How cities grow – up is in

[MTLskyline]

Vertical Cities

How cities grow – up is in

Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver – how planners managed, or failed to manage, sprawl in each

 

Kelly Grant and Anna Mehler Paperny

 

Globe and Mail

Update Published on Monday, May. 17, 2010 11:39AM EDT

Last updated on Monday, May. 17, 2010 5:00PM EDT

 

It’s a tale of three cities, and three very different models of urban growth.

 

An in-depth Neptis Foundation study of expansion in three Canadian supercities – Toronto, Calgary and Vancouver – shows density is an art, and sprawly metropoles get what they planned for.

 

While Vancouver sits smugly as a dense urban planner's dream, Calgary’s Wild West growth has seen it sprawl into southern Alberta’s foothills. And, when it comes to urban density, Toronto the Good is Toronto the in-between.

 

VANCOUVER: URBAN PLANNERS' DREAM

 

Prognosis

 

Lotus Land has one more thing to be smug about: It's grown up and in, not out, focusing on getting denser as its population has grown. Out of the three cities studied, it's the only one that sprawled less between 1991 and 2001.

 

How it grew

 

Avoiding sprawl is easier when you're hemmed in by mountains and ocean. But Vancouver's relative density is no accident: It's largely the result of a series of public policy decisions dating back to the late 1960s and early 70s, when the city was considering building freeway extensions of Highway 1 over the Burrard Inlet and the downtown peninsula.

 

“That was a key turning point,” says planning consultant and economist Eric Vance. Decisions like that, and the creation of the Lower Mainland's agricultural land reserve, put developable land at a premium: It only made sense to leverage that limited supply by building as many units in as small a space as possible.

 

Where it's growing

 

Vancouver's plans verge on the utopian: Mayor Gregor Robertson has adopted his predecessor Sam Sullivan's “EcoDensity” strategy and aims to make Vancouver the world's greenest city by 2020.

 

Secondary suites? Check. Laneway houses? Check. Now Vancouver's challenge is working with 21 other municipalities in the Lower Mainland to check sprawl across the region.

The Bottom line

 

Vancouver's a model of how public-policy choices can foster dense growth or curb sprawl. The missing piece, says Simon Fraser University's Gordon Harris, is making it affordable to live there.

 

“If we can't create housing that the people who work in the city can afford, pretty soon the city stops working so well. You start to see economic decline that is directly related the to cost of housing: People will choose to live and work elsewhere.”

 

 

TORONTO: THE IN-BETWEEN

 

Prognosis

 

A bipolar metropole, Toronto has evolved into a Jekyll-and-Hyde combination of a hyper-dense downtown core and sprawly bedroom communities.

 

How it grew

 

In 1991, Greater Toronto was actually denser than Greater Vancouver. But in the decade that followed, the Toronto region – which in this study includes Hamilton and Halton, Peel, York and Durham – grew out more than up, and fell behind its West Coast rival.

 

Chalk it up to haphazard planning in a megacity that wasn't amalgamated until 2000. Leapfrog growth hasn't been a major concern; lack of co-ordination has.

Where it's growing

 

The Toronto area has made strides in the past decade. The province has stepped in as the area's de facto planner, erecting barriers to sprawl such as the Greenbelt Act in 2005, which protects about 730,000 hectares of environmentally sensitive and agricultural land, and the Places to Grow Act, which encourages intensification on land that's already been urbanized.

 

“In Toronto, I think we need to take a wait-and-see attitude,” said Zack Taylor, co-author of “Growing Cities,” released Monday. “There's a more stringent planning environment than there has been in a long time and it's being closely managed by the process in a way that was not true for a long time. Whether that will be able to continue as priorities change, as there are changes in government, is an open question.”

 

The bottom line

 

Toronto's downtown is a collection of vertical cities, and government emphasis on intensification aims to increase that. Ambitious transit plans are projecting huge increases in density along in-progress rapid-transit corridors. In the meantime, try living outside the downtown core and getting around on foot. We dare you.

 

CALGARY: WILD WEST GROWTH

 

Prognosis

 

Welcome to big-sky country. Except by “big-sky,” we mean “big, sprawly spaces.” Throughout the 1990s, Boomtown Calgary also became Canada's Wild West of urban sprawl, with nearly 80 per cent of growth eating up green fields.

How it grew

 

Rolling prairies make it easy to spread out, city-wise. But Calgary's growth has been no accident: The city has had a strong planning culture since the 1950s – the 1963 Calgary General Plan was the first statutory municipal plan in Western Canada. The city functioned as a de facto regional government, gobbling up the land on its borders through annexations, often at the urging of developers who'd already purchased those plots.

 

“We talk about geography as destiny,” said Noel Keough, a professor of environmental design at the University of Calgary. “But in a place like Calgary where it is easier to expand and sprawl into prairie land I would argue that obligates you to be even more pro-active in your public policy and planning. It's going to cost you anyway.”

 

Where it's growing

 

In the past decade, Calgary has started checking its sprawl, motivated in part by a looming water shortage.

 

“There is an increased emphasis on urban redevelopment and infill for increased density,” said Mike Quinn, also an environmental design professor at the University of Calgary.

 

The Bottom line

 

Brent Toderian, who has worked as a planner in both Vancouver and Calgary, points to such initiatives as McKenzie Towne – a transit- and pedestrian-centric residential development in the city's southeast – as examples of Calgary's new “smart growth” communities. But make no mistake. As anyone on the Deerfoot Trail will tell you, Calgary remains a spread-out city of drivers.

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/how-cities-grow-up-is-in/article1571442/

[LindbergMTL]

Et Montreal?

[Ornello Mastrocola]

Jesus! Talk about a slap in the face. Three super cities and Montreal not in the picture!! What the F**k!

Interesting to note what the rest of Canada thinks about Montreal in terms of urban growth.

[Habsfan]

Jesus! Talk about a slap in the face. Three super cities and Montreal not in the picture!! What the F**k!

Interesting to note what the rest of Canada thinks about Montreal in terms of urban growth.

 

 

What did you expect?? Franchement les boys, je n'en reviens pas que vous êtes réelement surpris?

[Malek]

What did you expect?? Franchement les boys, je n'en reviens pas que vous êtes réelement surpris?

 

Exactement... "I couldn't get anyone in English in Montreal to speak to":rolleyes:

[Cataclaw]

I posted a comment on that article page... sort it from newest-to-oldest and see if you can spot which one is mine ;)

[pedepy]

i think supercities term is ridiculous anyway.

 

je pense peut-etre que montreal n'est pas dans la liste simplement car les 3 autres villes couvraient bien le 'spectrum' des possibilite en etalement. ils auraient pu en glisser un mot, mais bon. comme vous dites, pas si surprenant.

 

si javais a placer montreal, je pense qu'elle serait a quelque part avec toronto, probablement un peu moins etalee, mais surement en train de le devenir.

[Maisonneuve]

Calgary is the an example of what not to do or failed urban planning. Urban sprawl. Not extensive transit systems like the other cities, not enough density.

 

Vancouver's the best example.

 

The article is right, Toronto is in between.

 

As for Montreal, I'm not surprised the article doesn't mention it. Urban planning is too disjointed in Montreal and fragmented across the island. It's tough to create a cohesive big city when half the island is made up of separate municipalities, each with their own urban planning agendas. Plus, in English Canada, Toronto, Vancouver and Calgary are considered the country's metropolises. "Supercities" is a pretentious term. I wouldn't classify Vancouver and Calgary as supercities, unless you compare them to places like Moncton and Saskatoon. Montreal gets left out either because there's not much happening there, or because there is a perception that it does not have enough English Canadians to be considered on the same level as Toronto and Vancouver. It's almost as if English Canada has conceded that Montreal (Quebec) is just too different, or a lost cause in terms of English Canadian interests, so it is treated as a metropolis in another country to be exploited on certain situations, the same way U.S. interests view Canadian cities.

 

Interestingly enough, most Canadian architectural magazines cover Montreal very closely. Quebec architects are held in very high regard in Canadian architectural circles. It's about the only time Montreal gets noticed frequently in terms of building.

Edited May 19, 2010 by Maisonneuve

[Jacot]

Je me permets de vous indiquer un lien vers l'urbanisme au Canada :

http://www.respublicanova.fr/spip.php?article455

[jesseps]

I bet Montreal will be urban planners worst nightmare lol