Land Use/ Public Space

GEOG 346: DAYS 7-8

The outlines for the major projects are due on Thursday.

I didn’t get a chance to ask the international students, with one possible exception, how you got to school when you were young and where you tended to ‘hang out’ when you weren’t in school or at home? Also: what type of housing did you grow up in? Single-family housing? Apartments – low-rise or high-rise? Walled compounds with courtyards? Other?

HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS

What we do today depends on the weather.

If we do the public space exercise on campus, here’s the set-up: I will send you in 2’s and 3’s to the following sites: Library Plaza (including the smokers’ shelter), the library portion of Jumpin’ Java, the cafeteria and, if we have enough people, the lounge (211) in Building 355.

Your task will be to observe unobtrusively how people interact and come back and make a brief oral report.

HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS

Are people interacting and, if so, for how long?

To what extent do physical conditions (furniture, weather, etc.) influence those interactions?

Is there some purpose/ raison d’être that brings people into those spaces?

Any other observations?

HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS

If we do the design exercise instead, use the Mylar and the base map (with aerial photos for additional guidance) to draw in the type and density of housing, other uses (commercial, offi ce or institutional), community facilities, circulation systems, and connections to the surrounding environment.

Use the X-acto knives to cut the Mylar to fir the base map, and tape down with the green tape. Use markers to indicate the different uses and circulation systems. Provide a key to indicate the meaning of your colours and symbols.

HOUSEKEEPING ITEMS

The models drawn from for ‘new urbanist’ (and other) developments – are they always the most appropriate ones (see p. 186 of Grant)?

Sometimes new urbanist communities don’t get the expected market demand and, when they do, their quality tends to bid up the price.

Hok-lin Leung makes the point that, because of their generous open space, new urbanist communities are not necessarily more space-effi cient, despite the higher density of the housing.

Is new urbanism mainly an appeal to the elite (i.e. designer suburbs that aren’t meant to be affordable)?

A FEW KEY POINTS FROM THE READINGS

Sandalack and Nicolai decry the loss of a ‘sense of place’ and the proliferation of lost spaces – surface parking lots, empty lots, and traffi c interchanges, etc.

Cities need real public spaces – a public realm – that follows traditional principles whereby human- scale buildings define the space (as in the images on pp. 192-193). They note that a lack of them can correspond or contribute to a lack of civic engagement (as can high rises, as noted by Montgomery).

Despite the recent origins of Canadian cities, most cities and towns have had such spaces in the space.

A FEW KEY POINTS FROM THE READINGS

‘VICIOUS CYCLE’

Consumer demand

Developers seeking maximum profits

Unimaginative councils and city planners

Many people still embrace the “(North) American dream” of a single-detached home with a lawn and where you need a car to get everywhere.

Developers (and their fi nancial backers) want to keep delivering a proven product, rather than innovate.

With some exceptions, developers largely drive the city-building agenda, with councils and planners only too happy to rubber-stamp their plans with minor variations. When developers do try something diff erent – as with the Hawthorne development at Jinglepot and Wakesiah, they often run into loads of red tape.

VICIOUS CIRCLE

In many parts of the world achieving a beautiful built environment is a major priority, as is respecting and maintaining traditional aspects of the built environment. With the exception of the end of the 19 th and beginning of the 20 th centuries (City Beautiful movement), it has not tended to be in North America, nor has the preservation of heritage structures.

Is beauty important or it a frill?Maybe as long as our cities are functional – i.e. enable

us to go to work, buy groceries, etc., recreate, raise families – we don’t need anything else. What are your thoughts?

How important is heritage? Should we preserve some continuity with the past or demolish old buildings if we can achieve a “higher and better use.”

HOW IMPORTANT ARE BEAUTY AND HERITAGE?

Making communities more ‘legible’ for the visually-impaired

Seeking higher design standards (ideally, while not restricting them to private or gated communities)

Reclaiming streets for other usersA growing market demand for denser, mixed use

ways of living in inner-city areas of large cities in Canada. (Note: this often takes a high-rise form, and is not necessarily more affordable.)

The Bois-Franc community outside MontrealExperiments with ‘winter city’ design to reflect

our often cold climates‘Greening’ streets, boulevards, verges, and traffi c

circles in Vancouver.

POSITIVE INITIATIVES

Is use of public space strictly a cultural matter? Or how much does the built environment affect people’s behaviour? When Jan Gehl began to pedestrianize Copenhagen’s streets, people thought he was mad – didn’t he know that Danes were not Italians?

Yet, as streets became more user-friendly for pedestrians began to hang out in large numbers, even in the winter months. They changed streets from being for cars to being for people. (See the fi lm, Human Scale).

MONTGOMERY, CHAPTER 7

Strøget, Cøpenhagen

Gehl’s ideas have been taken up elsewhere – New York City, with the recolonization of Times Square, and indirectly in Bogotá’s ciclovías and expanded bike network.

There is so much more in Chapter 7. He notes that Walt Disney’s “imagineers” grasped the kinds of qualities that made people feel comfortable – human scale, an old-time nostalgic feel (for how they imagined America’s cities and towns to be in the past), a safe and friendly environment, and so on.

MONTGOMERY, CHAPTER 7

Disneyland’s Main Street

From Frederick Law Olmsted on, parks have played an important role in enabling people from different social and ethnic backgrounds to mingle and get more comfortable with one another. The Peňalosa brothers in Bogotá vastly expanded the park system, transit, and democratized the streets. They built new infrastructure for the poor.

The physical appearance of streets and the rest of the built environment make a big difference – are there lots of windows and doors in buildings, or instead blank walls? How does the environment look? Is there an absence of litter, broken windows, and graffi tied walls, or are things tidy and well-maintained as if someone cares.

As Gil Peňalosa says in his 8-80 newsletter, a city that works for 8-year-olds and 80-year-olds works for everyone.

MONTGOMERY, CHAPTER 7