G-20′s Impacts on a City

25 06 2010

Well, as the G-20 summit descends upon my current home of Toronto and protests and chaos begin, I wondered if there are any long term effects on a host city for the G-20.  Typically, an enormous amount of money is spent on such an event and the current price tag for the G-20 summit and the G-8 summit combined (the 2010 G-8 summit is taking place 3 or so hours north of Toronto) is a whopping $1 billion.  One would think that with such an enormous price tag, there would be some kind of long term impacts.

I took a look at the Wikipedia entry for the Pittsburgh 2009 summit.  Interestingly, the city was chosen due to it’s economic recovery from it’s depressing post-manufacturing days.  And while the Direct Energy Business greened the city’s electrical usage during the two days of the summit, there was no information pertaining to the long term effects on the city.

However, one has to believe that such a massive event must have an effect on the future efficiency and effectiveness of the city’s police department for if it can handle something  as chaotic as the protests for the G-20, surely the police force must be better equipped for any possible future protests.  So as Toronto becomes a zoo of protesters over the next couple of days, I hope that the economic and social costs of such an event are outweighed by the future benefits.


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Housing + Transportation Index

4 06 2010

The Chicago based Center for Neighbourhood Technology is changing the way we look at housing affordability in American cities.  Traditionally, one would base the affordability of housing in a neighbourhood on the percent a family spends on their housing.  A neighbourhood in which the average family spends 30% or less was deemed affordable.    However, the Center for Neighbourhood Technology is redefining how we look at affordability.   The new measure of affordability takes both housing and transportation into consideration.   With the new measurement of affordability, a neighbourhood in which the average family spends 45% or less on housing and transportation is considered affordable.  While one might expect that roughly the same number of American neighbourhoods would be considered affordable under both scales of affordability, the rather alarming part is these numbers are not even close.

Under the old measurement, 69% of U.S. communities are considered affordable.  However, shockingly, by factoring in both housing and transportation, that number shrinks to 40%.  Does anyone else find this down right scary?  Less than half of American neighbourhoods are considered affordable.

One might automatically blame the high transportation costs for such a decrease in affordability.  But it seems to be more complex than that.  For instance, traditionally, the farther one travels from the center of the city, the cheaper the housing costs.  Yet, moving away from the center of a city means that the transportation costs increase, perhaps more rapidly than the housing prices decrease causing an imbalance.

However, this blog post suggests that there is good news to all of this:

The good news is that many federal policymakers understand the impact of transportation on land use, housing, environment and affordability.  First, a new partnership between USDOT, EPA and the Dept. of Housing and Urban Development to coordinate and invest in sustainable development is included in President Obama’s 2011 budget.   Second, Senator Dodd (D-CT) and Representative Cohen (D-TN) have both introduced livability bills that would establish offices of sustainability in HUD and DOT that would provide competitive grants for transit-oriented development projects throughout the country.  Third, the next federal transportation bill could provide even more funding and incentives to increase transportation choices and greater proximity between housing, transit and jobs.

To learn more about the Housing and Transportation Affordability Index, you can check out their site: Housing and Transportation Affordability Index.


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The uselessness of Top 10 City Ranking Lists doesn’t make them any less fun

29 05 2010

After my last blog post of yet another random urban-related top 10 list, I thought it would be quite amusing to post the following Wall Street journal opinion piece: Why One Top 10′s List Leader Is Another’s Also Ran.  As one may expect, the author refutes several various top 10 urban related lists blaming several different factors including misinterpreted data or  non-transparency.  This is all true and the author even backs it up with a recent faulty top 10 by the very prestigious Forbes magazine (the 10 worst housing markets).

But the truth of the matter is that  such known problems with these top 10 lists doesn’t make them any less interesting or amusing to read.  In fact, the opinion piece brings up the recent Economist list of the world’s most livable cities in which Vancouver takes top honors once again.  100% accurate?   Not a chance.  Interesting and thought-provoking?  For sure!


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Save Transit City

24 04 2010

For those unfamiliar with the public transportation system in Toronto, let me just say that as far as rapid transit goes, it may be among the worst in all of North America for a city of it’s size.  For the most part, our subway system has no grown in the past 3 or 4 decades and has not remotely kept up with the growth of the city.  It does not have nearly the coverage it should and has made it near impossible to get to certain important locations throughout the city.  If anyone has ever taken public transit from the Toronto International airport to downtown, they know exactly what i’m referring to.  However, as 0f 2008, the government of Ontario committed nine billion dollars to greatly improving the Toronto public transit system including eight new light rail lines calling the project Transit City.  While these light rail lines will not be as rapid as a subway system, they are far more economic and still far quicker than a bus.  These lines greatly increase the coverage of rapid transit throughout the city to such places as the airport.

However, recently, this budget has been cut in half putting the entire project in jeopardy, even after development has already started.  So where does this leave us?  Apparently, in a very similar state we were before the project began.  As a Torontonian who frequently takes public transit, it is a very difficult thing to hear.  There has already been numerous events, groups and coalitions built to stop these massive budget cuts.  So what can you do?  Well, you can go here:  TTCriders.ca where they will give you information on how to either phone or email the government of Ontario letting them know how you feel about these budget cuts.


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The Failure of New Urbanism

10 03 2010

Cyburbia.org is an excellent forum for the urban planning community whether you are an urban planning professional or simply have a heavy interest in urban planning and design, like myself.  One of the hottest forum discussions has recently involved the the failure to apply the rules of New Urbanism (dense European-style neighbourhoods) to the suburban sprawl of the vast majority of the United States.   According to the forum discussion, the main issue surrounds the fact that these neighbourhoods seem to be created ad-hoc and are islands of new-urbanism within a pool of suburban style neighbourhoods on all sides.  It’s encouraging to hear that developers are attempting to create more workable and livable neighbourhoods, but are they going about it the right way?  This brings up a really interesting question for me:  how and where do you actually begin to apply new-urbanism style developments to suburban cities?

You can find the forum post here: The failure of New Urbanism


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City Planning with Special Reference to Planning of Streets and Lots

17 11 2009

Discovering Urbanism has an posted excellent blog post on the 1916 textbook ‘City Planning with Special Reference to Planning of Streets and Lots’ by Charles Mulford Robinson:

City Planning with Special Reference to Planning of Streets and Lots by Charles Mulford Robinson was a standard textbook during the early stages of the professionalization of planning in America. Written in 1916, it only shortly followed the first formal attempts at land use planning and the creation of local planning commissions. The textbook continues the transition from the traditional urban form evident in the Garden City movement to prescriptions for a more thoroughly modernized city. Robinson was more aware of the potential and needs of the automobile than Raymond Unwin, although he still held on to the traditional notion that the street was the most important public space in urban areas. He attempted to deal with this tension by differentiating streets from each other and districts of a city from each other

This blog post touches deeply on the concepts of the hierarchy of streets and zoning outlined in the book.  Perhaps the most interesting point is on the history of zoning.   ‘City Planning with Special Reference to Planning of Streets and Lots’ discusses the uses of zoning back in the early 20th century:

There’s a common narrative about how zoning unfolded in America. First, planners needed to find ways to separate dangerous and unhealthy factories from the places where people lived. Once the legal basis for this tool was secured, it was eventually employed to separate businesses from residents. The final stage of zoning was to segregating different kinds of people from each other. That’s how we reached where we are today.

Is that last stage of zoning really surprising?  When you put this into context of the time, it makes perfect sense.  Later on, author Charles Robinson explicitly describes why such zoning was used:

“Both poor and rich are probably happier in their own environment, among their own kind, where each can live his own life in his own way, without covetousness or odious comparison.”

Robinson brings both the concepts of hierarchy of streets and zoning together when he discusses the fact that zoning helped designate wider streets for commercial zones and narrower streets for residential ones?  If you look at your own city, how many of these concepts still exist?  Can you see past evidence of concepts that may no longer apply to today’s cities.


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The Resurrection of Hamilton, Ontario

4 10 2009

hamilton

Sorry for the long delay between blog posts.  I don’t like to go into personal details on the blog, however as of three weeks, I finally tied the knot with my long time girlfriend and couldn’t be happier.  So that might explain the lack of posts these past couple of months.

As a Toronto resident, you often hear Hamilton, Ontario (just 50 minutes away by car) as being referred to as the armpit of Ontario (which plays on the geography of the city on the south western edge of Lake Ontario as well as its seedy reputation).  Yet, there is often been a slight bit of optimism that the city could eventually remove itself from its image as primarily a steel manufacturing center and become a much more diverse and prosperous city.  The Globe and Mail recently posted a great article on the decline and possible resurrection of Hamilton.  The article covers a lot of ground from the start of the decline of the  city in as early as the 60′s to the recent losing attempt to lure an NHL hockey team from Phoenix.

If there’s one region of Hamilton that gets the most co-ordinated lip service from its politicians, it’s the downtown, which has been Hamilton’s bête noire going back to the 1960s, when the city went to work demolishing the best part of the core, ripping out hundreds of homes and handsome buildings, including the grand old city hall, and then taking more than a decade to install an arena, some nondescript glass boxes and a bleak, low-ceilinged shopping mall.

Having visited downtown Hamilton last year, I can confirm that the downtown feels just as empty as it has for the last decade.  Yet, the article later on offers hope in the form of several new downtown condo developments.  While this does seems to have a become a common answer to revitalizing many mid-sized cities downtowns (with not always positive results), Hamilton does have a couple of things in favour of it.  First is the fact that a downtown condo could be bought for a much lower price tag than an equivalent one up in Toronto.  Which is the second benefit to living in Hamilton: the proximity to Toronto.  Thirdly, Hamilton does offers some decent cultural events in the center: the third largest art gallery in Ontario, the many events at Copps Colliseum (the stadium that was to play host of the possible NHL team) and several solid restaurants.  Combine that with Hamilton’s not too shabby geography and there is certainly room for a possible resurgence of the downtown core at least.


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A Dream Come True – Living in an Office Park

19 07 2009

new jersey office park

Love them or hate them, office parks have become a reality in about any major city in the developed world (especially here in North America).  Office parks typically offer a cheaper alternative for office space than downtown while still retaining some kind of pleasant atmosphere for the employees that work there.  Yet, what happens when these office parks are no longer used?  What about turning them into condos?  A blog post entitled ‘would you live in a suburban park?‘ over at Fast Company describes how developers in Holmdel, New Jesery are hoping to turn the Bell Labs (built around 1960) into a new mixed use development with retail on the ground floor and lofts on the upper floors.  Originally planned for destruction, scientists around the world came together to save the structure for both it’s historical importance and it’s architecture.

The idea is certainly an interesting one.  But it isn’t one that I believe can pick up much steam, especially if this trend continues to other less highly regarded office parks.  I’m just unsure of what type of people would choose to live in it.  The photo above (courtesy of FastCompany.com) displays the isolation of the office park which could also be a detriment to the retail finding customers outside of the residents of the building.  Either way, i’m all for the preservation of a building with some kind of historical importance, even if it is an office park.


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Urban Farming

9 07 2009

Another short blog post this time unfortunately.  Anyways, I found this interesting article on urban farming by the New York Times.  The focus of the article is on the ever increasing number of rooftop gardens in several of America’s urban environment, most notably New York City (apparently New York City offers incentives for undertaking such a green intiative).  While this isn’t a new concept, the article does go into more detail of how exactly it is done.   For anyone considering gardening on the roof, there are obvious benefits, but there are things one must think about, such as whether the roof can even support a garden, the increased irrigation and watering that may need to be done and impact of higher winds on the crops.  However, it seems (at the least according to Marrian Burros, the writer of the article), the benefits greatly outweigh the potential consequences.  And as well, for those that enjoy both gardening and the urban lifestyle, it really provides the best of both worlds.


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Dubai: The City of Controversy

22 04 2009

dubai-cranes

Anyone even a little bit familiar with Dubai knows about the insane amount of new developments going on in the city.  Any picture of the city showcases a skyline full of cranes.  There is of course a lot of controversy surrounding the city whether it comes from it’s mistreatment of it’s working class (generally Indian construction workers) or the growing divide between the ex-pats and the locals.

But I want to touch on another bit of controversy.  Certain new developments have sparked controversy in the city for one reason are another and I thought i’d bring to light a few of them:

1) The revolving apartment tower

http://wcbstv.com/national/dubai.david.fisher.2.756027.html

The first question that comes to my mind is whether such a structure is actually safe.  And why test it out on such an enormously tall structure first.  There have already been safety concerns over some of the other new developments happening in Dubai and this one would likely top the list.

2) Replicas of some of our greatest structures

http://burjdubaiskyscraper.com/2006/al-bawadi/al-bawadi.html

This project takes what Las Vegas has done to the extreme.  I really don’t find anything wrong with creating a mock of such things as an English village (like at Disney World), but this takes the whole thing one step further.  This whole project reaks of inauthenticity and is a very poor use of money for such novelties.

3) The World

http://www.theworld.ae/

This is perhaps the most famous of the three projects.  For those not in the know, the project is essentially a series of islands off the Dubai coast in the shape of the world.  The trouble with this one is the potential environmental impacts it has on the ecosystem in and around Dubai.  One has to wonder given Dubai’s reputation with other projects, whether such a project may have these adverse side effects.  Time will tell since this project is going ahead.

To some people, Dubai may be cutting edge.  To others, it’s just tacky.  But as a whole it has sparked a lot of controversy with it’s people and it’s surrounding environment.  As amazing as these projects sound, one has to wonder at what cost building such things will have?


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