This city deserves more Steven Lewis'
Condo battle about city's future
By Steven Lewis, Special to The Star PhoenixMay 15, 2009
Following is the personal viewpoint of the writer, a Saskatoon resident and president of Access Consulting Ltd.
After listening to some heated arguments against the project, city council approved a zoning change that allows 120 condo units to be built on a forlorn piece of underused land bounded by Haultain Avenue and Ruth Street.
Coun. Bob Pringle stood loud and proud for the NIMBY legions who overwhelmed proponents of the project at the April 20 meeting of city council. He went so far as to suggest that only residents of the immediate area were entitled to an opinion.
I suppose by that criterion I no longer count; while I lived at Munroe Avenue and Ruth Street for 28 years, my wife and I moved to Nutana last October. I watched the debate with a growing sense of irony. What the opponents of the project wished to preserve, we wished to leave behind.
Adelaide-Churchill has a density of 3.5 units per acre. In some countries this would be considered semi-rural. The lifeless streets are needlessly wide and are, despite the noble efforts of homeowners, the dominant aesthetic feature.
There is little pedestrian traffic, and for good reason. Woody Allen observed that the problem with the countryside is that there's no place to go for a walk. He meant, of course, that a good walk requires human and visual stimulation, variety, and the prospect of a spontaneous experience.
Opponents of the project want neither density nor the prospect of commercial enterprises intruding on their solitude. The essence of an interesting urban landscape is mixed use on a human scale. Big box retail outlets are as ruthlessly efficient as they are sterile; they are built for cars, not people. Monochrome subdivisions are their residential counterpart. They are isolating by design: the private preserve of the big backyard; the firewall between the domestic and the commercial; houses set well back from the street.
The obvious response to this is that I'm entitled to my perspective and the locals are entitled to theirs. To each his own, and, as the area residents kept repeating, they like what they have, and all they want is its perpetual enjoyment. Fair enough; my question is whether, even on their own terms, they are overreacting and needlessly fearful.
No one is proposing to turn the neighbourhood into Hong Kong; the project would add perhaps 200 residents who are 55-plus. The traffic argument was almost surreal. Yes, Clarence Avenue has become much busier in the past year, but it is entirely due to thousands of people living the same dream that created Adelaide-Churchill half a century ago. The Law of Sprawl comes back to haunt: Today's pastoral sanctuary is tomorrow's drive-through corridor to Home Depot and Stonebridge.
How the presence of a couple of hundred older, mainly churchgoing adults would disturb the tranquillity of the neighbourhood taxes the imagination. The complex will have its own parking. Building up the site would turn a desolate landscape into something potentially pleasing; the risk of it being aesthetically worse is near zero. And there is no better deterrent to speeding drivers than density.
From a quality of life perspective, the opponents may have it exactly wrong. They should insist on 200 units, not 120. They should demand an intimate pub, a coffee house, a courtyard, a multi-purpose centre for community get-togethers. The development should create volunteer and paid work for teenagers and ecumenical services at the church. Set aside a unit or two for artists-in-residence.
This was not just a local skirmish in Adelaide-Churchill; it was about the future of the city, the viability of the low-density model typical of prairie cities without natural boundaries, and a meditation on civic democracy.
Saskatoon is not immune to global realities, and time and economics will have the last word on the sustainability of how we live, travel, and work. The good life comes in many packages. Happy children grow up on Saskatchewan farms and in Manhattan amid the concrete and the towers. No one in central Barcelona or downtown Vancouver lives in a single-family dwelling. By choice and necessity, public and private life are more integrated, the streets are abuzz, the cafes are full, and pedestrians still matter.
There can be no gentler introduction to densification than what's proposed for my old neighbourhood. The opposing passions seemed disproportionate to the stakes and the risks. If anything, the problem with the project is that it lacks ambition.
It is neither imaginative nor transformative, but on balance it is better than doing nothing or doing less. It will be pleasant and quiet; its imprint on the neighbourhood will be minimal.
The gentleman who feared for the loss of his sunsets may find compensation in a new friend or two. The people accustomed to looking across their back fences at nothing might come to appreciate a different view. My hope is that we are all at the beginning of a larger conversation about adding vitality to neighbourhoods, and how Saskatoon might become the little metropolis that could.
© Copyright (c) The Star Phoenix
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Thank you Steven for an honest, realistic perspective on the successes and failures of urban environments, with contextual references to Saskatoon.
I especially connected with this last statement,
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My hope is that we are all at the beginning of a larger conversation about adding vitality to neighbourhoods, and how Saskatoon might become the little metropolis that could.
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Indeed, a larger conservation has begun. Of course, we have many more challenges ahead (NIMBYS will come again, that is certain).
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A construction update...because its been awhile.
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2nd Avenue stroll
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Discovery Plaza
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3rd Avenue stroll
3rd Avenue beautification underway (burying power lines).
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1st Avenue stroll
Another angle of the King George (23rd Street).
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Academic Health Sciences
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Academic Health Sciences
Academic Health Sciences
Place Riel Renovations/Additions
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Place Riel Renovations/Additions
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Vaccine Infectious Disease Organization
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McEwan Park student residences
McEwan Park student residences and a ghostly Luther Tower lurking behind.
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I'd be curious to know how they compile such a statistic and what it really means. For example, you could get a low score by being a truly tolerant city and thereby having a low rate of racially motivated crime. You could also get a low score by having a low level of racial diversity (i.e. if there are few people who are in the visible minority, there will be fewer crimes directed at them. Finally, you could also get a low score because of lack of awareness (which might negatively correlate with tolerance) for example if the police force is not aware of racial issues, they are not even likely to consider that a crime has a racial element and will not record the crime as such. Anyway, it is interesting.
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