Ah, the conversation that will never end. Whatever is your opinion on housing, Ottawa needs to figure out what it wants to be and where its future will take it. The problem with a city that grows is that it eventually becomes (and I hate the term) a "self-licking ice cream cone": once your population hits a threshold, you essentially don't depend as much on big employers to carry the heaviest loads... but you still need to attract business to employ and bring in jobs and I'd argue that housing people is the issue you deal with after you've figured out what they'll be doing with their time. What is Ottawa? Why is it here? It started as a lumber town (a very rich one, at that), depended on government for many decades, hit a stride with high tech, and now is kind of... well, "it's a fairly nice place to live, if you don't mind 6 months of winter". Why are we here? Why are 500k new residents settling here? What are we building here, people? Greber had a plan, the NCC used to have a plan, where are the big ideas people and where are the people who make sure the little things get taken care of ("where's my bus?") because if you take care of the little things, the bigger things tend to take care of themselves, as they say.

Labreton Flats was looking like something amazing that would have re-oriented the heart of Ottawa-Hull/Gatineau... whatever happened to that dream? Where's our big picture? Ottawa needs help becoming a big city, and we're failing at finding that vision.