For starters: it's gone quickly downhill in the last 5 years or thereabouts because the street-level outreach services were placed within the downtown and high-density mixed use areas of the city; and so city promenades and parks have become unsafe for children and other vulnerable persons. I got tired of having to sweep the grass and sand for broken glass and needles before my kids could play; or having to explain why their favourite playground was closed/spray painted/burned down. My wife and neighbours didn't feel safe walking at night; probably because of the _numerous_ murders in the immediate neighbourhood.
But more to zoning: the Queen's Park Heritage Community is an affront to affordability and heritage both! It secures and defends the white-favored, post-war housing that was constructed in the Queen's Park area that replaced the high-density housing that existed in the area pre-war. The tenements that were there prior would never pass the heritage committee now. Good luck trying to convince Queen's Park to build anything remotely affordable.
The whole of Brow of the Hill is a low-income residential area that council, even the current self-declared progressive council, seems determined to completely ignore. It has some of the highest density of children, but parts of Brow are a half hour, or longer, walk from a public playground. There was a playground, 10y ago, but the School Board paved it over to put in parking for teachers.
Last spring, I knew it was time to leave when I was walking my kids to day care at 9am on a sunny day and I had to divert their attention _yet again_ because a man was running down the street with knife wounds. It's funny, because when I first moved to town I did so because it was cheap; and one day leaving the Columbia Sky Train station a man lunged from a bush, covered in dried blood, and asked to use my phone. I let him, thinking he'd call 911, but instead he called his friends and ordered a hit on those who tortured him.
Since then things got better, the neighbourhood cleaned up, but then they rapidly declined again because council thought it was better to embrace than resist.
And so I packed up my family and left.