[Keith P.]

I've read through it all and my feeling now is one of overwhelming disappointment.

I could write a treatise on all the things in it that disappoint, but my overriding thought is that it reads like a planning school exercise. It takes pains to include every feel-good item that seems to be a mandatory part of planning theory, but which in practice makes little sense.

The document basically shunts the issue of tall buildings aside by prohibiting them almost everywhere downtown. The only area that can reach the 65M limit are 2 or 3 parcels that will be created once the Cogswell interchange is demolished. They draw the restoration of the traditional street network in that area, which, as I expected, leaves precious little room for anything much to be built. But then, the whole thing seems mired in the past.

It talks at length of the need to make downtown "pedestrian-friendly". It ignores the fact that the vast majority of downtown already is, at least as much as an area built on the side of a steep hill is likely to get. The only spot that is not is the interchange. Yet they go on about the need for "sidewalk bumpouts" at corners -- something you can see on Portland St in downtown Dartmouth, where they are a hazard to traffic and look just plain stupid -- along with the need to surface crosswalks in a different material. They show in their drawings those as being brick inlays like those that were put in back in the early 80s and were ripped out a decade or so later after being torn up by snowplows and being branded as "ankle-benders" in the press. They conveniently ignore the fact that the narrow streets with buildings built out to the sidewalk leave precious little room for wide sidewalks and bike lanes.

They condemn the automobile, as apparently all planners are trained to do, and forbid virtually any parking in most of the new developments they specify. While nobody wants vast parking lots covering the downtown, their disdain for virtually any parking raises serious questions as to the viability of many of their concepts. But a great many of their proposals are questionable; they call for a 4 or 5 storey condo or apartment development to be built on the Superstore parking lot while retaining the Superstore building behind it. How the hell Loblaws would allow that is not addressed. Similarly they discuss at length the need for bicycling provisions, even to the point of mandating bicycle parking at new developments. I will continue to maintain that bicycling will never be a significant form of commuter transport in a city like this given the hills and foul weather we cope with much of the year. But there it is, straight out of the planners handbook.

Despite the cries of the likes of Phil Pacey, the document reads like it kowtows to the heritage groups. It condemns downtown to a future of low-rise brick buildings for the most part. The design manual is particularly discouraging. It specifies finishes of mostly brick, and decrys attempts to make existing old buildings look like something other than 19th century relics. The disgust in the words of the authors as they describe the building housing Freak Lunchbox must be read to be believed. While it does say that faux-Victorian structures should be discouraged, the narrow parameters they define leave everything pretty much in that genre, perhaps without the ornamentation. Lovely. While leaving many broad questions unanswered, they nevertheless found the time to go into excrutiating detail about things like paint colors and finishes in other sections. Bizarre.

They have also wrapped up Barrington St pretty much as built. Everything from Duke St to SGR is considered historic and therefore untouchable. Good luck with that. They want it to basically be a museum.

As we digest what these documents tell us, one can only be disappointed that the vision of the authors was filtered through such narrow lenses. Despite the "10 Big Moves" they talk about, there really isn't much here to get excited about, and a whole lot to be disdainful of and discouraged by. They really aren't big moves at all. They are a prettifying exercise of what we currently have to work with and not much else. If everything they describe came to reality, we would have a nicer downtown. But would it be memorable or exciting or vibrant? I seriously doubt it. Sadly, though, with the effort, expense, and hype around this exercise, it seems certain that HRM will make it law. And that, in turn, will prevent anything truly big, either in size or in concept, from happening in the downtown for a very, very long time.