Planning Pool

Hearing Dan Burden speak to a Vancouver crowd was like Mariah Carey’s third wedding to the same guy: superfluous, self-congratulatory, and all criticism aside, a great way to renew vows.

Thanks to Christopher Lewis Cotrel on Flickr for this heartwarming photo of a Vancouver bicycle wedding!

Vancouver is an incredibly walkable and bikeable place. We get mixed use right, with small scale neighbourhood grocers and a variety of housing types. We care about the human scale, with tree-lined streets, frequent parks and a never-ending supply of the urban necessity of coffee shops. We fight the good fight in reducing travel lanes and handing them over to people, with the Olympics and the Burrard Bridge as examples. Dan reminded us that not only do we … Continue Reading

Understanding past-mistakes is essential to avoiding them in the future, however, hindsight is 20/20 and we here at Planning Pool are cognizant of this truth. With that in mind and with eyes toward sunnier days, we’ve decided to respond to last month’s Fail Week feature with some of the more hopeful developments in the world of planning: Win Week…

Pedestrians in Manhattan eye the traffic warily and consider jaywalking. Thanks to Oleg Dulin for the great Creative Commons photo.

While Christopher Hume’s article was written in response to the crackdowns on jaywalking following this year’s pedestrian deaths in Toronto, Tom Vanderbilt’s article was actually published about two months prior, in a similar response to the American media’s own shellacking of what were referred to as “foolish” and “lackadaisical” jaywalkers. Clearly, the issue is ongoing. As a matter of fact, the issue of pedestrian rights has been ongoing for quite some time now.

In his 1964 book, The Heart of Our Cities: The Urban Crisis, Diagnosis and Cure, Victor Gruen was responding to these very same concerns when he remarked:
“It is felt … Continue Reading

In Toronto, it is legal to cross a street mid-block as long as you yield to traffic and are not adjacent to a marked pedestrian crossing. Thanks to Nekotune for the great Creative Commons photo!

Early 2010 saw an uncharacteristically high number of pedestrian fatalities in the Greater Toronto Area. After the media storm that ensued, coupled with more pedestrian deaths in other parts of Canada, police crackdowns emerged across the country targeting jaywalkers in Toronto, Ottawa, and Calgary.

Crackdowns on jaywalking are a popular response because they seem to promote safe streets while quelling illegal behavior; above all, they offer the appearance of “doing something”. Unfortunately, publicly addressing what some consider to be reckless behavior on the part of pedestrians … Continue Reading

Heading south on Main, photo by author.

The APA has announced the results of its 2009 Great Places in America awards. I was really pleased to see Main Street in Greenville, SC celebrated as a 2009 Great Street! Greenville’s Main Street was one of the reasons I chose to go to university in the city. Main Street is definitely a lively and attractive place, filled with bustling restaurants, heritage storefronts, shops, ice cream parlors, public art, benches, trees, and plazas.

Some of the highlights of Main Street are the new trolley bus, Falls Park and the Liberty Bridge, Greenville Drive baseball, and the street itself, which is often used for festivals like Artisphere and Fall … Continue Reading

The High Line, underneath the Standard Hotel. Photo by author.

Pedestrians enjoy a stroll on the completed High Line in New York. Thanks to Gerard Dalmon for the Creative Commons photo!

Two weeks after the opening of the High Line, New York is still reveling in its newest city park. The creation of open space is a rare event in the world’s densest cities, a treasure hunt sometimes known as landscape urbanism. Seoul, Korea recently brought to daylight a forgotten river under the city, opening up a wide boulevard of parks and recreation spaces. Many cities have converted unused belt railways into community gardens or greenways. Now this trend for generating innovative … Continue Reading

***Update, July 17: The Comox bylaw received first approval from the town council.***

Have you ever wished that your least favourite form of development could be simply banished? In the Vancouver Island town of Comox (pop. 12,000), the town council is considering just that.

Drive-thru A&W in the City of Courtenay, in the Comox Valley. Thanks to Brian Chow for the Creative Commons picture.

A current resolution, meant to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and support sustainable development, would amend Comox’s Zoning Bylaw to prohibit drive-thru services like restaurants and banks throughout the town. Existing uses would remain but no future drive-thrus could be developed.

Howls of protest and approval … Continue Reading

I’m excited to announce that one of the brightest minds in urbanism today is gracing Toronto with an appearance on June 3rd. Jan Gehl, who is known for countless public space interventions over his long active career, will be speaking at the Design Exchange near Bay and King.

Good and evil. In the media, so many things are reduced to black and white, liberal and conservative, Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker. In the past week, the Toronto media has seised upon a specific grudgematch, and they decided to take out their biggest wedge. I’m talking about the epic struggle between the “build more roads” crowd and the “tear out roads” crowd. See – isn’t it easy to put them into two boxes? In real life, it’s never that simple.