail commercial on the ground floor."

this is a cane-bike

Randy says it's going to be noise and chaos, so he's against. But there's another side to consider: accessibility for people who want to get around well in their neighbourhoods. No Frills is near where I live, but I can't get around in that vast space nearly as well as I can at Ayal Dinner's corner grocery at Dundas and Sheridan. Night and day.

Accessibility is the subject, and it's not simple, and far beyond a wheelchair issue. So this week I made an "accessibility notebook" on the celos website. Rebecca Ott modified Jane LowBeer's cyclist image by sticking a cane in the basket, i.e. the image at the left. I like it!

The new section is here.

My newest posts are about farmers' markets accessibility. The three I've done are here and here and here. Bike lanes issues coming soon.

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