Saturday, December 21, 2013

Today's urban planning theories are changing but education, health and transportation policies have not caught up.

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.