[waterloowarrior]

The making of modern Ottawa (http://www.canada.com/ottawacitizen/news/opinion/story.html?id=8a748cd9-7bd5-428d-a510-ec9f7e3de77c)
The capital created by the planners of the '40s and '50s represents a triumph of the car, and a failure of sustainable development
Ken Gray
The Ottawa Citizen
Thursday, October 25, 2007

Did the federal government planning process in Ottawa succeed in creating a great national capital? Did the plan forged by the noted French planner Jacques Gréber work? The short answer is no.

Why? Because the plan reflects the period in which it was formulated, and the circumstances that created those decisions have changed. The car in the 1940s and '50s was perceived as the great liberator of the masses. No longer would individuals be confined to their neighbourhoods or downtown.

Families could live where they wanted. They created diffuse suburban communities that allowed families to grow but were inefficient in terms of energy and pollution. The National Capital Commission and its predecessors created the majestic capital driveways in response to that great North American pastime of a half-century ago - the Sunday drive. The Gréber plan resulted in the triumph of the car, a legacy that remains today.

These driveways - Colonel By, Queen Elizabeth, Rockcliffe and the Ottawa River Parkway - helped create urban sprawl by making car travel to the suburbs easy. They also cut off neighbouring communities from the waterways that they showcased for car passengers by creating an asphalt barrier to the shorelines beside which they were built.

In my neighbourhood, Westboro, to get to the Ottawa River, pedestrians must cross the uncontrolled Ottawa River Parkway. To do so is tricky. The speed on the parkway is supposed to be 60 km/h but realistically cars travel at as high as 100 km/h. That's a very effective pedestrian barrier. As a result, there is but one people place along the long expanse of the parkway that stretches from Carling Avenue to the parliamentary precinct.

That's Westboro Beach, access to which is facilitated by a tunnel under the parkway. The national capital region has three major rivers and a UNESCO world heritage site in the Rideau Canal. But, in part due to the NCC driveways, we don't think of Ottawa as a water city. Again that's the result of the 1950s triumph of the car.

In San Antonio, Texas, along its canal, there are restaurants and entertainment establishments that create the River Walk. In Ottawa, we have bicyclists and the occasional jogger along the river but nothing like the kind of people activity the River Walk sees. The Texas example is a tourist spot unto itself. Instead, here, if you want a rather eerie, perhaps dangerous, certainly lonely walk after dark, trundle along the Rideau Canal.

In the 1950s, the city almost seemed as though it were in the way of the capital. Car-oriented suburbs took employees and their families far away from the majestic Parliament Buildings. LeBreton Flats, a real neighbourhood with a significant heritage, was razed, in part, because it was seen as an eyesore too near the parliamentary precinct. Tramways were perceived as a blight with their unsightly overhead wires. They were eliminated in favour of the car and the bus. Train lines were lifted because their smoke and noise destroyed the tranquility of the capital. Trains downtown were seen as obstacles to road travel. During the light-rail debate, that same argument was heard from merchants on Slater and Albert streets. In addition, back in the 1950s, industry appeared to destroy the parliamentary vistas.

Thus the heritage of Gréber is a one-industry government town, with a lack of private enterprise, little modern mass transit, and urban sprawl created by suburban planning and the individual mobility of the car. The city was but an afterthought for the pioneering planners of the 1950s. That was a heritage carried on by the NCC until recent days.

Today, Ottawa is a low-density urban area, like Edmonton, Calgary, Peel, Halton and York. The Federation of Canadian Municipalities estimates that the ecological footprint of these areas is one-third higher than in high-density cities.

As John Lorinc wrote in his 2006 book, The New City: "Sprawl is directly tied to higher consumption levels. That may be good for economists and manufacturers, but these unsustainable urban development patterns have precipitated a vicious cycle of environmental degradation that is eroding the quality of life in the very places where our economic future will be made or broken."

In other words, we are degrading the conditions of our cities, where 80 per cent of Canada's population lives. Those cities produce most of the wealth that pays for all the good things that power the economies of our city, province and country. Urban congestion, inefficiencies, bad planning and pollution can't continue without hindering our economic development.

Meanwhile, the focus of environmentalism is changing. Once it emphasized forest-cutting or acid rain. Now, it's global warming. The predominance of the car cannot continue without catastrophic climactic consequences.
Ottawa, as a G8 capital, the best-educated major city in Canada, and as the richest metropolis in one of the wealthiest countries in the world, should lead the fight against environmental degradation. In fact, it lags behind. It is the largest Canadian city without an environmentally friendly subway or light-rail system. Incredibly, the two petrochemical capitals of North America - Houston and Calgary - have electric light-rail systems. Ottawa's urban sprawl is enormous because our 12 former municipal governments allowed the city to expand across the Greenbelt, which should have been a natural boundary for the community.

Our suburbs are far from self-contained and invite long, polluting, energy-consuming commutes - because there is no light-rail system - not just across kilometres of suburbia but, ironically, across the NCC Greenbelt, which was to have been a pristine reserve. In fact, the Greenbelt, by extending car commutes, is contributing to the very environmental degradation that is the focus of today's green movement. The Greenbelt is part of the heritage of 1950s national capital planning.

This city should be an example for the world in development intensification, mass transit and green practices. When tourists from around Canada and the world descend on Ottawa, they should see a model city from which to take home ideas. Diplomats, on their return to their native lands, should have stories to tell about the innovative Canadian capital.

In fact, Ottawa sets a bad example. This despite hundreds of millions of dollars of federal largesse being pumped into this community. Our city is so bereft of leadership that provincial and federal governments have been unable to give away more than $400 million to construct a green, efficient light-rail system. Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty told me in a recent interview that the more than $200 million in provincial funding waiting for an Ottawa light-rail plan is the hardest $200 million he has ever tried to give away. The province can't give away money to the City of Ottawa to build green mass transit. How is that possible?

The triumph of the automobile began in the 1940s and '50s during the years of the Gréber plan and subsequent moves by the NCC, its predecessors and Ottawa's municipal governments. Our community suffers as a result. They tore up the rails and the tramways to facilitate a core of museums, monuments and federal buildings where few walk after 5 p.m. Through the NCC parkway system, and later the Queensway, planning was such that it made driving easy and created a vast, loosely developed suburban city that contributes to our pending environmental crisis.

Former Nepean mayor Ben Franklin, late in his life, told me he wished his city had never jumped the Greenbelt to create Barrhaven. His realization was correct, but too late.

Ken Gray is the city editorial page editor and a Citizen editorial board member. His column runs on Fridays.
E-mail: kgray@thecitizen.canwest.com

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007


I really like the first sentence.... despite the good intentions of planners at the time, we really do have a legacy of auto-oriented, sprawling city from them. It's amazing how large our "parkway" system is, and how it is basically limited-access expressway system adjacent to traditional neighbourhoods. I don't know if there's anything that can really be done, especially with all the competing jurisdictions in Ottawa.

[Kitchissippi]

I, too, have mixed feelings about the parkways. In many ways, they were designed because the government was ashamed of how ugly the city was. The solution was to create an easy-to-contain glossy federal core in the centre and then have green corridors leading up to it to separate the messy civic part which the feds had little control over. Kind of like putting horse blinders on until you got to Parliament Hill. The problem ever since has been how to integrate the neighbourhoods into this old outdated framework.

One thing I am thankful for is that it reserved the riverfront for public use. Had this not been retained or expropriated by the government, it probably would have ended up in private hands as waterfront backyards for a priviledged few. We can easily get rid of the parkway when cars become obsolete.

[Mille Sabords]

One think I am thankful for is that it reserved the riverfront for public use. Had this not been retained or expropriated by the government, it probably would have ended up in private hands as waterfront backyards for a priviledged few. We can easily get rid of the parkway when cars become obsolete.

That's a very good point. We are slowly acquiring the maturity we need to get ourselves to reclaim our waterfront in an urban (and therefore public) way. The very fact we are having this discussion shows it in my mind. Ken Gray's speech was very good at Urban Forum, by the way. I attended.

[lrt's friend]

What the federal government has done with our waterfront property is far from perfect, but it is a whole lot better than what was there before. Often factories, railways, ramshackle boathouses and cottages, even shanty towns with squatters. Imagine what Ottawa would be like if the feds hadn't cleaned out that mess. Now, the challenge is to make it even better.

The Ottawa River Parkway was really the worst example of what Ken Gray described as the ribbon of asphalt separating the community from the waterfront, but then again it was conceived based on 1960s thinking. The older parkways actually in some cases predate the auto era and are far less a barrier.

[Dado]

That's a very good point. We are slowly acquiring the maturity we need to get ourselves to reclaim our waterfront in an urban (and therefore public) way. The very fact we are having this discussion shows it in my mind. Ken Gray's speech was very good at Urban Forum, by the way. I attended.
Ken Gray's speech was the above as far as I could tell. I was there too. Can't say I was too impressed with some of the nasty, parochial urban chauvinism on display, like the guy referring to outlying areas as "hick towns", including, bizarrely, Smith's Falls. Smith's Falls is older than Ottawa. It's a major rail hub, and was for a long time a major industrial town because of that and its location on the Canal where there was a source of water power. I think some of these people should get out of the city a bit more and go explore and learn some history before they mouth off again. I was appalled, I really was.

[keninhalifax]

Often factories, railways, ramshackle boathouses and cottages, even shanty towns with squatters. Imagine what Ottawa would be like if the feds hadn't cleaned out that mess.

I understand where you're coming from, but I tend to think that the 'mess' would have cleaned itself up with the tertiarization of Ottawa's economy and the rise in overall living standards in the city during the 1960s and 1970s. Massive urban renewal schemes might have cleared away the detritus at the periphery of wealthy cities, but they demonstrated that they couldn't plan for resilient, interesting districts to replace what was destroyed. Had the OIC and NCC not tampered with Ottawa's waterfront, perhaps areas like Victoria Island would be much better connected with the city, and the area west of Parliament Hill wouldn't be a hodgepodge of old neighbourhoods severed from one another by rambling scrub fields.

[Mille Sabords]

I understand where you're coming from, but I tend to think that the 'mess' would have cleaned itself up with the tertiarization of Ottawa's economy and the rise in overall living standards in the city during the 1960s and 1970s. Massive urban renewal schemes might have cleared away the detritus at the periphery of wealthy cities, but they demonstrated that they couldn't plan for resilient, interesting districts to replace what was destroyed. Had the OIC and NCC not tampered with Ottawa's waterfront, perhaps areas like Victoria Island would be much better connected with the city, and the area west of Parliament Hill wouldn't be a hodgepodge of old neighbourhoods severed from one another by rambling scrub fields.

Well said, Ken. I hope the City of Ottawa has room in their planning department for people with your ability to see the big picture.

[waterloowarrior]

another Ken Gray NCC article


Rethinking Ottawa's Brownbelt
Ken Gray
The Ottawa Citizen
Friday, November 16, 2007

For once, a National Capital Commission chairman is right. NCC chief Russell Mills is bang on when he calls for developing non-environmentally sensitive areas of the Greenbelt.

In fact, he should go farther. The time has come for a second Gréber plan.

Development on the scale Mr. Mills is suggesting requires a major rethink of the federal role in Ottawa-Gatineau.

The great French planner Jacques Gréber created the blueprint for Ottawa in 1950 around which this community has grown. The project succeeded in some respects. Gréber created a capital that became a symbol for the nation and he expanded our magnificent Gatineau Park. But he also built the parkway system that cuts Ottawa off from its rivers, took rail links out of downtown and expropriated huge tracts of land for the Greenbelt.

The Gréber plan, unveiled when the automobile reached its ascendancy, is out of date with today's environmental concerns. So too is the Greenbelt.

Areas such as the farmland between the city and Kanata as well as between the core and Orléans has no special environmental significance. So too the agricultural land bordering Greenbank Road. Rather than develop working farmland at the far reaches of Ottawa's suburbs and extending the polluting commutes of its residents, why not develop land of little consequence inside the Greenbelt nearer Ottawa's downtown?

We're not talking about paving Mer Bleu, Stony Swamp or the Jack Pine Trail. Rather the farmland that sits fallow while cars must drive long polluting distances to get past it. So too must ambulances on emergency calls take extra extended drives across the Greenbelt between places like Kanata, Orléans and Barrhaven to hospitals in older areas of the city. When it comes to polluting drives, the Greenbelt has become the Brownbelt.
Mr. Mills is right. There is not much that is special over large stretches of the Greenbelt. When I first moved to this community, I had a hard time understanding why unused farmland was perceived as a national trust.

Had Ottawa's former cities such as Gloucester and Nepean not jumped the Greenbelt, its use as an urban boundary could be justified. But now much of this land just contributes to the largest source of pollution in the city -- automobile exhaust.

Mr. Mills is correct again when he says that intense development in the Greenbelt would contribute to making rapid transit successful. Right again on the need for an east-end bridge to get heavy trucks out of downtown.

Bang on concerning opening the region's river and canal banks to people. Correct yet again on the importance of a national portrait gallery to the capital.

All this requires a second Gréber plan, for all those reasons and one more.

An independent study would operate above and beyond city and NCC planners who have done a magnificent job of profoundly botching planning the area outside the Parliamentary district. The list of NCC planning debacles is too large to list in this space and city planning appears confined to building tract housing and big malls with huge parking lots.

Which brings me to my one quibble with Mr. Mills's musings on the future of region and the NCC. Other than trans-provincial traffic (and Mr. Mills would do well if he could find a way to get the Prince of Wales Bridge carrying commuter rail), the Crown corporation should not play a role in transportation. It has little experience and the NCC's track record in planning where it has some knowledge is appalling, let alone on transportation. For all its failures, at least the city has run a bus service and might some day create a functioning light-rail service. It would be building rail now had the federal government not intervened.

In fact, all of Mr. Mills' musings were going well until the federal government got involved.

Environment Minister John Baird said he had grave reservations about Mr. Mills's proposal. That's the kind of setback the MP for Ottawa West-Nepean created when he set in motion the process that snuffed out the light-rail plan that would have brought $2.4 billion worth of economic uplift to the city and taken many polluting cars off the roads.

This is an environment minister whose contribution to the green revolution has been championing freeways so that he can garner votes from suburban drivers. His killing of the Mills idea would result in more polluting urban sprawl. Commuters would take longer drives on more crowded roads. What is even more mind boggling is that this is being suggested by an environment minister. Mr. Baird's thinking is horribly out of date. However, it will appeal to commuters and noisy residents near the Greenbelt. They vote, don't they?

A new Gréber plan is needed in part to come to terms with the new environmental and planning realities of our time, but also to help the capital avoid short-sighted planners, politicians and thinking.

A new Gréber plan is the path of least incompetence.

Ken Gray is the city editorial page editor and a Citizen editorial board member. His column runs on Fridays. E-mail: kgray@thecitizen.canwest.com

© The Ottawa Citizen 2007

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

:previous: Ken Gray needs to be in some position of power... :tup:

[Mille Sabords]

Agreed. Makes a whole lot of sense to me.

[waterloowarrior]

Ken Gray . Wishes for Ottawa
Ken GrayThe Ottawa Citizen
Friday, January 11, 2008

OK, so it's Jan. 11. Methinks it's still early enough in the year for New Year's resolutions for the city. So here they are: [numbers added by me]


Build light rail. Build any light rail. Build it through Innes Councillor Rainer Bloess's rec room, for his key vote helped scrap the perfectly good first light-rail project that weighed in at $919 million. Now the new improved plan could be as high as $2 billion. In fact, run the new line through all the estates of the dissenting councillors who voted against the Bob Chiarelli plan. An awkward route to be sure, but it will make the extra $1.1 billion to be spent on the new project by taxpayers feel worthwhile.
Develop the farmland and non-environmentally sensitive turf of the Greenbelt. Let's curb urban sprawl in the far suburbs and bring development close to the core on those NCC lands. But let's not just develop them. Make them something special, with access to the significant areas of the Greenbelt. Invite the best planners from around the world to compete on a plan. But before we do that, we need to know where proposed light-rail lines are going so we can intensify development along them.
Use those downtown parking lots for condos. Ottawa needs to get more people living in the core to create a street scene. The central business district after dark can be a very lonely place. And fewer parking lots means fewer commuters, less congestion and less pollution.
Before we start developing the area around Chaudière Falls, why don't we get people living on or near Sparks Street so that the street a block away from one of Canada's most important monuments can have people on it during the evenings and weekends? That's a job for the National Capital Commission and federal Public Works, which own much of the property on the street.
Someone start an Ottawa Comedy Festival. It's cheap to do because little assembly is required. Comic flies in and you rent hall. Why not hold the festival in November or February, the least funny months in Ottawa? Certainly there is much to satirize in Ottawa. Get the Comedy Network or the CBC to tape and broadcast it.
Make something of the spectacular fall colours in Gatineau Park. Sure the NCC holds a little festival in autumn but really it's just a bunch of people in a traffic jam in the park. Perhaps a fall colour festival is the job of the City of Gatineau. With so much of the economy of the national capital region dependent on tourism and one of the most spectacular spots on the continent for fall colour, perhaps we can market Ottawa as the place for leaf-peepers to peep.
Let's build a proper outdoor stadium. Sure we have a great baseball park on Coventry Road, but if this city is ever to host major athletic events such as the Commonwealth Games and perchance to try again for a football team, we need a stadium that will do us (the capital of a G8 nation) proud.
Run the Transitway (and later light rail) to Scotiabank Place. Surely this is a better way to get to the arena than idling in the parking lot and on Highway 417. Has anyone at OC Transpo talked to the management of Scotiabank Place about using one of the largest lots in town for a park-and-ride on days when there are no events at the arena? A little revenue for the hockey consortium through parking, and more riders for the bus company. Transit chief Alain Mercier, where are you?
Stop constructing tall buildings outside the core. Ottawa can become a more intensively developed community without huge highrises. Paris even does it in its downtown core. Highrises block the sun in this cold climate and increase wind velocity. If we are to have a community of pedestrians and transit riders, we can't make Ottawa any colder than it already is.
Let's stop building freeways. Toronto fought that battle and won with the Spadina Expressway about 40 years ago. Instead, governments in 2008 are building a freeway to Rockland and have been extending freeways along Highway 417 and Highway 7 in the west end. Freeways give the mistaken impression of fast commuting. At least until you hit traffic jams at the Split in the east end, the Queensway in the west end, or leave Highway 417 to travel on a 19th-century downtown street grid.
Let's stop building huge Ottawa River bridges. The No. 1 rule of commuting: never cross a bridge. You just sit there and idle waiting to get across. New bridges fill quickly with traffic and encourage urban sprawl in Quebec. That raises servicing costs and pollution. That said, we need an east-end bridge, not for commuters, but to get truck traffic out of downtown. Those huge gas trucks travelling through the core are a recipe for disaster. The NCC should expedite its work on that issue. So too should NCC chairman Russell Mills use his great diplomatic skills to bring Gatineau and Ottawa together on using the old Prince of Wales Bridge for the O-Train. That's a cheap commuting solution. That's my wish list for this year. How much do you want to bet, what with paralysis at city hall, that next year's is almost the same as this year's?

Ken Gray is the city editorial page editor and a member of the Citizen's editorial board. His column runs Fridays.

E-mail: kgray@thecitizen.canwest.com

/

[jeremy_haak]

# Build light rail. Build any light rail. Build it through Innes Councillor Rainer Bloess's rec room, for his key vote helped scrap the perfectly good first light-rail project that weighed in at $919 million. Now the new improved plan could be as high as $2 billion. In fact, run the new line through all the estates of the dissenting councillors who voted against the Bob Chiarelli plan. An awkward route to be sure, but it will make the extra $1.1 billion to be spent on the new project by taxpayers feel worthwhile.
# Develop the farmland and non-environmentally sensitive turf of the Greenbelt. Let's curb urban sprawl in the far suburbs and bring development close to the core on those NCC lands. But let's not just develop them. Make them something special, with access to the significant areas of the Greenbelt. Invite the best planners from around the world to compete on a plan. But before we do that, we need to know where proposed light-rail lines are going so we can intensify development along them.

I believe he answered his own question; we should centre intensification on all the rec rooms of the dissenting councillors. A double whammy!

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

:haha:


God Bless Ken Gray... :tup:

[Mille Sabords]

:previous: Amen. Good to have someone credible in the mainstream media saying the words and making so much sense.

[lrt's friend]

I have always found Ken Gray's comments reasonable. Now, if only our city council would take that list and make something out of it.

[Cre47]

72% of the population rely on their cars for every trip - time for some tolls or use more urban lanes for carpooling or transit.

[Mille Sabords]

Time for some pricing of every shred of free mall and office parking.

[lrt's friend]

There should be tolls on all those multilane highways we keep building as people are leaving Ottawa. Tourists from outside of Ont and Que exempted. Residents of Rockland, Carleton Place, Arnprior, Casselman, Embrum should contribute to the transportation infrastructure they use as they commute into the city.

[Deez]

^And somehow the City thinks it's a good idea to SUBSIDIZE trips from the exurbs by extending the 4-lanes of 174 all the way to the city limits. Bah.

[lrt's friend]

meanwhile those same people who have moved to the exurbs will rub it in your face, how much lower their property taxes are.

[Cre47]

Time for some pricing of every shred of free mall and office parking.

I've heard a few days ago that an organization (don't remember who) who wanted to see the big-box or suburban mall parkings to have parking fees. Certainly, have no problem for that, but I would also prefer some parking spaces to be wipe-out. These are eyesores to say the least.

[Deez]

^^Should have said "province":

Highway 174: a widened waste
Ken Gray, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Friday, January 25, 2008
The proposed $104-million freeway to Rockland is in jeopardy. That's because the project, announced in Premier Dalton McGuinty's re-election campaign, is very low on Ottawa City Council's agenda.

And while the federal and provincial governments have agreed to fund building a widened stretch of Highway 174 east of Orléans in conjunction with the city, the municipality is responsible for the road, this having been downloaded during the Harris years.

The city commitment is $15 million, and Mayor Larry O'Brien wants to build the freeway (calling it "mandatory"), but Alta Vista Councillor Peter Hume believes council won't support the project.

"I don't think it is in our budget," Mr. Hume said in an interview. "I can think of a lot more pressing projects that we could use $15 million for."

Mr. Hume then produced an excerpt from city budget documents. It reads:

"The provincial government has announced funding support to widen Highway 174 from Trim Road to Rockland. ... Detailed cost estimates will need to be developed through an environmental assessment process required as part of the widening. The project has not been identified in the city's official plan. ... It is also not identified in the transportation master plan as the widening is not needed to serve the city's projected growth over the planning period to 2021."

Mr. Hume is concerned that the project is not part of the city's priorities, but it is being thrust upon it by the senior levels of government.

"I don't remember it being on a committee agenda. I'd be spending the money on public transit instead. I'd be surprised if we funded it. I'd be amazed."

"Support in the east end is lukewarm at best," Mr. Hume said. "It comes top down from government. I'm not sure there are 13 votes for this (the needed majority on council). It's jumping the queue."

Furthermore, Mr. Hume doubts that councillors in a cash-strapped municipality will want to drop their ward priorities for something thrust upon the city by the senior governments. He feels council's priorities must take precedence.

The position of council and staff, if Mr. Hume is reading the political winds correctly, has the makings of a standoff between the city on one side and the senior governments on the other.

Mr. McGuinty wants the freeway project to fulfil an election announcement. However, he is, as a liberal, on the wrong side of the issue. The taxpayer should not be shelling out $104 million for a freeway that will not move traffic faster (it will stall in the Highway 417-174 Split if not before). As well, the freeway will contribute to pollution and urban sprawl by giving commuters the misplaced impression that they can travel quickly downtown from places such as Rockland.

Meanwhile, a statement released by the premier's office this week makes it look as if the freeway (which extends into Glengarry-Prescott-Russell along County Road 17) is still a go, at least at Queen's Park:

"The provincial government is pleased to commit $40 million to the improvement of this important city and regional road. ... We are pleased the federal government is coming to the table and we look forward to our municipal partners joining with us on this important project as well."

As the statement says, the premier is not alone in supporting the freeway. Environment Minister John Baird and Conservative MPs Royal Galipeau and Pierre Lemieux have pledged federal money for the project. That the federal environment minister would say last year that the widened road would cut congestion and pollution is astonishing. Surely he knows you can't build freeways wide enough to cut congestion at rush hour and that there is no solution to the huge volume of traffic moving through the Split. Physics doesn't allow it -- too many cars, too little space. That said, there have always been votes in widened roads.

Modern mass transit would not solve the Split problem, but at least commuters could get downtown quickly. That's what an environment minister in a G8 capital city should be saying.

Perhaps the Rockland freeway is Ottawa's Spadina Expressway controversy. That the province stopped Toronto's Spadina example 37 years ago at the urging of urban critic Jane Jacobs and media guru Marshall McLuhan among others shows just how far behind Ottawa is when it comes to urban planning. People in progressive cities stopped thinking freeways a long time ago.

Even back then, planners and politicians in Toronto knew that freeways were inefficient. In the words of Progressive Conservative premier Bill Davis when he killed the Spadina project: "If we are building a transportation system to serve the automobile, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to start. But if we are building a transportation system to serve people, the Spadina Expressway is a good place to stop." Accordingly, Mr. Davis helped build a subway along the route.

City council had a rough year in 2007 when it came to transportation. But if Mr. Hume is correct about the mood of council on the Rockland freeway, maybe our municipal representatives are starting to get it right. Now if we can just get the premier and the environment minister off the freeway bandwagon, maybe Ottawa can learn the lesson of Spadina, 37 years late.

Increasingly environmentalism is just artifice and fashion. Say one thing, do something else. Widening Highway 174 is a waste of $104 million of your tax money. It is bad business as usual.

Ken Gray is the city editorial page editor and a Citizen editorial board member. His column runs on Fridays.

E-mail: kgray@thecitizen.canwest.com




© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

[Mille Sabords]

There's an ugly dimension that might be added to this whole debate and that is the perennial language issue. The French east end getting shafted out of a freeway, while the anglo west end gets the 417 and the 407.

[Acajack]

Interesting angle. I know the eastern road to Rockland far better than the highway to Carleton Place.

Does anyone know what portion of the widened Hwy. 7 to Carleton is within the City of Ottawa’s limits?

On the eastern side, you’re still in the City of Ottawa until way past Cumberland Village. I think the boundary is at Canaan Road, at which point you’re just minutes away from Rockland. So I’d say close to 90% of the proposed “Rockland Freeway” is within the City of Ottawa. Can we say the same of the “Carleton Place Freeway”?

Also, who’s paying for what? The article spells out how the Rockland scheme is to be financed if it is to happen. But what about Carleton Place? Who’s paying for that?

[clynnog]

There's an ugly dimension that might be added to this whole debate and that is the perennial language issue. The French east end getting shafted out of a freeway, while the anglo west end gets the 417 and the 407.


I know that Ottawa and Toronto/GTA are sprawling but I wasn't aware that the 407 benefitted the 'anglo' west end.

I don't think of the east and west ends of Ottawa as 'anglo' and 'franco', but others may differ. The bigger difference is going from 613 to 819.

[clynnog]

[QUOTE=Acajack;3307252]Does anyone know what portion of the widened Hwy. 7 to Carleton is within the City of Ottawa’s limits?

/QUOTE]

The City of Ottawa ends on Highway 7 at Ashton Station Road...there is large bridge over the Ashton Station Road on Highway 7. On the NW corner of that quasi intersection there are some industries (probably didn't want to pay City tax rates) including Cavanagh Construction (construction and developer company involved in a lot of west end sprawl). I believe that about 2/3 of the C.Place to 417 upgrading/widening is within the City of Ottawa. They have stopped work for the winter I believe.

[jeremy_haak]

I'm sure if the MTO still had jurisdiction over 174, they would happily go ahead and expand it. The issue isn't one of anglophone v. francophone, but municipal v. provincial.

[Mille Sabords]

I know that Ottawa and Toronto/GTA are sprawling but I wasn't aware that the 407 benefitted the 'anglo' west end.

I don't think of the east and west ends of Ottawa as 'anglo' and 'franco', but others may differ. The bigger difference is going from 613 to 819.

I call 407 the widened section of Highway 7 from the 417 to Carleton Place - not to be confused with 407ETR in the GTA.

Having worked as a consultant in many of those Prescott-Russell municipalities, I can tell you without the shadow of a doubt that the language divide is deeply felt in that part of the world.

To answer Acajack, most of Highway 7 is within the City of Ottawa, but the highway is owned by the province, so they can widen it as much as they want.

And to echo Jeremy Haak, this one is very much a municipal vs provincial issue since the 174 is the only municipally-owned freeway outside the GTA. And this time, the city would be correct in arguing its case against the province that there is no need for Ottawa to widen its highway with its scarce money, just so our Orleans residents can wake up to an already-congested highway every morning.

It's like giving a mugger a bigger knife so he can stab you better in addition to stealing your wallet.

[jeremy_haak]

I call 407 the widened section of Highway 7 from the 417 to Carleton Place - not to be confused with 407ETR in the GTA.

I suspect that it will continue to be simply numbered Hwy 7 not unlike how the expressways in the Waterloo Region have retained their original (and extremely confusing) highway numbering scheme. Given that I don't believe connecting the 407ETR to Ottawa is a part of the MTO's longterm planning, it wouldn't make much sense to number the two highways the same.

[Acajack]

And so if the province owns Hwy. 7, it automatically foots the entire bill for widening it I guess.

Regarding the anglo-franco thing, the good old days die hard. There is still a long-standing perception that Ottawa east of Bank St. is predominantly French-speaking and west of Bank is mainly English-speaking. But although you hear more French in the east end for sure, the reality is that English dominates the public space pretty much everywhere (east and west) within the boundaries of Ottawa these days. Even in Vanier’s shops everything’s pretty much in English now, from the signage to the greeting when staff approach customers.

Yet the perception remains: East is French, West is English. The same is true with Aylmer across the river. It is by far the most anglophone part of the new city of Gatineau, but francophones are still something like 65 or 70% of the population these days. But talk to many people in West Quebec and you’d think it was a 99% anglo area. I myself didn’t know the place all that well a few years ago and pretty much expected it to be another anglo enclave like Shawville. Much to my surprise it was way more French than Orleans, my home at the time.

But I have to agree with Mille Sabords that the language divide is a much greater factor once you cross from Ottawa into Prescott-Russell. The simple reason is that as an everyday community language, French is still in the game there and holding its own (better in some places than in others) in much of this region.

On the other hand, French is no longer in the game even in places like Orleans, in spite of its long-established reputation as Ottawa’s francophone (Ontario-side) suburb. I once worked as a reporter in the area and attended numerous public meetings on various local issues and at the vast majority of them not a single word of French was spoken. We could have been in Kingston.

[harls]

Yet the perception remains: East is French, West is English. The same is true with Aylmer across the river. It is by far the most anglophone part of the new city of Gatineau, but francophones are still something like 65 or 70% of the population these days. But talk to many people in West Quebec and you’d think it was a 99% anglo area. I myself didn’t know the place all that well a few years ago and pretty much expected it to be another anglo enclave like Shawville. Much to my surprise it was way more French than Orleans, my home at the time.

Aylmer is a lot more English than Hull, that's for sure. I find it depends on what commercial establishments you visit.. I tried Gabriel Pizza a couple of weeks ago (the old Pizza Hut), and next to none of the servers spoke french. Other places like Blockbuster and Loblaws have mostly French-speaking anglos working there. The place where I take my car to get fixed is owned by a unilingual hardcore francophone. My neighbours next door are english, but the people across the street are french. What a crazy place. I love it.

[Jamaican-Phoenix]

Dude, in my neighbourhood, people are speaking either Chinese, Italian, Vietnamese, English or French. :haha:

And where I work, there are always a good number of francophones. Tis a truly crazy city. :P

[m0nkyman]

Dude, in my neighbourhood, people are speaking either Chinese, Italian, Vietnamese, English or French. :haha:

And where I work, there are always a good number of francophones. Tis a truly crazy city. :P

Not to mention a fair whack of Arabic...

[Rathgrith]

MMMMMMH.... Shawarma.:slob:

[Rysdad]

Aylmer is a lot more English than Hull, that's for sure. I find it depends on what commercial establishments you visit.. I tried Gabriel Pizza a couple of weeks ago (the old Pizza Hut), and next to none of the servers spoke french. Other places like Blockbuster and Loblaws have mostly French-speaking anglos working there. The place where I take my car to get fixed is owned by a unilingual hardcore francophone. My neighbours next door are english, but the people across the street are french. What a crazy place. I love it.

I just moved from templeton(old gatineau) to aylmer and its like moving from baie comeau to moncton..aylmer truly is a crazy place beacuse whatever you speak its accepted by the community.

[Rysdad]

how about 178, 418 or 471?
I like qcs naming convention

[Dado]

I suspect that it will continue to be simply numbered Hwy 7 not unlike how the expressways in the Waterloo Region have retained their original (and extremely confusing) highway numbering scheme. Given that I don't believe connecting the 407ETR to Ottawa is a part of the MTO's longterm planning, it wouldn't make much sense to number the two highways the same.

My bet is for it to be numbered 415. Hwy 15 and Hwy 7 used to share the stretch to Carleton Place (i.e. Hwy 7/15). What we think of as old Hwy 15 to Arnprior used to be Hwy 29, then Hwy 15/29, then Hwy 15 and now finally it's Cty Rd 29. Also, as you say, connecting the 407ETR is not likely part of MTO's longterm planning (though who can say?), but connecting Ottawa to Kingston with a 400 series just might be, and Hwy 15 is the obvious route to use. You can envision how this will go. First they'll want to twin it to Smiths Falls and create a bypass (probably on the west side), because Smiths Falls is growing and with its recent economic troubles there might be more people commuting to Ottawa (Smiths Falls is also a major CPR hub and the closest one to Ottawa now that CPR has cut all its lines into Ottawa, so that probably generates some extra truck traffic too). Then more transports will start using the route to get to Toronto because it'll be quicker than using 416 (which was an idiotic routing anyway) or Hwy 7, which will create pressure to first bypass the smaller towns and villages along the way and ultimately to twin the route all the way to Kingston and the 401.

So Hwy (4)15 has a history, it's available, it doesn't cause confusion and it fits with the next most logical freeway-building wet dreams at MTO.

[Kitchissippi]

Highways don't necessarily become 400-series just because they are four-laned. Highway 11 from Orillia to North Bay is case in point.

The most of the time, highways are given 400 designation when significant portions of it deviate from the old highway. For example, the first segment of the 416 from Bayshore to Bankfield was far from the original 16 which was along Prince of Wales. The 407 ETR in Toronto is a completely new route, and the old 7 is still intact.

[Mordack]

My bet is for it to be numbered 415. Hwy 15 and Hwy 7 used to share the stretch to Carleton Place (i.e. Hwy 7/15). What we think of as old Hwy 15 to Arnprior used to be Hwy 29, then Hwy 15/29, then Hwy 15 and now finally it's Cty Rd 29. Also, as you say, connecting the 407ETR is not likely part of MTO's longterm planning (though who can say?), but connecting Ottawa to Kingston with a 400 series just might be, and Hwy 15 is the obvious route to use. You can envision how this will go. First they'll want to twin it to Smiths Falls and create a bypass (probably on the west side), because Smiths Falls is growing and with its recent economic troubles there might be more people commuting to Ottawa (Smiths Falls is also a major CPR hub and the closest one to Ottawa now that CPR has cut all its lines into Ottawa, so that probably generates some extra truck traffic too). Then more transports will start using the route to get to Toronto because it'll be quicker than using 416 (which was an idiotic routing anyway) or Hwy 7, which will create pressure to first bypass the smaller towns and villages along the way and ultimately to twin the route all the way to Kingston and the 401.

So Hwy (4)15 has a history, it's available, it doesn't cause confusion and it fits with the next most logical freeway-building wet dreams at MTO.

If only that would happen. Getting to Ottawa from Kingston would only take about an hour and twenty minutes, while with the current route it takes about 2 hours. I agree, the 416 makes no sense at all. I don't know who it's serving, because people to the east of it (like Cornwall) most likely take the 138 to the 417 and into Ottawa, which is faster anyways. Meanwhile any traffic west of the 416 has to travel all that way over to the middle of nowhere. Unfortunately i cant see Highway 15 being developed at all now, since it would most likely leave the 416 largely abandonded. Maybe if they had though ahead as to what would have made the most sense, the 415 would already exist.

[Dado]

Hwy 416 was built for the exact same reason that the Prescott and Bytown/Ottawa railway was built some 150 years earlier: because it was the cheapest way to connect Ottawa to the main route between Toronto and Montreal. That's it. Hwy 416 does go to one of the Seaway bridges, unfortunately on the American side of that bridge there is absolutely nothing of significance nor any major roads to get one to somewhere of significance. So yes, the funds sunk into the 416 would have been better spent getting to Carleton Place and Smiths Falls, and the funds currently being sunk getting to Carleton Place could have been used to get down to Kingston or thereabouts.

[Acajack]

A logical place for the expressway south of Ottawa to end up would have been the exit off the 401 for the Thousand Islands Bridge. It would have been a westward more direct route to Kingston and Toronto, and linked up with Interstate 81 towards the south. This could have been numbered 415.

[Mordack]

A logical place for the expressway south of Ottawa to end up would have been the exit off the 401 for the Thousand Islands Bridge. It would have been a westward more direct route to Kingston and Toronto, and linked up with Interstate 81 towards the south. This could have been numbered 415.

This too would have made sense. Taking local roads through this route from the end of I-81 to joining the 417 near Stittsville is only 125 km. When you factor in the less curvy route the new road would take and the faster speed limit, you could get to ottawa way faster than with the current routing. And at least the new road would actually serve some communities like Smith's Falls and Carleton Place. What communites does the 416 serve?

[jeremy_haak]

This too would have made sense. Taking local roads through this route from the end of I-81 to joining the 417 near Stittsville is only 125 km. When you factor in the less curvy route the new road would take and the faster speed limit, you could get to ottawa way faster than with the current routing. And at least the new road would actually serve some communities like Smith's Falls and Carleton Place. What communites does the 416 serve?

Kemptville.

I suspect that one reason the 416's route was chosen was simply because 16 was already the primary highway between Ottawa and the 401. I suppose the Hwy 15 routing makes a bit more sense; however, I suspect it would have been quite a bit more expensive due to the geography of the area.

[Acajack]

Good point. I believe the area I would have the 415 running through is a southerly wedge of the Canadian Shield that extends to the Thousand Islands. You see it in the rockier scenery in the sparsely populated segment of the 401 between Kingston and Brockville.

Also, the old Highway 16 south of Kemptville had a very wide right-of-way, and the MTO had actually been clearing land next to it for many years (if not decades) in anticipation of its widening to four lanes, even before it got the political green light to build the 416.

[lrt's friend]

There is one answer to this question. Cost. To build directly to Kingston more or less following Highway 15 would mean building twice as much divided highway as the Highway 416 route. A route connecting to I-81 would also be costly because it would cut through very rocky country requiring a lot of blasting and filling. When Highway 401 was built, the last section completed was between Brockville and Kingston because of the challenges that this section presented.

[Mille Sabords]

Excellent article...

=========================================================
Ottawa Is Just A Little Big
Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:00 AM EST

The year 2008 may have seen the beginning of Ottawa's slow maturation from small town to larger metropolis. The advent of a new rail system has clearly shone a spotlight on crucial economic issues facing the city, which is finding itself up against a wall in dealing with infrastructure costs. As a quick fix the city has clamped down on the rezoning of rural areas. It now wants more intensive forms of urban land-use within its developed boundary. Our think-tank is finally realizing that it has to grow up, not out, to reduce operating expenses and increase revenues. Unfortunately, our planning framework is too long-in-the-tooth to adequately accommodate just a quick fix to the City's development form. As a consequence, bigger building projects everywhere are running into protracted conflicts with neighbouring residents accustomed to low-density neighbourhoods.

Ottawa's low-density wisdom has shaped its landscape for over half a century. It is now visibly colliding with the modern economic fundamentals that make cities viable. In a breath, the sustainability of our urban plan is imploding. The problem has evolved as a consequence of flaws in the regional plan that was deeply embraced by predecessor administrations in the post WWII era. At that time, Francois Greber conceived a new vision at the request of the NCC; a garden city model of urban beautification. Since its inception, the fundamentals of this urban canvass have only been tweaked cosmetically in subsequent revisions.

Greber's influence on this city's modern day geography is immense. He conceived our greenbelt interspersed with urban islands called garden cities, including for example Orleans and Kanata. He also proposed commercial building height restrictions in the downtown to preserve the silhouette of the Peace Tower's clock from strategic viewing planes along the banks of the Ottawa River and he relocated railway lines to less visible domains. Our Garden City wisdom encouraged the development of thousands of hectares of raw land into single-family homes where the highest part of any building is the dormer windows that grace single home rooftops.

Greber's urban vision is troubling today because it unwittingly caused a simultaneous increase to infrastructure spending with a reduction in tax revenue potential. Our capital region's plan now needs a major overhaul from the ground up or it is to face very serious and broad consequences in a short period of time, never mind trying to finance a new rail system. The economics of low density planning is simply rubbing City council the wrong way.

Economic laws affect both city form and its function. As to function, one acre of residential land will barely contain 8 single-family homes with a collective tax base of perhaps $30,000 a year. The same acre of land on Carling Avenue will earn the city $200,000 as an apartment building or $400,000 in taxable revenue developed for office space. In the downtown, the same acre will produce over $3,000,000 in taxable revenue each year, and more than double that if height restrictions were relaxed to any reasonable extent!

As to form, Greber's height restrictions have wiped out over 12,000,000 square feet of taxable floor space in Ottawa's business core. Moreover, since 1979 builders have erected over 10,000,000 square feet of new office space in that core and have left it with barely six properties remaining with less than 3,000,000 square feet of floor capacity. This number is arguably a puny 12-year office supply. Land is virtually a non-renewable resource. By using more land to produce fewer buildings everywhere, Ottawa is quite literally running out of space.

If offices cannot be built downtown where they belong, the city will have to increase office space development in our backyards. Is this the city form we all aspire to achieve? The Greber plan is an example of 1940s urban artwork at its grandest and most naïve. Its economic and social design flaws were concealed in an elaborate matrix of federal post-war urban idealism. Euphoria followed our nation's Second World War accomplishments and perhaps understandably became the driver of a new urban consciousness in the capital. Our nation's capital was after all our country's symbol of hard fought freedom and democracy. Greber has manifested this symbolism in Ottawa's physical reconstruction of the day.

Thanks to Greber's earthy vision though, Ottawa has enjoyed the appearance and character of a little City but with big aspirations. Our little bigness is a comfort to we residents, and it has helped shape our community's undemanding personality and we like it that way. The greenbelt is a popular and cherished aspect of our community, but at what cost do we embrace its sprawling finery? Homeowners have by and large paid a disproportionately lower share of the City's annual tax requirements. If we are going to continue to rely on a stable commercial sector to pay the bills and finance new forms of transit, things have to change and fast. We must accommodate a larger commercial land base or reduce height restrictions to existing land, or both, lest we face the consequences of more development in our back yards. The alternative is to increase residential taxes to absurd levels, which is clearly ours and our politicians' death wish.

If residents understood how important the newer high density development plans are to keeping a lid on our future tax increases, we might not object so strenuously to their completion. Like it or not, Ottawa is just a little too big to be small, and remaining a little-big flies in the face of economic reality. It is no small irony that Ottawa's dated master plan is causing it to struggle today to finance new rail infrastructure that Greber himself worked so hard to remove in the first place; a classic confrontation between function and form that is fuelled by economics.

We residents are going to pay for our urban life style preferences one way or the other. We don't need to turn our city upside down to accomplish new financial goals, but it would certainly help if we had a modern land use plan with a balanced floor space allocation. This plan will not eliminate new development conflicts entirely, but at least it will permit city council to wean our community from its little big personality just enough to create a balanced budget and enable new infrastructure without increasing taxes. The future of Ottawa is now, so it is time for us all to grow up, literally and figuratively speaking.

Paul Bennett, Vice President, Broker

[waterloowarrior]

Great article... I looked up his bio (http://www.colliersmn.com/prod/profiles.nsf/WebPortals/18149A761461B94585257261006F77FD?OpenDocument) since he sounded so interested in these issues..

University of Waterloo, Bachelor of Environmental Studies (1978)

waterloo represent#@

[Acajack]

Excellent article...

=========================================================
Ottawa Is Just A Little Big
Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:00 AM EST

The year 2008 may have seen the beginning of Ottawa's slow maturation from small town to larger metropolis. The advent of a new rail system has clearly shone a spotlight on crucial economic issues facing the city, which is finding itself up against a wall in dealing with infrastructure costs. As a quick fix the city has clamped down on the rezoning of rural areas. It now wants more intensive forms of urban land-use within its developed boundary. Our think-tank is finally realizing that it has to grow up, not out, to reduce operating expenses and increase revenues. Unfortunately, our planning framework is too long-in-the-tooth to adequately accommodate just a quick fix to the City's development form. As a consequence, bigger building projects everywhere are running into protracted conflicts with neighbouring residents accustomed to low-density neighbourhoods.

Ottawa's low-density wisdom has shaped its landscape for over half a century. It is now visibly colliding with the modern economic fundamentals that make cities viable. In a breath, the sustainability of our urban plan is imploding. The problem has evolved as a consequence of flaws in the regional plan that was deeply embraced by predecessor administrations in the post WWII era. At that time, Francois Greber conceived a new vision at the request of the NCC; a garden city model of urban beautification. Since its inception, the fundamentals of this urban canvass have only been tweaked cosmetically in subsequent revisions.

Greber's influence on this city's modern day geography is immense. He conceived our greenbelt interspersed with urban islands called garden cities, including for example Orleans and Kanata. He also proposed commercial building height restrictions in the downtown to preserve the silhouette of the Peace Tower's clock from strategic viewing planes along the banks of the Ottawa River and he relocated railway lines to less visible domains. Our Garden City wisdom encouraged the development of thousands of hectares of raw land into single-family homes where the highest part of any building is the dormer windows that grace single home rooftops.

Greber's urban vision is troubling today because it unwittingly caused a simultaneous increase to infrastructure spending with a reduction in tax revenue potential. Our capital region's plan now needs a major overhaul from the ground up or it is to face very serious and broad consequences in a short period of time, never mind trying to finance a new rail system. The economics of low density planning is simply rubbing City council the wrong way.

Economic laws affect both city form and its function. As to function, one acre of residential land will barely contain 8 single-family homes with a collective tax base of perhaps $30,000 a year. The same acre of land on Carling Avenue will earn the city $200,000 as an apartment building or $400,000 in taxable revenue developed for office space. In the downtown, the same acre will produce over $3,000,000 in taxable revenue each year, and more than double that if height restrictions were relaxed to any reasonable extent!

As to form, Greber's height restrictions have wiped out over 12,000,000 square feet of taxable floor space in Ottawa's business core. Moreover, since 1979 builders have erected over 10,000,000 square feet of new office space in that core and have left it with barely six properties remaining with less than 3,000,000 square feet of floor capacity. This number is arguably a puny 12-year office supply. Land is virtually a non-renewable resource. By using more land to produce fewer buildings everywhere, Ottawa is quite literally running out of space.

If offices cannot be built downtown where they belong, the city will have to increase office space development in our backyards. Is this the city form we all aspire to achieve? The Greber plan is an example of 1940s urban artwork at its grandest and most naïve. Its economic and social design flaws were concealed in an elaborate matrix of federal post-war urban idealism. Euphoria followed our nation's Second World War accomplishments and perhaps understandably became the driver of a new urban consciousness in the capital. Our nation's capital was after all our country's symbol of hard fought freedom and democracy. Greber has manifested this symbolism in Ottawa's physical reconstruction of the day.

Thanks to Greber's earthy vision though, Ottawa has enjoyed the appearance and character of a little City but with big aspirations. Our little bigness is a comfort to we residents, and it has helped shape our community's undemanding personality and we like it that way. The greenbelt is a popular and cherished aspect of our community, but at what cost do we embrace its sprawling finery? Homeowners have by and large paid a disproportionately lower share of the City's annual tax requirements. If we are going to continue to rely on a stable commercial sector to pay the bills and finance new forms of transit, things have to change and fast. We must accommodate a larger commercial land base or reduce height restrictions to existing land, or both, lest we face the consequences of more development in our back yards. The alternative is to increase residential taxes to absurd levels, which is clearly ours and our politicians' death wish.

If residents understood how important the newer high density development plans are to keeping a lid on our future tax increases, we might not object so strenuously to their completion. Like it or not, Ottawa is just a little too big to be small, and remaining a little-big flies in the face of economic reality. It is no small irony that Ottawa's dated master plan is causing it to struggle today to finance new rail infrastructure that Greber himself worked so hard to remove in the first place; a classic confrontation between function and form that is fuelled by economics.

We residents are going to pay for our urban life style preferences one way or the other. We don't need to turn our city upside down to accomplish new financial goals, but it would certainly help if we had a modern land use plan with a balanced floor space allocation. This plan will not eliminate new development conflicts entirely, but at least it will permit city council to wean our community from its little big personality just enough to create a balanced budget and enable new infrastructure without increasing taxes. The future of Ottawa is now, so it is time for us all to grow up, literally and figuratively speaking.

Paul Bennett, Vice President, Broker

Good stuff. BTW though, the French urban planner's name was Jacques Gréber...

[Davis137]

Beacuse of all that has been said above, and a few other things, is why I choose to live in the City Proper, and you'd have to pay me to live in the burbs (no offense to those of you out there).

[harls]

I am deeply offended.

Nah.

[waterloowarrior]

does anyone else find that they no longer agree with most of Mr. Gray's columns???


Ken Gray Column: Making Dull Ottawa Even Duller (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/archive/2011/02/02/ken-gray-column-making-dull-ottawa-even-duller.aspx)

By Kenneth_Gray (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/members/Kenneth_5F00_Gray/default.aspx) Wed, Feb 2 2011 COMMENTS(15) (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/archive/2011/02/02/ken-gray-column-making-dull-ottawa-even-duller.aspx#comments) The Bulldog (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/default.aspx)
Filed under: City of Ottawa (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/archive/tags/City+of+Ottawa/default.aspx), Jim Watson (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/archive/tags/Jim+Watson/default.aspx), intensification (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/archive/tags/intensification/default.aspx), planning (http://communities.canada.com/ottawacitizen/blogs/bulldog/archive/tags/planning/default.aspx)

The flair and swagger of Ottawa in winter.

The is my weekly column that appears in the Citizen on Wednesdays:
----
Flair in Ottawa is donning a scarf, perhaps in plaid, in a fashionable manner on a blustery day. Accordingly, former mayor Larry O'Brien's mighty scheme to give the national capital "swagger" fizzled.

Perhaps our lack of colour reflects the attitude spawned by the exacting grey world of the public servant, as Ottawa is not the most welcoming place. Warmth is a climatic event rather than a characteristic - a little something that occurs for a few weeks in July and August.

Hard to believe it's about to get worse.

This time it is coming in the city's built form. The urban thinkers and soulless city planners are calling it intensification, but maybe it would be better dubbed blandification.

In theory, intensification is something that Ottawans should support. And handled well, in what would be an Ottawa city planning first, it could produce grand neighbourhoods. But this is a city where if you expect very little, you won't be disappointed.

Intensification is created by the urban boundary beyond which development cannot occur. It was overwhelmingly supported recently by Ottawa City Council. Intensification causes the city to fill in with condos and apartments in under-used spaces, often in the downtown core. It uses services already in place as a municipal cost-saving measure, and cuts environmentally unfriendly urban sprawl.

All this sounds wonderful until the devil is found in the details. In the suburbs during the bountiful days of sprawl, the city would use development charges to build playing fields, schools and community centres where soccer moms and dads could meet and create a sense of place or belonging.

However with intensification, successful downtown neighbourhoods of small homes, functional businesses and front porches are replaced with beige condos. Many of us have lived in these barren towers. Residents don't know their neighbours and human contact is restricted to standing in an elevator, silently looking up at what floor the lift is passing. The apartment common room never gets used. Rather fits the Ottawa stereotype doesn't it?

While the suburbs get additional community services, the municipality in the intensified core merely hooks up a sewer and water main and hangs a hydro wire on the side of a new building. That's it for services ... except downtown residents pay higher property taxes than their better-treated suburban counterparts.

So what were once vibrant downtown neighbourhoods are likely to become faceless towers of lonely people. Scratch a resident of the Glebe really hard and you get more Glebe. But under the skin of a transient Bank Street apartment-dweller, you don't get that same feeling of community. Maybe the soul was lost down the garbage chute.

Part of the reason intensification is so popular with city staff is that not only is it cheap, it generates great amounts of taxes and development charges but few servicing costs. Each building is like winning the lottery for the municipality. The city government that approves such towers prospers from their construction and gets nothing from disapproving nearby residents except their usual dollop of property taxes. And let's not forget that frugal is fashionable in Mayor Jim Watson's Timbits Dynasty.

So if you are wondering why a 12-storey condo was built a foot behind your back fence, but you had to tear down your carport that was six-inches too close to your neighbour's side window, follow the money.

Development charges form an unholy alliance between the monetary needs of the city and its planning department and the built form of our city. It is in the municipality's interest to see as much development as possible to generate revenue. So condos get approved on heritage property. And that's why community interests take a back seat to construction. It's all about the dollar.

We need a whole new attitude toward development. It should be about neighbourhood building and co-operating with area community associations and residents, about development rather than just proposing huge high-rises, listening politely to outraged residents at planning committee, then approving the project with a couple of minor changes.

Residents are landowners and property taxpayers, too. They have stakes in the community that run deep. And when they take time off work to go to planning committee to protest a development, they go there not as nuisances, as they are sometimes perceived by politicians, planners and developers, but as stakeholders who care about their communities. They live there.

And if we continue to develop our core using the official plan as suggestion rather than a working document, our city will become even more impersonal and few will care about their neighbourhoods. With that comes crime, decay and isolation, something builders might not consider, but residents do and politicians must.

For residents are voters, too.

Ken Gray is a Citizen editorial board member who produces a blog The Bulldog at ottawacitizen.com/bulldog. His column runs on Wednesdays.
kgray@ottawacitizen.com

[rodionx]

does anyone else find that they no longer agree with most of Mr. Gray's columns???


Yep. That article is a NIMBY manifesto. "Faceless towers of lonely people" indeed. The whole Convent thing in Westboro seems to have turned him. What's particularly sad about it is that he imagines he's an urban visionary, and tries to prove his cred by supporting developments - good or bad - in other people's neighbourhoods. Which is classic NIMBY.

[Uhuniau]

Yep. That article is a NIMBY manifesto. "Faceless towers of lonely people" indeed. The whole Convent thing in Westboro seems to have turned him. What's particularly sad about it is that he imagines he's an urban visionary, and tries to prove his cred by supporting developments - good or bad - in other people's neighbourhoods. Which is classic NIMBY.

NIMBY in its purest form tends to lend support to all other NIMBY.

NIMBY that adds the codicil "BIYBY... But In Your Back Yard", well, that's just hypocritical.

[Acajack]

Sounds almost personal.

One wonders if there isn't some type of intensification he doesn't like that is happening in his neighbourhood. It would be interesting to know what part of Ottawa he lives in...

[gjhall]

He lives in Westboro.

[Proof Sheet]

Sounds almost personal.

One wonders if there isn't some type of intensification he doesn't like that is happening in his neighbourhood. It would be interesting to know what part of Ottawa he lives in...

Randall Denley often is in favour of the market dictating where residential growth should occur and he is often quite convincing in his arguments....however, I recall about 5 + years ago a whole bunch of land was being bought up (I think by Minto) in the area between the south edge of Kanata and Fallowfield Village and he was quite fervently against it....hmm..guess where he lives....Fallowfield Village.

[kevinbottawa]

Excellent article...

=========================================================
Ottawa Is Just A Little Big
Mon, Jan 12, 2009 12:00 AM EST

The year 2008 may have seen the beginning of Ottawa's slow maturation from small town to larger metropolis. The advent of a new rail system has clearly shone a spotlight on crucial economic issues facing the city, which is finding itself up against a wall in dealing with infrastructure costs. As a quick fix the city has clamped down on the rezoning of rural areas. It now wants more intensive forms of urban land-use within its developed boundary. Our think-tank is finally realizing that it has to grow up, not out, to reduce operating expenses and increase revenues. Unfortunately, our planning framework is too long-in-the-tooth to adequately accommodate just a quick fix to the City's development form. As a consequence, bigger building projects everywhere are running into protracted conflicts with neighbouring residents accustomed to low-density neighbourhoods.

Ottawa's low-density wisdom has shaped its landscape for over half a century. It is now visibly colliding with the modern economic fundamentals that make cities viable. In a breath, the sustainability of our urban plan is imploding. The problem has evolved as a consequence of flaws in the regional plan that was deeply embraced by predecessor administrations in the post WWII era. At that time, Francois Greber conceived a new vision at the request of the NCC; a garden city model of urban beautification. Since its inception, the fundamentals of this urban canvass have only been tweaked cosmetically in subsequent revisions.

Greber's influence on this city's modern day geography is immense. He conceived our greenbelt interspersed with urban islands called garden cities, including for example Orleans and Kanata. He also proposed commercial building height restrictions in the downtown to preserve the silhouette of the Peace Tower's clock from strategic viewing planes along the banks of the Ottawa River and he relocated railway lines to less visible domains. Our Garden City wisdom encouraged the development of thousands of hectares of raw land into single-family homes where the highest part of any building is the dormer windows that grace single home rooftops.

Greber's urban vision is troubling today because it unwittingly caused a simultaneous increase to infrastructure spending with a reduction in tax revenue potential. Our capital region's plan now needs a major overhaul from the ground up or it is to face very serious and broad consequences in a short period of time, never mind trying to finance a new rail system. The economics of low density planning is simply rubbing City council the wrong way.

Economic laws affect both city form and its function. As to function, one acre of residential land will barely contain 8 single-family homes with a collective tax base of perhaps $30,000 a year. The same acre of land on Carling Avenue will earn the city $200,000 as an apartment building or $400,000 in taxable revenue developed for office space. In the downtown, the same acre will produce over $3,000,000 in taxable revenue each year, and more than double that if height restrictions were relaxed to any reasonable extent!

As to form, Greber's height restrictions have wiped out over 12,000,000 square feet of taxable floor space in Ottawa's business core. Moreover, since 1979 builders have erected over 10,000,000 square feet of new office space in that core and have left it with barely six properties remaining with less than 3,000,000 square feet of floor capacity. This number is arguably a puny 12-year office supply. Land is virtually a non-renewable resource. By using more land to produce fewer buildings everywhere, Ottawa is quite literally running out of space.

If offices cannot be built downtown where they belong, the city will have to increase office space development in our backyards. Is this the city form we all aspire to achieve? The Greber plan is an example of 1940s urban artwork at its grandest and most naïve. Its economic and social design flaws were concealed in an elaborate matrix of federal post-war urban idealism. Euphoria followed our nation's Second World War accomplishments and perhaps understandably became the driver of a new urban consciousness in the capital. Our nation's capital was after all our country's symbol of hard fought freedom and democracy. Greber has manifested this symbolism in Ottawa's physical reconstruction of the day.

Thanks to Greber's earthy vision though, Ottawa has enjoyed the appearance and character of a little City but with big aspirations. Our little bigness is a comfort to we residents, and it has helped shape our community's undemanding personality and we like it that way. The greenbelt is a popular and cherished aspect of our community, but at what cost do we embrace its sprawling finery? Homeowners have by and large paid a disproportionately lower share of the City's annual tax requirements. If we are going to continue to rely on a stable commercial sector to pay the bills and finance new forms of transit, things have to change and fast. We must accommodate a larger commercial land base or reduce height restrictions to existing land, or both, lest we face the consequences of more development in our back yards. The alternative is to increase residential taxes to absurd levels, which is clearly ours and our politicians' death wish.

If residents understood how important the newer high density development plans are to keeping a lid on our future tax increases, we might not object so strenuously to their completion. Like it or not, Ottawa is just a little too big to be small, and remaining a little-big flies in the face of economic reality. It is no small irony that Ottawa's dated master plan is causing it to struggle today to finance new rail infrastructure that Greber himself worked so hard to remove in the first place; a classic confrontation between function and form that is fuelled by economics.

We residents are going to pay for our urban life style preferences one way or the other. We don't need to turn our city upside down to accomplish new financial goals, but it would certainly help if we had a modern land use plan with a balanced floor space allocation. This plan will not eliminate new development conflicts entirely, but at least it will permit city council to wean our community from its little big personality just enough to create a balanced budget and enable new infrastructure without increasing taxes. The future of Ottawa is now, so it is time for us all to grow up, literally and figuratively speaking.

Paul Bennett, Vice President, Broker

Can someone tell me what newspaper or website this article is from?

[acottawa]

I would disagree with Mr. Gray's assertion that single family dwelling is inherently more social than high rise living (I've lived in both types and in both social and unsocial condos). But I think he makes a good point that the city gets a lot of money from all of these condos going up, and existing neighbourhoods get more pressure on their parks, libraries, public parking, community centres, etc. and the city provides almost no new services or facilities in return.

[rodionx]

I would disagree with Mr. Gray's assertion that single family dwelling is inherently more social than high rise living (I've lived in both types and in both social and unsocial condos). But I think he makes a good point that the city gets a lot of money from all of these condos going up, and existing neighbourhoods get more pressure on their parks, libraries, public parking, community centres, etc. and the city provides almost no new services or facilities in return.

That's the only rational point he makes. The rest of that article is strange and contradictory. Would an advocate of urban living really write something like this:

In the suburbs during the bountiful days of sprawl, the city would use development charges to build playing fields, schools and community centres where soccer moms and dads could meet and create a sense of place or belonging.

People have sense of place and belonging in the suburbs? If so, apparently it's because of all the grass the city gives them. After all, we do have playing fields (Technical High School), schools (Elgin Street, Centennial) and community centres (McNabb, Plant Bath, Jack Purcell) in Centretown as well, but not as much grass. We can, however, walk to all of these places, if that's relevant.

Ken Gray writes at various points that city planners only support intensification because it's "all about the dollar." Setting aside the fact that those are our tax dollars and worth thinking about, why would he then express support for the city's pro-intensification official plan?

The cri de coeur in the final paragraph gives one a certain insight into the NIMBY mentality...

And if we continue to develop our core using the official plan as suggestion rather than a working document, our city will become even more impersonal and few will care about their neighbourhoods. With that comes crime, decay and isolation, something builders might not consider, but residents do and politicians must.

I can't even parse that. It's the Convent proposal in Westboro that set him off. How building apartment buildings for rich people on a grassy lot will cause crime, decay and isolation is anyone's guess. It makes me think I should never have replaced my urban lawn with a garden. There's something magical about grass... it suppresses crime and creates community.