Assignment
Choose an uninviting public place in your neighbourhood whose layout and structure make you feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. This may be for any reason and must not be restricted to traffic. There may be social issues, or safety issues such as criminality. Maybe a space has been taken over by tourism, by taxis or maybe there are just too many claims so people start encroaching on each other. Many of these issues, planners or designers can do nothing about, but as far as the spatial dimension is concerned, we can use our skills to propose solutions.
There have been several private sector projects in downtown Nanaimo that have made considerable contributions to its urbanization. City Hall transportation and urban design policies — especially in the areas of walkable neighbourhoods and neighbourhood public places — have not kept pace. In Assignment 5 in the Technical University of Delft on-line course, Urban Design for the Public Good: Dutch Urbanism, I have proposed a solution to a public space on our City Hall's formal grounds that is presently used only to park a few cars and extends to and eliminated what was once the adjoining sidewalk. I have proposed the creation of a new public square on the site. This square would take advantage of the view from here across downtown to the harbour and be a very welcome addition to the steadily densifying Old City neighbourhood.
Before
Proposed
Top view
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| CLICK TO ENLARGE |
Looking spatially at Nanaimo's mobility and transportation systems with inputs and outputs, storage and using a "circular urban metabolism" approach and the principles "reduce, reuse and recycle."
ASSIGNMENT
See your city or town as an ecosystem with inputs and outputs. Choose one flow with a particular relevance for this ecosystem. The assignment is to analyze this flow. Not in a quantitative way, but in a spatial way. What are the inputs and outputs? Where do they enter, stay and leave your ecosystem? Where do spatial problems arise? Try to visualize them in the way shown in the Definition part of this tutorial. Draw a miniature or simplified version of “your town” in the diagram below.
You can use the subsoil, the surface or the sky above to represent your flow. Try to think of spatial solutions or improvements using the circular urban metabolism approach in which you try to “reduce, re-use and recycle” your flow. Please note: this is an explorative exercise. It is about generating spatial ideas. Your contribution may be speculative!
Pinterest Assignment 4:
Urban Metabolism
A lot of people self-identify as “fiscal conservatives.” These folks are often enthusiastic supporters of $10 - 15M spent on a single intersection. This surprises me as in my view these spends are the most wasteful of all our allocations of public funds. Our public investments in mobility infrastructure have a responsibility, as do all public investments, to return a clear benefit to the greater public good.
It’s said that “a well-defined problem is already half solved.” The problems being addressed when intersections are given a make-over are usually little more than a few fender-benders and seconds and minutes lost in our rush to get from here to there. Northfield Road is the latest example with construction at the Parkway and imminent for the Boxwood, Bowen Road and Island Highway intersections.
Cost of these projects totals $10s of millions and won’t solve the problem. That’s because the problem properly identified is two-fold: The BC inter-city Provincial Highway system lands here in a residential neighbourhood via BC Ferries at Departure Bay. This traffic has to flow through Nanaimo neighbourhood streets to reconnect with the highway system. The other part of the problem is one of urban design and transportation planning — Nanaimo has not designed and built alternative mobility modes. No credible effort has been made by the City to reduce the number of trips which require the use of a private automobile, to reduce the number of cars on city streets..
So take a fresh look at the problems we face as drivers. Here’s 2 suggestions. 1. Take a bus, walk around, ride a bike. The view looks very different than the one through the windshield of our cars. You’ll no doubt find these inefficient even unsafe. Consider that investment in these modes and better land use planning might return far greater benefit to the public good. And 2. Familiarize yourself with the concept of “induced demand.”
Induced demand is "the great intellectual black hole in city planning, the one professional certainty that everyone thoughtful seems to acknowledge, yet almost no one is willing to act upon.” — City Planner Jeff Speck
I live in the Old City which is as close as Nanaimo has to a
medium density urban village. All the benefits of compact city centre
living are here. Within an easy walk: transit, shops, pubs and restaurants. I’ll
stop now before this turns into an ad.
But
here’s the thing: density’s driven by both good public land use
policies at City Hall and market demand. Towers may be the right choice
based on those things. So 2 things to consider —
The City of Nanaimo’s Downtown Waterfront Lands Initiative established that heights restricted
to between 4 and 6 storeys would easily accommodate the number of
residents over the near and long term.
And the City’s projection
included in last week’s open house is for population growth of about
1,000 a year. So back of the envelope if they’re all newcomers (as opposed to
birth rate exceeding the rate us old farts are kicking off, but let’s
say all newcomers) and family size averages let’s say 3 we need 333
homes a year. Let’s say half of those families want to live downtown (it
tends to be a smaller ratio) so for all of the downtown area we would
need 165 new homes per year. Let’s say half of those want to live on
these waterfront lands and you get 4 storey buildings built over time as
demand dictates. (And it's clear the market has not built anywhere near this supply over the last number of years.)
So anyway, that’s why I say yes
to density. Yes to better land use policies (let’s re-instate the Urban
Containment Boundary across the southern greenlands that was eliminated
about 10 years ago) and yes stop sprawling into forested lands..
But
there’s no need for towers on the waterfront. Or any developer driven
residential projects on the portion of the site closest to the waterfront as has been recommended by City
of Nanaimo Staff.
These waterfront lands (the
portion on the map identified as residential east of Front St) should be
public space protected from development forever.
Take a look at the visionary work being done by cities like Hamilton ON to redevelop old economy waterfront lands.
