Sunday, December 27, 2020

Twitter thread : The blog in 2020 the year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Nanaimo Commons : Urban Public Space : Our Commons...

Posted by Nanaimo Commons on Sunday, 27 December 2020

Monday, December 21, 2020

Saturday, December 19, 2020

Monday, December 14, 2020

Jane Jacobs on master plans

When a trip to Saturn is proposed, the planning has to be very comprehensive, very detailed and very much in control until the whole scheme is finished. The plan has to be big or it is useless.
It seems to me sometimes that many city and town planners must be frustrated space-travel planners. But pieces of our cities, or for that matter suburbs or even New Towns, are not going to take off Saturn. They aren’t going to take off for anywhere. The substance doesn’t mandate big, comprehensive, tightly controlled planning the way a spaceship does.
Little plans are more appropriate for city renewal than big plans.
− Jane Jacobs, Residential Areas + Urban Renewal Conference, Germany, 1981

Friday, December 11, 2020

“Main streets are like old growth forests, they display species diversity, they support a rich variety of interdependent activities, the mature die off and are replaced by new a little at a time leaving the forest whole..."

Friday, December 4, 2020

A Covid-19 journal. Part 2

Notes from my Covid-19 quarantine in this earlier post, included urban design courses, gis data mapping and 3d drawing projects, and urbanism and economics reads.
There were also several excellent webinars over recent months, the Council for Canadian Urbanism’s City Circle round table a standout.
Lead planners on city-wide plans, Stockholm, Auckland, Ottawa, Edmonton, “explore the bold steps their cities are taking to design neighbourhoods that better support community resilience − cohesive, connected, mutually-supportive communities… a more place-based approach."
Moderator: Khelsilem, elected member of the Squamish Nation Council, is the public face of the innovative Sen̓áḵw development, 6,000 rental homes to be built on 10.5 acres of reserve lands in Kitsilano. The circle : Kalen Anderson, lead planner Edmonton city plan, currently Chief Planner National Capital Commission in Ottawa; Evelina Hafvenstein-Säteri, Stockholm Plan; @oliviahaddon, Māori Design Auckland; Alain Miguelez, Manager, Policy Planning, City of Ottawa; and Gil Kelley, General manager of Planning, Urban Design, and Sustainability, City of Vancouver.
Unfortunately, the video of the discussion has not been uploaded to the Council for Canadian Urbanism website for broader viewing. The Tweet above links to a thread of the discussion and my notes can be found on this thread.
This discussion offered a master class on best practices where change-making leadership is guiding cities to transition from the mid-20th Century mall and sprawl development model to 21st Century realities. Community building principles: place-based, inclusive, equitable, resilient, holistic, complex and integrated. Contain urban growth, invest in the public realm ahead of the market’s curve. These principles are not, with this group, idle virtue-signals, but embedded, codified in planning frameworks, frameworks that, rather than locking in current circumstance, anticipate review and revision in an unpredictable future.
This Council for Canadian Urbanism City Circle webinar was also a master class for the City of Nanaimo. Here is what 21st Century city-building looks like, led by courageous change-making leadership. And here is as clear an illustration, in contrast, as you will find of the flaws of our current fill-out-our-survey approach.
 The Canadian Urban Institute launched a number of initiatives to help cities cope with the current and future crises caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Videos are availabe on their YouTube channel
They also collaborated on the excellent Art of City Building series which included this conversation with Eric Klinenberg about his book Palaces for the People, How Social Infrastructure Can Fight Inequality, Polarization and the Decline of Civic Life.
And in this Urban3 webinar Joe Minicozzi chats with the former Director of Planning, City of Minneapolis Heather Worthington.

Thursday, December 3, 2020

Tuesday, December 1, 2020

Dozens of amenities and services are
within a 1 km walk. But the neighbourhood
is unwalkable. Treacherous, literally deadly


Statistics Canada’s Proximity Measures Database identifies the north western tip of Nanaimo as an “amenity dense neighbourhood,” with access to a grocery store, pharmacy, health care facility, child care facility, primary school, library, public transit stop within a 1 km walk.
The data are not wrong. There is a great wealth of amenities and services in this area but it is 100% unwalkable. It’s treacherous, literally deadly. Several people killed on these highways and high-speed arterials in recent memory. (Weekend Nanaimo pedestrian carnage and victim blaming #VisionZero)
In this neighbourhood, kids old enough to go off to a movie by themselves aren’t walking or biking the 1 km, they’re being driven by their parents. A total urban design failure.
How is it possible a City with the opportunity to incorporate these essential daily-needs elements into its urban design could blow this so badly?
These two images are the area identified by the Proximity Measures Database as amenity dense and the outlines of the Census Dissemination Areas they're within.
The residential population (2016 Census) of these dissemination areas is 1,763 in 939 households. Total land area of 1.72 sq km, density of 1,000/km².
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