Planning Pool

The Neptis Foundation study learned that 80 per cent of Calgary's growth in the 1990s had occurred through greenfield development. Yikes! Thanks to Michael Soron on Flickr for the stunning Creative Commons aerial photo.

It’s been almost two years since I transplanted myself from Ontario to British Columbia, and I continue to be fascinated by the differences in attitude and political will around planning issues in the two provinces. I recently stumbled across an interesting study by the Neptis Foundation that compared recent growth patterns of three Canadian metropolitan regions: Calgary, Toronto, and Vancouver.

It’s a thought-provoking study, if not altogether surprising. It’s no secret that Vancouver is reputed as a model of sustainable development and good planning while … Continue Reading

Michael Wolfe of the Garden City Lands Coalition weeds out invasive plants. Creative Commons photo from 350.org.

On March 8, 2010, the city council of Richmond, BC voted to purchase the Garden City lands, a 136-acre block of vacant, mowed-over bog located right in the centre of the Vancouver suburb (pop. 175,000). The land was purchased from the Canada Lands Company (CLC) and the Musqueam Indian Band for C$59.17 million.

Until recently, the Garden City lands were used to house Coast Guard transmission towers. Once the towers became obsolete, interest in the lands’ potential for residential development – which hinges on their removal from the provincial Agricultural Land Reserve (ALR) – began to grow. The first application by the City of Richmond, Canada … Continue Reading

Typical Greater Toronto sprawl that Ontario is trying to prevent. Thanks to Carnotzet on Flickr for the great Creative Commons photo!

In Ontario, as in many other parts of North America, the gulf between what we know about city building and how we actually build our cities is pretty wide. Despite the province’s numerous attempts to eliminate sprawl, the same old car-oriented subdivisions keep springing up around the edges of the Greater Toronto Area. Last month, however, a glimmer of hope burst through the doors of the provincial legislature. After spending over half a year reviewing Durham Region’s Growth Plan, The Ministry of Municipal Affairs and Housing sent it back to the drawing board, claiming that there are “fundamental issues” with the document.

Why is … Continue Reading

For this final instalment of FAIL Week, we take a look at a few places that you would never want to set foot in. These cities and neighbourhoods are meant to be experienced in a bucket seat, and it shows!

1. Eagle Bend, Jacksonville, Florida (The entrance has no sidewalk.)

View Larger Map

According to Walkscore.com, this is the least walkable neighbourhood in the least walkable major city in America, which I think is saying quite a bit. They rank areas based on proximity to services, stores and transit –  all of which are next to non-existent in Eagle Bend, earning them a flat zero. Based on the Google Map view, it isn’t difficult to see why. The gated community is adjacent to a river but not any … Continue Reading

A technologically advanced rain barrel, as captured by Jason Vance on Flickr. Thanks for the Creative Commons photo!

We all know that outdated legislation can often be one of the largest barriers change. Up until 2009, in the state of Colorado it was illegal to have a rain barrel and still is illegal for a majority of its residents. They would probably not hang you for it and it was mostly unenforced but it still had an effect on how infrastructure in that state could be designed, particularly for large developments. You couldn’t bring a development application which included a rainwater collection system no matter what the planned use for that water.

The reason rain barrels were and still are in most circumstances illegal is … Continue Reading

Four country western expansion urban growth model from UNC Charlotte Urban Institute on Vimeo.

North Carolina is one of the states that is losing farmland most rapidly in the US. Researchers at UNC Charlotte and UNC Asheville are using satellite images, development trends, population data, and growth projections to create a visual digital model of what North Carolina may look like in the future.

So far, they have found that four western North Carolina counties (Madison, Buncombe, Henderson and Transylvania) have developed by 500 percent between 1976 and 2006, which is at an average rate of six acres of green space per day! More shockingly, the model predicts that an additional 47,500 acres of forests and farmlands will … Continue Reading

This session took place on October 1.

Uri Avin of Parsons Brinckerhoff and Iain Dobson of the Real Estate Search Corporation discussed edge cities and how they can be transformed into urban places. Avin described Tysons Corner, Virginia, a prototypical “edge city” and the 12th largest business district in the United States. Although Tysons Corner, located just outside of Washington, D.C. in the Dulles Airport corridor, is generally considered to be an economic success, the city suffers from an increasingly dysfunctional environmen. Dobson contrasted Tysons Corner with Mississauga, Ontario, a similar city in terms of square footage, population, jobs, and other statistics, but stagnating nonetheless.

Edge cities are typically suburban commercial, retail, and residential developments built in areas that contained no development 30 years ago. They are usually outside a larger urban area and tend to be close to highways and airports. … Continue Reading

Perhaps the last installment in live blogging from the 2009 CIP conference, this session (held October 3) dealt with growth management, a critical issue for many North American cities. This summary focuses on the presentations of two of the session’s speakers.

Russ Mathew, a planner from Toronto, ON with Hemson Consulting, spoke about the new Growth Plan for Canada’s most populous urban area. The Greater Golden Horseshoe includes the Greater Toronto Area as well as smaller subcentres. Looking ahead to 2031, the Plan sets numeric targets for residential and employment density (an average of 50 residents + jobs per hectare) as well as intensification of currently built-up areas (40% of new housing is to be accommodated within the current built-up area, especially transit-oriented growth centres.) Russ is concerned about the plan’s focus on predictive numeric targets instead of livable design, and … Continue Reading

CEOs for Cities just released a study showing that homes located close to shops, schools, churches, offices, libraries, parks, and restaurants are worth more than similar homes in less-walkable neighborhoods.

The report, “Walking the Walk: How Walkability Raises Housing Values in U.S. Cities” by Joseph Cortright, analyzed data from 94,000 real estate transactions in 15 major markets. Cortright found that in 13 of the 15 markets, higher levels of walkability, as measured by Walk Score, correlated to higher home values.

Finalists have been announced at the Reburbia Suburban Design Competition! Cast your vote for the best idea before midnight tomorrow (Monday, August 17).

Currently leading the vote count is Galina Tahchieva’s Urban Sprawl Repair Kit. It offers design solutions for integrating existing suburban prototypes like drive-through restaurants into a more diverse, cohesive and walkable urban fabric. The “T-trees Social Housing Project” has the second-greatest number of votes – it proposes nifty-looking modular towers topped with windmills that supporting prefabricated social housing units.

Meanwhile, an article in yesterday’s Edmonton Journal describes the fierce community resistance that stands in the way of proposals to modestly densify Edmonton’s older single-