I am trying to imagine the absolute misery of a life that would lead someone to say — publicly — about the sound of children playing in a backyard, that “the idea of tolerating this type of noise is frankly ludicrous, and completely incongruent with this, or any other, residential corner in this city.”

How scarred and dark the psyche of an adult human being would have to be for her to stand up in a room full of other people and suggest that strollers on a front porch present an unbearable “heritage concern” or a threat to the “character” of a neighbourhood.

The horrible experience of the world that would lead a man to consider the presence of a day nursery in a downtown neighbourhood to be an “outrage.”

One can almost conjure the misanthropy of a character holding such attitudes, but the cartoonish level of oblivious villainy that would lead a person to stand up and make those arguments in public, as if they should be considered reasonable? It stretches credibility.

And yet, there they were, residents of Cabbagetown and their professional advocates, making just those arguments in speeches and letters to the city’s committee of adjustment on Wednesday, as reported by my colleague Jennifer Pagliaro.

Read more:

Cabbagetown daycare proposal refused at city hall over traffic concerns

Editorial | Daycare won’t destroy Cabbagetown’s heritage

Worse, the committee bought it, and turned down the application to allow a daycare in a corner-lot, double-sized house. The local political representative, unelected placeholder councillor Lucy Troisi, whose appointment itself was a disgrace, disgracefully sided with those who find childcare an affront to urban life. “The protection of this delicate neighbourhood is imperative,” she wrote to the panel.

A neighbourhood so delicate as to be threatened by a few dozen toddlers may be beyond protecting, I think.

The loudest complaint made, the one cited by the committee panel in its decision, was about the volume of traffic an 82-child facility would bring to the side street it was on. This was also the most reasonable concern. It is a legitimate worry, and you only need to look at almost every elementary school in the city to see that drop-offs and pick-ups on residential streets can create car chaos.

But you can see that clearly because the vast majority of elementary schools in Toronto, including in suburban areas like Scarborough, are on residential sidestreets. (See, a schoolyard on a residential street is not “ludicrous,” it’s “normal,” even in Cabbagetown where there are two elementary schools bordering on side-street residential yards within five blocks of the proposed daycare location.)

Residential streets are a perfect place for elementary schools — kids and families can walk there more easily, there is less concern about people spilling out of the schoolyard into high-traffic zones, they make a neighbourhood a good place to raise a family, which most often translates into making it a good place to live for everyone.

Despite legitimate widespread concern about the drop-off situation, we do not seriously debate closing all these schools or moving them into industrial parks and suburban malls and away from residences. Because childcare and education facilities are excellent things to have in your neighbourhood.

The way to deal with traffic concerns is by making and enforcing traffic rules and plans — an approach both the facility operator and the city government itself should embrace. The city staff recommendation to allow this proposed Cabbagetown daycare for a limited time to see how traffic developed or didn’t, in a neighbourhood within walking distance of both Regent Park and St. Jamestown, and bursting with young families who would not need to arrive by car, seemed imminently reasonable.

But to see it as so, you’d have to realize the obvious truth that a childcare centre would be a community asset. The other complaints offered alongside the traffic concern make plain that these objectors consider it a blight.

Good neighbourhoods need day nurseries, and they need schools and healthcare facilities, and other amenities. For that matter, a strong city needs homeless shelters and needle exchanges and half-way houses. Many of those are things you might prefer to locate a few blocks away, rather than directly next door to your house. But all of them are things that need to go next to someone’s house. “I was here first and prefer not to have anything change on my street” is not an argument worthy enough to justify impoverishing your community and your city.

Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading... Loading...

Given the range of possible new uses for a building—a Wal-Mart, a tire factory, an abattoir — most of us would find a new daycare welcome, even enriching. A sign of our neighbourhood’s health.

Indeed, it seems to me that if somehow the presence of children threatens the character of your neighbourhood, then the character of your neighbourhood sucks. And if you find yourself arguing for the preservation of that character over serving the needs of a living urban community of your neighbours, consider that you might benefit from spending some time reflecting on your own character instead.