Planning Pool

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

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…

“Don’t build new residences, only rebuild the old”, argues Liesbeth van der Pol, Chief Government Architect of the Netherlands, who has helped revitalize the nation’s neighbourhoods. Buildings are significant consumers of energy and major contributors to global green-house gas emissions. A panel at Globe 2010 explored how “cities and communities can become more sustainable through better planning, integrated developments, and the design of resource-efficient, high performance buildings.”

Like almost all cities around the world, Amsterdam is struggling with urban sprawl; the city has the same number of residents as 1920s, but the city uses four times more space. van der Pol warns that if this trend continues, there won’t be much interconnected green spaces by 2050. The solution, van der Pol argues, is low rise, high density city buildings, saying that “Europe still has a chance to choose between … Continue Reading

As you or may not have noticed, Planning Pool has been streamlined over the past week to improve site performance and to place greater focus on some of the features that readers enjoy most.  Additionally, we’re redoubling efforts to highlight some of the cool things about the site that fly under the radar.  One such feature is our multimedia library, where we post our own photos and video, as well as interesting things from other sites.  In order to make this content a little more accessible, Planning Pool will showcase a new video every Tuesday.

So, without further ado…

Envision Lancaster County- 2009 National Award for Smart Growth Achievement from Abby Hall on … Continue Reading