There has been a drastic change
in planning theory across North America over the past 20 years. Most planners today agree that the suburban
model comes with a plethora of inherent problems; from environmental concerns
to economic and social issues, it’s clear we need to make changes. Despite efforts by many planners we seem to
fail to be able slow the demise of existing inner-city neighbourhoods or build
new communities that perform like their predecessors.
The reaction by these professionals
to the problems of suburbanization has for the most part been progressive and
well thought out. Planners across Canada
and the United States have been challenging the suburban codes set in place by
the city builders of the 1950’s. Individuals
such as Jane Jacobs, James Howard Kunstler, Jeff Speck, Donald Shoup and
countless others have been recognizing the need for change and though numerous books
and other publications. Additionally
organizations like The Congress for New Urbanism, Strong Towns, The Walkable
Cities Institute and various others have been promoting good design practice on
the basis of economic sustainability, environmental responsibility and social
good.
So what’s the problem? With planners working diligently to provide
responsible design solutions, as well as many municipalities recognizing the
problems associated with suburban development patterns, and in some cases even
making changes to zoning codes that will permit good urban design, why do our
existing neighbourhoods continue to degrade?
Furthermore, with all the progressive changes to the planning practice
in recent decades why do new communities fail to perform like their traditional
counterparts? The problem is that even
though progressive planners have recognized the need for change, they remain
essentially powerless to affect change in three major branches of government
that are perhaps the most influential to our communities function and
wellbeing. These branches of government
being: the ministries of transportation, health and education. It’s becoming clear that no matter how well
planned our city streets and public spaces and how well designed the buildings
that line them, without massive changes to the aforementioned branches of
government, all efforts to affect positive change will likely be for little or
no gain as decisions made by these institutions can easily undermine any effort
to maintain the basic function of an existing inner-city neighbourhood or the
creation a new community with the intention of utilizing the traditional
pattern of development.
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First of all, and perhaps the
most important; our schools. These
institutions often become the heart of a community and are major drivers to
attract and keep people in a neighbourhood.
Year after year, it seems that another school closing is announced. Local school boards, driven by policy from
the province or state are forced close and consolidate neighbourhood
schools. Any existing neighbourhood can
be devastated by such a move; additionally it becomes impossible to build new “traditional”
communities without neighbourhood schools.
When local school boards are forced to work with a funding model that
does not allow neighbourhood schools to stay open, and when consolidation to
these “mega-schools” is the only way to balance the budget, our existing
neighbourhoods suffer and our new neighbourhoods never have a chance.
Fig. 1 - The location of the Tecumseh Vista School in Windsor / Tecumseh.
When it
comes to healthcare, our local doctor’s offices and hospitals are both vital to
the wellbeing of a community. Hospitals
located in the city core are magnets for commercial and residential development,
bringing thousands of people into the city core everyday. Physicians locating their offices within the neighbourhoods
they serve, eliminates the need for residents to travel great distances outside
of their community to receive care. Both
these facilities have historically been developed at the traditional
neighbourhood scale. For example, the
city in which I reside, Windsor, Ontario, once had four hospitals, but after
closures and consolidation, now only two facilities remain. With talks of closing these last two in lieu
of a regional centre to serve both the city and surrounding suburbs the city
core will be left without a hospital. Today,
the provincial ministries of health in Canada have been supporting this model
of local hospital closure and consolidation of services into what’s commonly
termed a “mega-hospital”. These are regional
centres that serve large metropolitan areas and are frequently located on the
outside fridge of a city. The are seen
as the most accessible and economic way in which to deliver healthcare services,
but do not take into consideration the impact that this model will have on our
existing towns and cities or our the pattern in which we develop new
communities. In addition to
consolidation of hospital services many physicians are being encouraged to move
their practices to large co-operative health centers. This model brings together a large number of
physicians into one facility but pulls doctors out from the communities they
serve. This forces patients to commute long
distances to access these services, which can be difficult for seniors and
those who use public transit. Both of
these changes to our health system are very harmful to our existing inner-city
neighbourhoods as they encourage the exodus of the city and turn new developments
into little more than bedroom communities.
Fig. 2 - The new location of the Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ontario indicated in red.
Downtown Barrie is indicated with the yellow marker and the old Royal Victoria Hospital
site is indicated in blue.
Finally,
modern policy developed by the ministry of transportation has completely changed
the way we build our places. Many towns
and cities in this country began simply as a small collection of buildings at
an opportune location along a path or the intersection of two well-travelled
roads. This is the beginning of a
village and if the population in the area grows, more buildings are constructed
until the village takes shape, some of these will eventually grow into a towns,
and even a cities as time goes on. The
ability to construct buildings in the traditional village scale, that is, a
building form that addresses the street and utilizes on-street parking is vital
to the creation of towns and cities. This practice creates what we know as
“main street” and is place-making at its finest. For
the most part, this is how most villages, towns and city centres that we
cherish today were formed. However,
currently the ministry of transportation denies us the ability to build in this
form. Most county and provincial roads
do not permit this form of development; instead only allowing what is often
referred to as a “pad site” requiring all parking to take place off-street to
maintain high-speed traffic on the roadway. Instead of encouraging development in a
pattern that will result in the creation of real towns, real places, our
current policy is to only permit development in the form of pad sites, strip
plazas and big box developments strewn randomly across our landscape. Developments in this form will never come
together to create a village, they will never create a public place in the
traditional sense. This regulation,
established for the sake of moving cars quickly, prevents us from ever creating
new places of value.
Fig. 3 - Small towns in Ontario located at intersections of two well travelled roads.
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There are
many challenges that today’s planners face in the pursuit of building places of
quality. These professionals have the
know-how and the tools to build real communities that are more than bedroom
neighbourhoods and endless corridors of commercial plazas, but with the current
policy of our education, healthcare and transportation government, planners
will continue to spin their wheels. In
order to affect real change, to maintain our existing inner-city neighbourhoods
and build new places of value we need to make drastic changes to these braches
of government. If municipalities and
planners cannot encourage all branches of government to align their policy with
current planning theory, our existing and future communities will suffer for
it.
