Edmonton Journal

Last week, Carl Zehr drove through a new subdivision in Kitchener and saw a wall of garages. He looked at the rows of semi-detached homes with double-car garages in front, separated by swatches of concrete and small tufts of grass. "When you looked at these in multiples, side by side if you were looking [down the street], you saw nothing but garage doors," said Mr. Zehr, Kitchener's Mayor. "There has to be a better way." On Monday, the city's municipal council voted unanimously to ban two-car garages in front of semi-detached homes, beginning in 2007. Mr. Zehr said the new zoning bylaw is not simply about ridding communities of what urban planners and architects call "snout houses."