High-density doesn’t necessarily mean high-rise

A few weeks ago the City of Ottawa hosted an Intensification Forum, where they invite experts to speak to city politicians and residents about how to promote and develop higher-density living. Perhaps intentionally, perhaps not, they hosted it not Downtown, within sight of the handful of skyscraper condo developments starting to progress, but rather out at the former Nepean City Hall: suburbia central, if suburbia can have a “central”. And, presumably, home to suburbanites who’d fled the “big bad city” and now need convincing that intensification is a good thing – and moreover, that their big yards and garages and open spaces are making the city worse off for everyone.

I don’t know where it comes from, the idea that big yards, wide roads, garage-door streetscapes, walls around neighbourhoods and having to drive everywhere is “the good life”. I mean, I grew up in a suburb, and though I think I turned out all right, we already know that suburban sprawl is linked to obesity, that simply living in a less-sprawling area can have a similar health impact as being 4 years younger, and doctors recommend moving to communities with good public transit, and where you can walk to work and stores and schools.

Oddly enough, it’s young families and retired people who make a bee-line for the ‘burbs – precisely the people for whom health should matter most. Sometimes you hear young parents say that cities and downtowns are too crowded and too dangerous to raise children (perhaps my parents thought the same way), but families thrive Downtown: everything is close by, the streets are safer precisely because there’s more people around, and of course, no better way to teach kids about diversity than immersing them in Downtown’s cultural and economic and social mix. Old people bring up the same fears of crowds and crime, but again, statistically they’re more affected by isolation and physical inactivity than anything else. If I ever have kids, they’ll be Downtown dwellers from day one; and if I ever retire, to a Downtown I’ll empty-nest.

Anyway, Ottawa actually faces a lot of the urban development pressures often mentioned about prairie Regina, if not more: being so close to Toronto and Montreal, attracting development is still a bit of a fight sometimes. It’s a recruiter’s dream: being a government town, it means there’s a good core of well-educated residents to try to get to work for you. But then again, being a government town, this well-educated labour pool isn’t necessarily keen to leave their cushy federal jobs (and pensions) to join whatever new employers might come in; and after the high-tech crash, which hit tech-dependent Ottawa especially hard (that was their short-lived marketing slogan once, “Ottawa: technically beautiful”, which could’ve also been a bit of modest self-deprecation – “not really beautiful, but just technically”), people here tend to be wary of joining start-ups of any sort.

So I snuck in and took some notes, which I think apply to Regina too.

They had a stack of booklets the City produces to raise awareness (and expectations) amongst Ottawans for design and urban planning issues. Pretty impressive, and full of local examples – helps set the context, and also gives positive feedback/reinforcement for those developers that build responsibly:

And just as importantly, they aren’t afraid to give big red “X”s to developments that are poorly-done – for shame! All part of having a healthy culture of self-criticism, which leads to improvement:

First up was Peter Clewes, an architect from Toronto behind similar densification projects in Toronto: (He was relieved to see his Ottawa projects all get green checkmarks.)

- it’s a a given that high(er)-density planning is more sustainable, environmentally-friendly, well-suited to mixed residential and commercial/retail/employment uses, cheaper to service and objectively better for the City. Actively convincing residents and developers that this is the only responsible way to grow, and actively discouraging any further suburban status quo growth is key

- take-home message: “high-density doesn’t necessarily mean high-rise”, “you don’t need height for intensification”. One of the more common concerns people have when they hear about planning “high(er) density” development is that it means everyone has to live in apartments or condo towers

- new single-family homes can be accommodated in densification plans: by optimising building:lot ratios, you can probably double the density and cut infrastructure costs in half or a third. Most suburban homes only occupy 50-60% of the lot area – cut down the wasted yard space to only 20-25% and you save a lot of land impact

- he also presented some of his projects: one included a condo with 3-storey above-ground parkade that could’ve ended up being a blank, concrete blemish on the streetscape – but instead of a dull cement wall, he came up with a “sky lobby”, and a green roof along the podium:

Next was Michael Geller, a residential/commercial developer and prof from Simon Fraser University (who also happened to announce his candicacy for Vancouver city council too). He led a mixed residential/commercial development at SFU called UniverCity that basically started a new, complete town in the middle of campus. Some points:

- developers recognise (or need to) that having filled commercial space benefits the development as a whole, above and beyond the rent they collect. So, they offered rent-free storefronts to retailers, knowing that their presence raises the value of the housing they sell, and drives more interest to the development

- similarly, transit recognises (or needs to) that having dense nodes of residential/commercial makes their planning easier. So, they got TransLink to provide free/heavily-subsidised passes to all UniverCity residents, and had some leverage in planning express routes to service it

- that also allowed the developer to reduce the number of parking stalls it had to provide. Something I didn’t know: cities tend to have minimum parking requirements specified in their construction rules, not maximums. Moreover, these minimums are always grossly overboard: for residences, its like they plan for visitors for every unit every day; for commercial, as if they expect Christmas shopping volumes throughout the year. It’s ridiculous

- adding to what Mr Clewes said about building:lot ratios for single-family homes: back-to-back townhouses (eliminating backyards) is another very efficient way to accommodate the psychological aversion for some people against side-by-side townhouses who really need a “standalone” home for themselves

- regarding high condo prices (esp in Vancouver): new buildings allow owners of 2- or 3-bedroom condos to rent one out and help cover their crazy expensive mortgages. Instead of condos having one big master bedroom and smaller “guest” or “kids” ones, they have equally-sized bedrooms, each with separate baths. They also include small kitchenettes (or spaces for one), and – this is key – separate entrances from the bedrooom to the building’s hallway, so that it can be rented out as an entirely separate studio unit

- regarding rising property values that long-time residents are scared of not being able to pay the rising property taxes on homes they’ve owned forever: defer tax increases until the property is actually sold. No sense paying market-value taxes if the home isn’t actually on the market

- regarding pricing residents out of parts of the city: require a proportion of new units to be allocated to the city’s low-income housing pool, or to equivalent projects (one building started a residence for artists, and used one of their storefront for a gallery: art gets a sponsor, the community gets a gallery, the developer gets to be a well-like patron of culture – win-win-win; another gave free commercial space for a daycare: attracts young families, which attracts more commercial development)

- regarding keeping people in city centres and attracting more: can’t just rely on vague “urban-ness” or “excitement” to draw people. You need to cover the basics – eg, upgrade city amenities like pools and schools (especially schools!) in older parts of town. Do not build new schools in suburbs just because parents want them – you need to “pressure” the market by managing city resources towards an inner-city focus

- public amenities integrated with the project (eg parkspace or community centre), or community development charges can be applied to developers to provide improved resources. Even if the project is right next to existing amenities (he cited one building built right next to Stanley Park – it still didn’t have the requisite parkspace on its plan, so it had to pay an extra development charge), it still must contribute. And, development charges on a building in one part of town, can be used to fund amenities elsewhere (this would work great in Regina – charge suburb development extra to directly fund Downtown improvement)

The most interesting speakers were Dennis Eberhard and Tom Smith, developers from a company called Smart Centres. Kind of a funny hush over the room when they were introduced: they open a new power centre in Canada every 4 weeks, usually anchored by Wal-Marts and such. Though they are behind many of the suburban big-box stores across the country, they came to talk about their “lifestyle centre” design in Toronto, the Foundry District.

- parking can be placed off of “internal streets”, so that along the main boulevards, you have a continuous streetscape. This was especially important, because the development borders an existing residential area

- anchor retailers can be placed in the back, or on upper floors – thus leaving the ground floor and streetscape for smaller stores conducive to window shopping

- developers are often maligned but they often really are stuck between citizen request and client/tenant pressures. Eg, their business is to “provide blank spaces” for national chains to apply their template plans. Things like entrances, windows, loading access etc are often beyond their control, no matter what they want to plan. Retailers get really nervous about anything that might “mess” things up for them

- echoing the point about excess parking: they got grilled about one of their Ottawa developments and the seas of parking around it – but it turns out it wasn’t their idea, but actually a city requirement for a minimum number that led to that.

(Thus turning the grilling to the city councillors in the audience.)

I think that was the most encouraging thing about the night – that city councillors were in the audience, to learn from experts. One of them (the head of the Ottawa planning commission – with the mike above) asked outright, what can councillors do to lead to better buildings and higher density in the city. The short answer: “Make it a law”. Legislate for parking maximums, not minimums; development charges, not variance concessions; etc. To which there was unanimous applause from the crowd – hopefully something the councillors will consider when it comes to a vote.

Unanimous applause for better planning and intensification from a suburbanite Ottawan crowd: perhaps there’s hope for Canadian cities yet.

Only on the bus

Seen on my daily bus commute – a public service announcement:

Brittany M– has CLAP! BEWARE.

Well, the clap (ie, gonorrhoea; “clap” from the French clapier, or brothel – where back in the day one would tend to get the “clap” in the first place) is a reportable disease to Public Health, like chlamydia and HIV/Aids and most other sexually-transmitted infections. Anyone and everyone who could’ve given the clap to or gotten it from the unlucky subject clapper has to get tested and treated, and same with each of those contacts’ contacts, and so on – it’s really no fun at all. And believe me, I speak from experience. (As a physician, of course. And it wasn’t the clap but TB, but same idea.)

This one case I was following – I was only at it for a week, and plotting out the cases I was imagining those documentary maps of World War II battles, with the sweeping red Axis curtain swallowing up all of Europe. First the jail, then a halfway house, then one family to the next, then the school… Eventually every neighbourhood in town has a case to trace back to the index patient, and everyone knows at least one or four people caught in my dragnet. You end up thinking it’s probably easier just to check everyone – which probably wouldn’t be too big a deal for TB, just a skin test and a spit sample. But probably not so easy for gonorrhoea, I imagine – it’s a bit more “intimate” of a test.

Anyway, maybe Ottawa Public Health will have an easier time now that everyone on the 85 St Laurent bus knows to watch out for Brittany M–.

Also on the bus:

does a^2 + b^2 = c^2?

It was actually kind of heartening to see a good-old notebook doodle. I noticed it at my feet after dropping my hospital ID on the bus floor whilst digging around for my pager that was LOUDLY announcing a code blue I couldn’t do anything about, being both not on-call, and still on the bus on the way to work. Maybe half of the passengers are nurses or med students or residents on the way to the hospital too, so we all share a knowing glance. (I’ve only once ever seen a staff doc take a bus, my Family Medicine preceptor in Toronto – I guess if a physician is trying to be environmentally-conscious, they walk or bike instead.) “Hope you’re not the closest doc”; “maybe it’s faster to get off and run from here”.

Anyway, I assume the doodle’s from a high school class, though I guess it could also come from a university course too (the 85 does stop at Campus station, after all). Heartening to see, partly because of the nostalgia value – it’s my 10th anniversary of high school grad this year, apparently there’s a reunion that no one I know is going to next month – especially in a moment where the inconsequential world of high school algebra would be more comfortable than knowing there’s a code I’m totally helpless to get to.

And heartening also, to find that kids today still know how to doodle in school at all. I guess I feared by now pencil and paper had gone the way of PowerPoints and laptops in classrooms; and notebook doodles and hand-written and -passed notes replaced by ASCII art and instant messaging. What would teachers do now? Have their own laptops “intercepting” IMs, so s/he can read them in front of the class? Or better yet, some programme that reads them out loud automatically? And how else will people objectively measure how boring a lecture is, other than the lopsided doodle vs notes ratio on the page at the end of the hour?

(Edit: as I write this at the university, outside a lecture hall running a night course – I guess people could write their blogs in class, that would be one way to measure it.)

I remember AH and I joking that for our high school Art Week, we should just frame our notebook doodles and caricatures – random overdrawn arrows and letters and boxes; random cartoon characters calling out wistfully for German physicist Otto Frisch (Mr S was talking about him in class); random nonsensical atomic structures – and call it “art”. Who knows, if technology does end up taking over everything and no one knows how to write or draw or doodle anymore, there’ll be a place in a museum for all that marginalia.