Quote:
Originally Posted by S-Man
The problem with Ottawa (and it shares this with Toronto) is that the topography allowed for explosive and continuous sprawl out into the flat countryside starting in the 60s, leading to the downfall of downtown urban areas. This is a common theme seen in most if not all Canadian cities during this time.
The return of people to the core in the past decade forced Ottawa and other cities to suddenly have to take a look at new urbanism, which it had grown unfamiliar with, and recognize the need for taller buildings and transit in key areas.
The problem, however, is that the people who bought cheap into the urban areas being vacated by families rushing towards the suburbs got used to nothing ever changing. No new buildings, no real vibrancy (except for touristy parts of the city), etc, etc. Now those residents are older, almost all retired and spending lots more time at home, and suddenly other people want to move into the neighbourhood after the size of sprawl has made the city unsustainable.
Who are the community associations run by? People who have "lived somewhere 30 years" and are opposed to "rapid, extreme change". What they don't say is that they bought into an area of stagnancy and nothing has changed for decades, thus meaning that ANY change is big and extreme, and scary.
These people also delude themselves into thinking it is the return to the core, the rise of urban life (and tall buildings) that is raising their municipal taxes, not, in fact, the decades of costly sprawl that the urban influx is a reaction to.
A lot of misconceptions, untruths and lies being thrown about at meetings in Ottawa, with a lot of hysteria and entitlement, too. It seems quite similar to Halifax's situation. And of course, "we're not Toronto" is used to squash any progress thinking in urban planning. The LRT route the city has been trying (twice) to build under downtown gets this argument all the time, even though buses now jam the limited downtown street space and ridership is growing.
Ideology trumping reality.
|
This sounds almost exactly the same as Halifax's situation. The current goal is to funnel 40-50% of new population growth into the inner city (the Peninsula and central Dartmouth) but because this area is by definition made up of "existing communities", most of which are very averse to change, it's proving very difficult. I think you hit the nail on the head when you said that people buy into stagnant areas and get used to things never ever changing. I remember one older gentleman at a public meeting I recently attended getting up and bragging about how he had successfully fought off developers trying to come in and build things in his North End neighbourhood (ie. ~2km from downtown) and then complaining about the need to stop students from coming in (as the major universities are also <5km away), subdividing single family houses into 10-room apartments, and "ruining his neighbourhood". A lot of people seemed to agree. I got up and politely countered that if we don't allow for new residential buildings, then there aren't really any options other than converting houses to flats, because the number of cheap but safe apartments in the inner city is very limited and few people my age can afford anything beyond that. I suggested that rather than "how do we keep change out of our neighbourhood" what we should be asking ourselves is "how do we protect what we love about our neighbourhoods and make sure that any change that development brings has a net positive effect?" The response was notably lukewarm - I think I heard about 2 people clap in a room of about 80.
The other big difference here is that heritage preservation trumps any other objectives, including sustainability, affordability, and the sense that the future matters in any way. This doesn't mean that it's hard to demolish heritage buildings (it actually isn't necessarily hard to do this at all) but any upgrading/renovations beyond brick-for-brick restoration based on original blueprints for example is seen as anti-heritage. Building high-rise buildings on vacant lots near heritage buildings is seen as anti-heritage. Highrise buildings that are tall enough to be seen from point x within the stone walls of the Citadel are ILLEGAL. I assume that this attitude is much more extreme in Halifax than elsewhere in Canada, though I can imagine there are similar weird insecurities revolving around the Parliament Buildings and the "Capital City Image" that Ottawa undoubtedly obsesses over, if it's anything like here.
I've heard that OC Transpo is significantly more expensive to operate than the TTC because of its reliance on buses, which need more drivers and energy per passenger than subway trains - but subways are a "Toronto" way of getting around, I suppose. Ironically the LRT tunnel would be much more like Edmonton's, but I guess Edmonton is just like Toronto too.